HVAC Day 3: Can you feel the excitement?

First the really good news: Another cut taken from the dining room floor confirmed that the luan is simply stapled down with teeny tiny staples, and not glued as we'd feared.

I'm such a compulsive planner and budgeter, but there is always one thing that I never remember to budget into the cost of a bigger project: Extra meals out. I just do NOT feel like cooking when the dining room is such a disaster, though maybe I'll make pancakes and bacon for supper tonight.

Things are far enough along (1/3 done!) that I can now list what's left to be done instead of what is done:

• Finish cutting and installing kitchen, bathroom and laundry room vents
• Connect two returns and three vents
• Attach one section of ducting to the ceiling in the basement once it's connected to the return
  
• Install plywood around where the ductwork exits the basement window into the crawlspace
• Put some bits of insulation around a few places
  
• Do all of the 2nd/3rd floor work
  

Ok, so that last bullet point is a pretty big one, but this means that tomorrow one of the guys will finish with the first floor installation while the other two get the unit put in place in the attic and start assembling and connecting some of the key pieces. Friday will be vent/return cutting day, so (poor me) I will need to work from home again. God, I love my job!

One of the guys on the crew is a thin, energentic youngster, and I realize that ever job like this needs a thin energetic youngster, since he's the one who does 98% of the crawling around in the crawl space, and he'll also be the one to crawl through the tiny kneewall space on the 3rd floor to pull around the ductwork there.

I wish that the fact that they hope to finish next Thursday could get me out of travelling 80 miles up to Wilmington that day for "Employee Appreciation Day" aka "be there unless you're hospitalized or an immediate family member died in the previous 24 hours Day," but I doubt it.

I was going to take and post pictures but honestly, does anyone really want to see pictures of my vents, returns, ductwork and blower?? I'm sure that reading about it (if anyone's even bothering) is mind-numbingly boring enough as it is. The dog-bite scar was the only real item of visual interest so far.

I do plan to take before & after pictures of the dining room floor once we get to that point, although I'm almost embarrassed to show folks just how nasty this carpet is ("You let the baby crawl around on THAT?!?").

Oh, and we have to figure out how to keep obsessive-marker-boy from peeing on the vent in his hallway. Honestly I think we might just have to cover it most of the time. That or cut his weiner off.