Julie, list those signs on Freecycle! That's great Freecycle material. Turn your DH onto Freecycle, if he's really looking for people who could use the stuff. My favorite give away saying: **I have faith that the universe will provide us with xxx if we need another one. **You KNOW we would have never been able to find that if we hadn't been digging in all of this stuff. **You have exceeded your fair share of the space, so you'll have to keep it in "your" space. **And just where, exactly, did this come from in the first place? **I DID deal with it, it's in the trash where it belongs. Remember, a place for everything and everything in it's place. **It's costing us $200 per square foot to store that thing. Is that worth it to you? Our current go-around is an old wool coat with holes, which he finally replaced. I'm going to cut out the wool and put it in the compost pile, but he thinks I should donate the thing. His feeling is that it's better than nothing if you have nothing. I told him there were tons of decent coats at the thrift stores and he could just go out and find someone living under a tarp to give it to. He's not willing to do that, so I guess I've won this battle. I actually did 90% of the decluttering when he was at work. I would load up the van and drop it off at the store right next to where I worked. This summer, he accused me of decluttering his boots. Turns out that he hid them from me in the trunk of his car! Gloria

"This method would keep the attic ventilated but cuts back on the radiant heat coming in from the underside of the roof sheathing". If you can use a straight edge, utility knife, and stapler, you can diy this for big savings using rolls of radiant barrier. The install is on the underside of the rafters using the rafter cavaties as channels to trap the heat gain and is pushed out by way of the soffit venting up and out the ridge venting. Here's a link to an outfit that offers different install methods and radiant types. I've used 50" wide x 1000" rolls one side foil faced. fiberglass mesh inbetween, with the opposing side kraft paper. You hold it up 3" from where the rafters meets the top plates and run it perpindicular to the rafters overlapping and foil taping the seams. You overlap at the ridge as well. Your soffit/ridge venting must be continous run meaning every rafter cavaty would be vented to allow the heated air to escape. The radiant blocks it from entering the attic. Very effective anvenue of keeping the attic cool. Here is a link that might be useful: radiant barrier

Since you are new to our country, my thought is to ask you about the type of ownership you have. If you truly own the town home from your curb to the back of the lot, the advice you have gotten above works fine. However, if the unit is a condominium or co-operative, things are handled differently. In that case, you probably do not fix a roof problem yourself, you would report it to the condo board or manager, or someone like that because in a condo, you only own what is inside your walls, not the structure itself. A cooperative is likely more complicated than a condo.

Bruce, I thought there may be another entrance somewhere else in the house, as the one that I know of is in the ceiling in the garage, but I checked everywhere else in the house and there's nothing. The house is just a normal size ranch house, so I don't think it would need an additional fire barrier. I'm going to be contacting the builders tomorrow to find out what's up with that, along with additional things. Thanks for all the suggestions, much appreciated.