Insulation

We decided that the Wyoming winter weather calls for extremely good insulation, so we expanded our budget for a little higher quality insulation. It's called "spider" insulation.

They use a huge vacuum-type hose that's attached to their van and blows in the insulation between the 2x4's. Then they have a scraper machine that they roll up and down the insulation to cut off any access so that it lays flat against the wall.
After they finish that, they suck up the excess with a different hose back into their van.
Here's a close up shot of what this stuff looks like. The crazy thing is that it has some sort of self adhesive ingredients in it and it sticks to the wall, but when you touch it, it doesn't feel sticky at all! In fact if you touch it, it will dent in and leave a dent, so even though it's tempting, it's best to let it be a "look only" project. We have several dents from several hands in our insulation...
We decided to insulate the basement so we could leave it open from the upstairs. We have a door that's called for at the top of the stairs in our plan, but both Carson and I prefer the feeling of openess, so we opted to get rid of the door and insulate the basement. That's the code here... you have to insulate your basement walls if you are not having a door.
Here's a shot into the future theater room and the stairs taking us to the main floor.

We had them insulate the floors over the garage because we have been warned that it can be terribly cold and noisy in those bedrooms if we don't. If you look closely, you can see the netting they put up so they could spray the insulation into the inner wall areas where there is no plywood.
The sheetrock was dropped off on the same day as insulation so there would be no lapse time in between jobs. Tomorrow starts the sheetrock process!
Here's a view from the piano room into the entry way. The spider insulation is sprayed on the right, because that is attached to the garage wall. The bats are on the left, because that is inside the home.
Master bedroom.
We decided to insulate some of the innerwalls and the floors for sound proofing purposes and better heating/airconditioning. We used the cheaper insulation bats for these areas to save money, since the walls are the most important areas and those were already done.
Our inspector had never seen this type of insulation before and was so impressed that he brought over a fellow contractor to see the work. We passed the inspection with flying colors, and there was even talk of the inspector wanting to start his own insulation business up here with this new technology.