I Love Talented Friends

Let me tell you about our ventelation system upstairs.

There is none.

There is no heating or cooling to the upstairs. For the summer, we bought a window unit for Nathan's room. During the winter, this was the heating system:

Move that piece of plywood, and you'd see a round hole that looked right into the living room. This works for heat, because heat rises. It was cool, but comfortable in his room on all but the most frigid and windy nights. (Then we used a small space heater.)

If you're wondering why the deuce there's a hole in the floor anyways, it's leftover from the previous owners. (Imagine that.) There had been a ventelation pipe from the old furnace in the basement that went up through the house all the way through the roof. When we had the roof replaced, we removed the part from the roof and the attic, but left the pipe in the living room and Nathan's room (before it was Nathan's room). The next spring, we pulled the pipe from the basement up. It added a bunch of room to both rooms (the pipe was like an 8-inch pipe, encased in like an 18-inch box), but we were left with ugly holes in the floors. Simple solution in the living room.... Move the TV stand on top of it. Not so easy upstairs.

Do you see the problem? Small child. Large hole. Something had to be done.

This was the temporary solution:

A second, larger piece of plywood put over the hole in the floor, then covered with a rug. That worked for a baby. But now the baby is crawling. And obviously curious. That plywood would be no problem for him to move here in a few months.

Our friend Jeff from church works at a welding shop in Lawrence. I knew he was interested in "decorative" work, so I mentioned to him that we needed a floor grate. I knew we'd need a custom job since this wasn't your standard 4x8 hole. So we gave him some measurements, and a couple weeks later he's made this beauty for us:

The ugliness of the floor distracts from how pretty it is. He made it out of cast iron, so that beast is heavy. And he made it with holes to screw it to the floor, which is something we hadn't even talked about. It's perfect. Exactly what I wanted. And now I can move the rug into the middle of the room where it belongs!

I love taking advantage of my talented friends.

(And yes, we're paying him. But not what it's worth, I'm sure. I'm not a complete mooch.)