After the floor came the next step towards our new kitchen: insulating the little flat roof that’s keeping the weather outside of our kitchen. Insulation is also the magical word when renovating, so we couldn’t escape it.
Not that we ‘d want that, of course.
So I started reading up. The distance between beams is irregular, so we needed insulation that could handle that. As it’s a roof, ideally you place insulation as thick as possible. In our case this meant either having a ceiling at 280cm and settling with an insulation thickness of 16cm (the thickness of the beams), or having the ceiling in the kitchen drop to be able to accommodate more insulation.
We opted for the first one, but only partially because we want the higher ceiling. Dropping it any further would also mean that the housing for the rolling shutter would end up in the ceiling instead of just below it. This would mean that whenever something went wrong with the shutter, we’d have to take out part of our ceiling, which isn’t fun.
That’s renovating, sometimes you have to make concessions.
Back on track now. So I knew I had to find insulation of 16cm thick, which would easily handle around different widths. The recommendation you then usually get is Isover isoconfort, which are basically sheets of 120cm wide, and length varying upon thickness. You simply cut them to size according to your needs, very convenient.
We got ourselves the insulation, and started stuffing it in between the beams. Cutting the insulation goes best with a serrated knife. You can get a knife specifically made for this, but we used an old bread knife instead. Works just as good!
Then the fun really began: measure, cut, measure, cut, … Did I already mention this stuff itches like hell? It does. So long sleeves and gloves are a must (and even then you have to be careful not to wipe your face with the gloves…). But a few hours later the ceiling was stuffed.
And that is that! Any of you been insulating lately?