Well the title suggests a smooth sailing approach over the weekend, but that may not be fully accurate. As you can see in the pictures below, on Friday I was able to install some insulation along the wall in my basement bedroom. However, as you can also see, I still need to do a little bit more as I ran out of insulation. If you take a look at the first picture below, you may notice that it looks somewhat smooth compared to the rest of the wall. The benefit of this was that the insulation was perfectly sized to fit directly in between these two wall studs. However, along the rest of the wall, the studs are closer together, which meant I had to cut the insulation to make it fit between the rest of the studs. This caused some challenges as the stuff does not cut super smoothly and I had to do some patchwork to shove pieces in to fit along the whole wall. Additionally, as you may be able to tell, half of the wall still has drywall, however, there is no insulation behind it. So I had to attempt to shimmy the insulation up the wall and push it until it was at the top of the room. This was difficult to do and the stuff didn't just slide up, but I think I got it pretty much covered.
This process was a good test for me at this stage in my learning project as it tested my patience. I mentioned in earlier posts that completing manual labour and jobs such as these create stress for me. I don't feel comfortable or confident engaging in these activities and often get overwhelmed and frustrated. In this situation, I had to take my time to figure out how to cut the insulation, as well as navigating the different sizes of space along the wall while ensuring they were fully covered with insulation. The next step I took was using my new drill for the first time. To be honest, I thought this would be really simple and easy, but it wasn't. I have never used a drill before, so even just connecting the drill bit created some interesting dynamics. I couldn't figure out why the end of the drill wasn't out, but eventually was able to figure it out on my own with some helpful tips from YouTube videos. A situation which normally would have driven me crazy, turned out to be quickly resolved with my patience and some technology assistance. This is the greatest thing about the internet nowadays, we literally have access to anything at our finger tips. This whole process would be so much more difficult on my own, but being able to simply Google or YouTube any technique and find support and see a solution with your own eyes, makes it so much easier to complete what would otherwise be impossible tasks. Ultimately, this class is meant to show us this - learning is so much more accessible than it ever has been due to the power of technology. I look forward to continuing to navigate these resources as I work towards completing this mini project.
