Starting attic post

_drafts/the-attic.md

@@ -7,9 +7,86 @@ tags:
   - Not a lot of finish
 ---
 
+The attic was one of the big unfinished projects we inherited with the house.
+It appeared the previous owners had been aiming to convert it into a bedroom suite.
+We weren't very excited about that plan (the layout seemed impractical), but we were excited to have the space available to use.
+It adds square footage to the house, and since it's on a different floor, it offers some separation from other parts of the house if someone needs some alone time (the dog regularly needs her alone time).
+
+Things that were finished when we got it:
+
+ * The ceiling and walls were insulated with spray foam and drywalled.
+ * There was a mostly-complete half bathroom.
+ * A subfloor was installed.
+ * There was a sweet skylight.
+
+Things that were not finished:
+
+ * There was no heating or cooling.
+ * There was no floor on top of the subfloor.
+
+Despite missing a few obvious things, the attic was basically usable.
+You could walk on the subfloor, even if it wasn't all that nice, and the space got enough ambient heat from the rest of the house that it was a reasonable temperature most of the year.
+So after moving in, we threw down a couple beater rugs, moved up a chair that didn't have another home, and proceeded to use the half-finished attic for an embarrassingly long time.
+
+Eventually, though, it did rise to the top of our house priorities.
+Having the space fully finished would make it much more pleasant and welcoming, which would encourage us to use it more often and make it a place we could bring guests (we did put one visitor on an air mattress on the subfloor, sorry Sean).
+Also, we really needed to get a better floor surface down.
+The subfloor conducted sound very clearly to the floor below, which especially becomes a problem when the dumb dog goes through a sleep regression and decides to spend the 1 AM hour pacing around the attic, clicking her nails on the floor directly above the room where you're trying to sleep.
+
+## Radiator ##
+
+If the attic was going to be a fully-functional space, it needed a heat source.
+The insulation was doing its job well, and heat rising from the rest of the house kept the attic above 50℉ even in the winter, but it wasn't always comfortable.
+
+Some lines had been plumbed from the radiator but they just terminated at the top of the chase without being hooked up to anything.
+The small bathroom appeared to have tubing installed for hydronic in-floor heat.
+I suspected the previous owners had been planning to put in-floor heat in the rest of the attic as well, so I looked into that option but wasn't crazy about it.
+The typical method involves stapling tubing to the subfloor and then covering it with a layer of self-leveling gypcrete.
+This would add about and inch and a half to the floor height, which would put the finished floor pretty high above the level of the stair transition and the bathroom floor, which seemed like an awkward nuisance to deal with.
+Also, pouring gypcrete is super messy, not something I was particularly excited to have done on the top floor of our otherwise-finished house.
+And having a big concrete slab introduces a whole bunch of extra weight and potential for moisture issues, complications I wasn't especially keen to introduce.
+
+I spent a long time looking at [Warmboard](https://www.warmboard.com/warmboard-s) and a couple competing products, which skip the slab and embed the tubing in engineered panels instead.
+These were very enticing, but not a perfect fit for our situation.
+To avoid adding a bunch of height to the floor, we'd want to go with the version integrated into subfloor panels (rather than the retrofit version), which would mean tearing up all the existing subfloor and doing it over, which seemed kind of dumb.
+With the attic's small floor plan, getting a sensible layout designed from the mix 'n' match panels looked like a challenge.
+And while I didn't ever get a full quote on one of these systems, I gathered that they would be fairly expensive.
+
+In the end, in-floor heat was just too great of an investment for what was essentially a bonus space.
+Going to all this trouble might be worth the trouble for the long-term benefits in a heavily-used part of the house, but the attic simply wasn't important enough to warrant such a big investment.
+So I backed off the radiant heat idea and aimed for simpler, inexpensive heating options instead.
+
+TODO
+
+## Knee walls ##
+
+## Floor ##
+
 ## Time & Materials ##
 
-| Flooring | $ |
-| Flooring installation tools | $20 |
-|||
-| Floor installation | 13 hours |
+{% summary time %}
+{% line_item Floor installation | 15 hours %}
+{% line_item Bannister trim | ~2 hours %}
+{% line_item Caulking, quarter round | ~4 hours %}
+{% total ~7 hours %}
+{% endsummary %}
+
+{% summary cost %}
+{% subtotal_heading Radiator %}
+{% line_item Labor & Materials | $1,286 %}
+{% line_item Permit | $315 %}
+{% line_item Tax | $94 %}
+{% subtotal $1695 %}
+{% subtotal_heading Knee walls %}
+{% line_item Labor & Materials | $TODO %}
+{% subtotal $TODO %}
+{% subtotal_heading Floor %}
+{% line_item TODO Laminate flooring, "Cinnamon Oak" (on sale) | $TODO %}
+{% line_item Laminate floor installation kit | $20 %}
+{% line_item T-molding (? TODO) | $TODO %}
+{% line_item Quarter round, TODO | $TODO %}
+{% line_item Silicon caulk | $TODO %}
+{% line_item Foam fill stuff TODO | $TODO %}
+{% subtotal $TODO %}
+{% total $21 %}
+{% endsummary %}