What can I put on my walls to keep heat in

Suesage66
by Suesage66
My house is single brick built ,I lose alot of heat ,walls always cold ,any ideas what I could put on them

  6 answers
  • Linda Sikut Linda Sikut on Jan 11, 2018

    I would think that blown in insulation would be the best idea, but for a temporary idea, you could hang blankets, quilts or heavy drapes to help keep the cold from getting into the room. If possible, you could hang plastic first then a layer of heavy fabric as mentioned above. It's not a permanent solution, but it should help. Wishing you the best.

  • Rusalyn Andrews Rusalyn Andrews on Jan 11, 2018

    Tkae that idea a step farther and do what they used to do in cold old castles. Put curtain rods up and hang beautiful tapestries, artful quilts or beautiful textiles. In other words use it as an opportunity to make your room feel like a gallery for beautiful textile works of art. You can hang insulated curtains either in the open as neutral spaces or behind artful textiles. Consider making your own huge artwork on a piece of muslin (by following the procedures for making muslin rugs.

  • Dave Dave on Jan 11, 2018

    You definitely need to insulate the walls. A lot has to do with how much money you want to spend. If it were my home I would go down to home depot or some place like that and buy their 8×4 sheets of foam insulation with built in barrier on it glue them to the wall, then come back with 2x4s strips in between and sheetrock to the strips. If money is a problem just do a little at a time, or start with the colder spots first. It will cost you one way or the other.

    • Suesage66 Suesage66 on Jan 11, 2018

      Thank you for yr idea ,money is tight being on my own ...but I am spending more going out the wall :(

  • Gale Allen Jenness Gale Allen Jenness on Jan 11, 2018

    From what your saying I’m guess you have a brick wall with no space between the inside or outside of the brick? If so, if you don’t mind loosing some space inside the house as well as loose the look of the brick wall inside the house? The very best way to make your home more energy efficient to keep the heat inside the house and cold outside or visa versa is to fit the wall out with at least 2x4 studs. I would cover the brick wall well with plastic sheeting first then add the 2x4 studs and insulate between studs then Sheetrock.. from there you tape your Sheetrock joints and Use joint mud to even out your joints. Let dry and sand. You’ll have to decide whether you want a smooth wall or textured? If you decide smooth you’ll need to get your wall perfect before painting since every imperfections will stick out like a sore thumb after you paint. Which is why walls are usually textured to hide imperfections! You can buy cans of texture spray that can turn out just as nice as a professional coming in a texturing a wall. But it takes some practice and skill set to come out with a nicely textured wall! I found going over the wall with thin coats of texture and changing the setting back and forth between the large,medium and small settings on each coat. I came out with a nicely looking textured wall.

    But note I’m also a trained contractor that also gives me a edge over a novice doing jobs like this! You may want to use some scrape Sheetrock and practice spraying texture on a 2x2 scrape piece before attempting your wall? It will also take a lot of cans to texture your wall too! Plan on 20-50 cans depending how big your wall is? No big deal if you run out of cans though, just buy more and start again where you left off at! After your happy with the texture on your wall let dry and paint. By chance if your not happy with your wall after you paint or find areas that just don’t look right? You can spray texture over your dry paint area and let the texture dry again and repaint that area. We live in a manufactured home and whoever did the original texturing on the walls did a horrible job! I retaxtured all my walls right over the painted walls and repainted after the textured dried and it turned out beautiful as far as a textured wall goes!

    if you don’t want to use a spray can there is another way to texture a wall or a ceiling that this method is usually used for. But a wall be fine too! Take a 12”x12” piece of plywood and screw a handle to the center of the board or maybe a 2”x2” roughly 18”-24” long. Then wad up a bunch of news paper in a sheet of plastic big enough to wrap around your plywood that has the handle on it. Take the wadded up paper in the plastic and wrap the plastic as snug as you can around the board keeping the wadded paper on the flat side of the board opposite the handle as much as possible and staple the plastic to the handle side of the plywood all the way around. Then get you a big enough bucket that your plywpod with the handle will drop down inside of easily! Add texture or joint compound that you buy and mix up with water yourself to a consistentency that is just thick enough to not be runny! Then stick your plywood plastics with the handle into your texture to get texture all over your plastic and then press it to the corner of your wall and pull it away and repeat the process. Do like a 4’x4’ area of the wall to let dry just a bit and then take a trowel to wipe off the extra texture off your wall to flatten out the areas to the desired look you want. Your not trying to remove all the texture, just the high points! It can also give you a beautiful textured look to a wall or ceiling! It’s really not hard to do, but can be a little scary your first time! Again you can always practice on a large scrape of sheetrock to see how it turns out and give you more confidence you’ll be happy with your project when your done! Know I gave you a lot of information here to think about. I hope it will help you decide in some way to help warm up your home as well as keep it from getting too hot in the summer! Best of luck! If you have any other questions let me know? Feel free to email me directly as well. goldwinggj@yahoo.com for any other help I may be able to provide. I’m disabled now due to neuropathy but I still have a lot of knowledge to help people out when I can and if I can save people money with projects they’re willing to do themselves I’m more then willing to help them thru the process!

    • Suesage66 Suesage66 on Jan 11, 2018

      Bless you :) I will read yr answer again tomorrow ,take it all in ....it's really the wall going up the stairs that needs doing ..it sure is a nightmare with heating bills , warmer outside lol ...I don't have anyone to help me , so it will be interesting :)

  • Gale Allen Jenness Gale Allen Jenness on Jan 12, 2018

    Really sorry you have no one to fall back on for help. It’s tough when you got to deal with everything by yourself! I don’t know if you have any power tools to speak of or feel comfortable using them? If your not experienced using power tools they can be very dangerous if not used correctly and I’d hate to hear you hurt yourself! But if your set on doing this yourself and got the tools. Maybe I can give you some pointers what to do or not do with the equipment you’ll be using to help keep you safer I hope? Hard to teach someone from long distance. Going up a stairway adds a little more difficulty to the job too. You’ll need to be good at reading a tape measure too! For a novice that’s never done this type of work, it’s a big task to take on! Especially with going up a flight of stairs!

    You know there may be a easier option to your problem? Get some sheets of styrofoam from a home improvement center and some liquid nail. If you can use a tape measure you can mark your sheet of styrofoam to fit your wall around your stairs. Once you got the styrofoam fitted you can run beads of liquid nail on the back side of the styrofoam to stick to your brick. You can push it against the brick and pull it away for roughly a minute or so then push it back to the wall and it should stick better too! Then you could repeat this process once you get the wall covered with the styrofoam with some 1/2” Sheetrock using liquid nail to glue your Sheetrock to the styrofoam. It save you some cutting on having to add studs and since your going up a flight of stairs it not protrude into the stairway so much. You probably want at least 1” thick styrofoam or thicker to give more insulation value? Then the 1/2” Sheetrock will hopefully only add 1 1/2” - 2” to your wall going this route! It be your easiest choice to do your wall up the stairway

    • Suesage66 Suesage66 on Jan 12, 2018

      Your so helpful ,it's so kind of you to spend yr time explaining it all.i will look online bit later see if I can get styrofoam .my wall going up the stairs is very high ,so guess I need to hire those special ladders ..should b fun ...have u ever seen that film ...money pit with Tom Hanks lol

  • Gale Allen Jenness Gale Allen Jenness on Jan 16, 2018

    yes I have, funny movie! If you need to, you can make a 2x4 frame that can sit on any stair with a 2x4 legs that you measure down say for two stairs to make a level flooring screw a piece of plywood to your 2x4’s to stand on. I’m not sure how wide your stairs are? But even something 18”-24” give you a level area to stand on while on your stairs working and you could stand a latter on it too possibly? You could screw a board sticking up on the edge of the board so a latter can’t slip off too! Hope you understand what I’m saying? Your 2x4 would end up a L shape with your plywood screwed to the long side or your L and the short end would be your leg that sits on your lower stair. If you can without it showing too bad you may want to put at least one screw or two screws be better yet to make sure this stays in place while your working on it. I hate to see it slip if you were standing on it! So anchor it if you can with least one Sheetrock screw!