Weather proof

This is the first year my dh and I have weather proofed. Before we lived in apartments, the last one was heated so strongly from the apartment below that we never turned on our heater. We like to be a little chilly but not as chilly as our little house gets without heat. I'm going to share with you the methods that we're using.

We have caulked the underside of our old windows, but have not had time to go all the way around. Dh and I went outside at night and we could see big cracks of light leaking out from under the windows, so we made sure to get those done. Hopefully this weekend we can do the whole window. I purchased a window insulation kit and dh has done 3 windows so far, the ones with the biggest drafts. I would chose to do all of our rear having windows (we live in front of a sharp retention wall nobody but us sees the back of our home) but the cats have other plans. Already I've had to pull a few away from the insulated window in our bedroom. However we did the ones with big gaps and intend to do a few more.

Last night I hot glued draft blockers for the doors. I would have prefered to sew them but I can not get the hang of putting in my bobbin and dh hasn't remembered to do it for me. Those made a HUGE difference. The dog's crates are in the laundry room and it gets pretty chilly in there. They have blankets, but for some reason big dog bunches his to the front of his huge kennel and curls up in the back. With the door blocker it was much warmer. We don't keep the dogs in there all night, they sleep with us but dh puts them up in the morning so I can catch some extra sleep. I didn't like them being chilly even if only for awhile. I originally made door blockers out of the legs of an old pair of jeans but they were not long enough. So i put them behind our couch on the window ledge where the cats sit. Even there I notice its not as drafty.

Today we purchased weather stripping buy 1 get 1 free. The ad ended Sunday but they still had a sign up, and the lady was quite surly about honoring it. I was angered to say the least, its illegal to not honor a signed price. Anyway they did and we got 4 rolls of stripping for the price of two. I believe hubby intends to use it on the windows.

We're heating our home with built in electric heaters in the bedrooms, an oil heater in the living room, and a space heater upstairs. We don't run them all the time, only when needed. Our furnace needs a pipe installed so that the heat does not dry out the chimney and create a fire hazard. Therefore we have not used it, we did check to make sure it worked before we bought it but not since. Hubby had a company give us an estimate, $325. That is cheaper then I thought, and affordable. But before we go ahead and have it done dh is going to research how much it would be to do it himself and how difficult it would be. If its cheap and easy he will do it, if not its time to hire a professional.

Tomorrow big dog goes in for shots and a neuter. Its going to be quite expensive (cats are so much cheaper! I'm in sticker shock) but its for the best. He's getting a little to interested in things he shouldn't be, and hopefully he will calm down a bit. The furnace, and big dog's shots and neuter were adoption road blocks I'll be happy to see removed!