What the hell were they thinking?!?

P1000107, originally uploaded by davethetemp.

This photo is in the dining room looking onto the back side of the stairs. Note the 1/2 inch furring strips on the exterior brick walls. Yep, that's it, the sum total of ALL the insulation we had on the walls of our downstairs. In this room you could see daylight between some of the bricks. One of our first decisions was to sacrifice some space in our rooms and add provide some depth in the walls for insulation. Given that the house is 16 feet wide, three inches less space may actually be noticeable