This is another case of why you should always budget more than you expect for a project.  You see we had started out assuming that the insulation in the walls would be fine.  However after tearing down some of the Sheetrock I noticed that the insulation said ‘1.5″ Economy’.  That means that instead of the recommended R11->R28 for a outside wall in our climate, we probably had about R6.  So I checked out the insulation at Lowes and since it would only be 20 bucks or so to replace it, I figured it would be a good idea.  Picked up a couple of rolls of 15″ wide, 3.5″ deep (since we have 2×4 walls)  R13 insulation, and was happy to find that its quite easy to install.  It fills the stud bay completely, and has nice little flaps that make it easy to staple to the studs.  Hopefully the added insulation will keep the bathroom nice and toasty warm in the winter time!

You might ask why in the middle of a bathroom remodel, I decided to replace the window in the front of the house.  How I got there is a bit of a long story.  You see it turns out, I’m cheap and didn’t want to waste three dollars worth of insulating foam.    Perhaps I should go to the beginning.  When we decided to redo the bathroom we wanted to replace the old window there.  Since it seemed silly to just order one window I decided to replace the front three windows as well.   Of course I planned on not actually installing the windows until I had finished the bathroom, but then halfway through installing the bathroom window I realized that insulating the window would only require half a can of Great Stuff foam.   Since you can’t really save the foam once you start using the can, I figured it would be a better idea to do another window and use the other half on that.   Seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’m thinking it might have been a better idea to just concentrate on the bathroom and live with spending an extra couple bucks on the foam.