Insulation, Radiant and Vapor Barriers - Help! NO insulation

My 1000sq foot housw was built in 1955, and there is not one bit of insulation in the exterior walls, betreen the studs. They did you a heavy black paper under the siding. here's my question: We want to replace all our old original windows with something more modern and effeciant. Should I have insulation added to the walls beofre I invest in windows?
My attic is well insulated, which helps alot. We pay and avarage of $67.00 a month for natural gas, on an equal bill system, and about $ 30.00 a year for two window AC units.
Thanks for the help.

Insulation in the outside walls is the first and best way to go. To save on $$$$.


ED ;)

We bought a house in Oct of 05 and it also did not have any insulation in the attic or the walls! I rented a machine from lowes and 125 dollars later the attic floor had insulation. About a month ago we did our walls w/ cellulose. Our living area sq. ft. is roughly 15-1600sq. ft. But to estimate the job you have to figure out the sq. ft of your walls (H x W) Then you have to figure out how thick or deep your walls are. Mine were roughly 3in. maybe a tad bit more. Each bag of cellulose will do 80 sq ft. of a wall that is 3 in. thick.
What type of siding do you have? We have wood lap siding which I didn't think at all that we would be able to take a piece off w/o breaking them. But we did. We took the section off then drilled 1 3/8" holes w/ a butterfly bit. When you go to rent the machine make sure you tell them you need a reducer. Lowes did not have one so they MADE me buy a reducer from the shop vac section. Dont know what it originally was used for but it worked great!! I was mad b/c they are suppose to supply that stuff. I went through 27 bags which I probably would have only used 25 but I was filling a cavity that was not filling and it ended up going down behind my laundry chute that ran from the attic to the basement and I had about a 4' pile of cellulose in my basement bathroom. The total cost for me to do this myself was around 280-300 and that is w/ me taking 3 bags back that I did not use b/c I originally bought 30 bags.
I would recommend doing it yourself b/c I had a quote from 2 different companies and they wanted between 2500-3k to do the job! NO THANK YOU!! I saved myself 2200-2700 dollars. It took us 2 weekends to do this but it is kinda fun and was non stressfull. If you go this route let me know I have that reducer and would gladly let it go if you just paid for shipping!! Cost me 10 bucks to buy it!!

Thanks plank! looks like I will do the attic first, then the walls.
DIY is the only way to go, there is know way I would pay that kind of dough to a contractor! Thanks for the info, and I will keep you in mind for the reducer.

Allan

No problem. Just let me know if you want the reducer. It had 4 different levels on it (so to speak) and I cut the first one off so it made a bigger hole but yet it fit great into the 1 3/8" hole I drilled in the wall.