Brrr, It's Cold Inside!!!

Just keep plugging away.  That's the mantra for the house.  I made a to-do list for the house when I first bought it, and I swear the list is longer now four months AFTER purchase!  It seems like the more I do, the more NEEDS to be done!  Am I moving forward at all?!

Dad showed up this morning, and we started tackling the staples in the kitchen.  I told him that my goal was one 4' x 8' floorboard a day.  I think I have around 15 or so to do, so it's just a couple weeks of pulling staples.  Little by little!

Well, we strategically focused on the middle of the kitchen dining area.  The reason being that I want to be able to scoot the chairs if need be.  I don't have to have tile floors yet, but I WOULD like to be able to use the table if I wanted to!  I looked at the clock.  9:40 A.M.  Let's see how long it would take.

OH.  MY.  The staples!!!  Hundreds upon hundreds in the floor.  Flooring guys have told me that they have a tool similar to a roofer that they use to pick up the staples...and the ones they can't get they just hammer in.  But in both Dad's and I's mentality, why not pluck 'em up for good?!  We both have tons of free time on our hands right now, so...

Staples, staples, EVERYWHERE.

One board at a time.  But it's work!

After the board (and then some!), we decided to tackle the walk-in closet.  I'm trying to find projects that require two people, and this is definitely one of them.  The shelves are SO long that I can't handle them myself.  Well, we quickly learned that we were ill-prepared for the job.  With the length of the shelf combined with the flexibility of the shelf (not completely rigid), we had a difficult time keeping it level for drilling holes.  I put three support holes into the wall before we realized that we were going to have a tremendously difficult time staying straight across the whole wall.  We REALLY needed a laser level, but it was at Mom and Dad's house.

Adding shelves to the massive walk-in closet...well, trying to anyway...

So after a frustrating hour and a half of hanging shelves (and messing up), we decided to call it quits on that project and just wait until tomorrow.  It pains me to do that, but I really want it to look nice.

So as to not waste any time (ok, so we DID have a long lunch break talking about how nice it would be to have a laser level, and I even considered buying one at Sears across the street!), Pa decided we should pull up more staples.  I, of course, accused him of being crazy, but he started, and I couldn't let him work by himself.

So at the front entryway, we started pulling staples.  Hundreds upon hundreds of staples.  Now, granted, this was the most important part of the house to pull staples, for I cringe every time I walk from upstairs to downstairs barefoot!  I take a shower upstairs, then have to come downstairs to grab clothes out of the dryer, off the couch, or out of my suitcase!  And OUCH! do those small staples kill the foot.  I have hit more than one that just surprises the living daylights out of you with how painful it is.

Staples every inch!

What tedious work!  But my feet will love me!

Leaving our wake in the front entryway.

So we pulled.  And pulled.  And pulled some more.  I was pulling close to the air vent next to the front door when I said, "Dad, I don't think the heat is on, but I feel a huge cold draft coming out of the vent."  "Well, that's good."  "No, Dad, the heat is NOT on.  I'm telling you, no air should be moving here."

But we kept pulling staples.




Not only did the staples come up, but the staples have prevented me from getting a good, deep clean of the floors in this area!  So bye, bye, staples, dirt, hair, and pet dander!

One of the piles of staples and dirt.

Another pile.

After we pulled them all out, I swept them all up and looked for ones we had missed...to the tune of over 30!  ha!  Pa was taking some much-needed relaxation in the chair and mentioning he was leaving for home when I said, "Just a few more minutes.  Let me clean up here."  I grabbed the sweeper and cleaned up the area.  And then I noticed the incredibly filthy air register, so I took the hose from the vacuum and started cleaning it out.



Yet another container full of dirt and dust and sawdust.  This house is FILTHY.



The walkway is now clear!  I can walk from the bath to the laundryroom (and scream in the kitchen when I hit those staples!)

And something just didn't feel right.  I wasn't hitting bottom.  I figured I was missing something, so I pulled the hose away and couldn't believe my eyes.  COULD NOT BELIEVE.

I was looking straight into my crawlspace!!!  I thought I was done looking into my crawlspace from the main floor.  I couldn't see exactly what was going on, so I grabbed a flashlight, and that only made the realization all the worse.  My elbow in the ductwork had literally rusted out.  I had a straight view of my crawl.



The air vent before I cleaned it out.



At second glance, I noticed it had no bottom!!!  Agh, this house!!!

I was ready to tackle it tomorrow, but Dad said it was an urgent project that needed fixed, so we decided to tackle it at "closing" time.  Sorry, Pa!

I headed to the crawlspace to take a look at the situation, and it was obvious that I needed to replace not only the elbow but also the five-foot section of ductwork, too, as it was also rusted out.  It appears that my front door has been leaking so much water over the years (hence the ruined floors) that it leaked into the ductwork and simply rusted out over 25 years.



Just solid rust.



Why, yes, that IS my living room ceiling you are seeing.  Sigh.



The worthless vents.  This house is nothing but a big water leak fiasco.

Maybe this explains why my house has only been warming up to 62 degrees as pointed out by Mom yesterday!

We headed to Lowe's and grabbed the required materials, then headed back to the house.  The fix was relatively simple.  I worked in the crawlspace while Dad attached to duct upstairs.  We had it fixed in about 40 minutes.



The new parts ready to install.

And it was an instantaneous change.  As we both realized, not only was more heat coming into the house now, but less cold was coming into the house!  I'm actually thankful that today was so windy (gusting over 30 MPH), as I think that's what caused the massive airflow out of the vent that I felt in my face while pulling up staples.  The wind blew through the vents in the foundation of the crawl (I felt it drastically in the crawl) and pushed the air out the hole in the floor.  If it had been calm, I don't think I would have felt it at all.  So the cold air was stopped from coming into the house, AND the warm air was added to the house.  This should help out significantly!



The new duct installed!  All that heat was going straight into my crawlspace!  How inefficient!



All fixed!



Oh so clean!

As I told Dad, I think I have five ducts coming off the main duct, so we basically increased the efficiency of my heating by 20% today.  Amazing.

So glad we found the damage.

We called it quits a little after 6:00 P.M.  Thanks for the help on the needed fix, Pa!  He headed home right after that...later than expected for both of us.

 

 

Later this evening, I glued my bi-fold door pivot hole from the laundry room.  It had been totally splintered before I bought the house.  And now I'm trying to salvage the door.  I will let it set overnight.



The splintered door.



Letting it set.

One step forward, one step back!  Am I making any progress?!  Every time I check one box off the list, I add another...or three!