The devil was in the drop ceiling

I used to know an environmental scientist who worked for a company that specialized in cleaning up contaminated places. She used to say that sometimes you think you know everything about a place. And then you put your shovel into the ground and you end up finding the devil.

Well, we started to take down the drop ceiling in the parlor this morning and sure enough, a little devil jumped out at us. Apparently, when the first floor bathroom was installed, they decided that it was too much work to get the exhaust duct into the chimney via the space between the floors - in other words, between the ceiling and the second floor subfloor. Instead, they cut a hole in the ceiling.



Then they ran a duct across the room to the chimney and punched a hole into the chimney vent.


So, if (when) we take down the drop ceiling, we will have a hanging duct in the middle of our parlor/library. Oh, and the duct isn't even placed into the chimney vent. It's just sort of pointed in the direction of the hole that was punched into the chimney. I can't say we're surprised. Apparently when they put the bathroom in, they never bothered to get proper permits, so why should we should expect the work should be properly done. For all my anti-government friends out there - this is why we require permits. You can't trust people to build things right, apparently.

After cussing and wishing lots of harm on the previous owner who would allow such shoddy work, we were forced to rethink our plans. So, the new priority is getting the ceiling fixed. Since the bathroom is in the middle of the house and requires (by law and common sense) some form of mechanical exhaust, we've decided to have a recessed ceiling built that can hide the duct. Something like this:


and perhaps eventually we'll build a coffered ceiling. That would look something like this:

http://www.showing247.com/parksidewalk/living_ceiling.jpg

In happier news, we had our first snow of the season today. It was wonderful, light and fluffy snow. All the more wonderful because it would melt upon contact, thus no shoveling needed.

In other happier news, Marcos found two things of value that the previous owners did not take with them:

The glass is called alabaster glass. There were two left behind and they fit perfectly in the light fixtures in the rooms where the lights didn't work until the wonderful people from Daly Electric came by to give us light. If you remember, they took the doorknob to the master bathroom. But they left these beautiful fixtures, so we can partially forgive them.

The next couple of weeks are the final weeks of the semester. Besides a few important meetings, it's all grading all the time. We hope you have a happy week.