A Breakthrough

My mom was talking about coming up and staying with me while I recuperate from surgery the end of this month.

That means getting some heat into the guest bedroom.

Not that there's no supply duct in there; there certainly is. It's just that it's never had a grille that fit. When I only had my senior cat, it didn't matter that it was uncovered. Rhadwen has no interest in spelunking the ductwork. But my little girl-cat, Gwenith, is an intrepid duct explorer, and ever since she and her brother Huw came to live with me, I've had the guest bedroom HVAC outlet covered with a piece of screen affixed to the wall(paper) with duct tape (stupid, stupid, stupid! I actually like that paper!), with a piece of 1 x 12 board over that , and the bed pushed against the wall over that.

The room is freezing.

I've tried to install the fancy Victorian grille the POs-1 left me. Over two years ago I even butch-- I mean, notched out the 8" high baseboard to accommodate its lower rim. But I had no luck making it stay.

But now it was time to call in the heavy artillery. I phoned a local HVAC contractor on Tuesday and yesterday one of their guys came.

He was very nice. He actually pushed the grille into place and screwed in the setscrew (helps having some strength). Says after I get it painted, he'll come back and do a proper job of it for around $75 or so.

Meanwhile, it's in there! And it's been made to fit! For the first time in over fourteen years, that bedroom register has a grille on it!

I feel bad for the HVAC guy, though. I talked to my mom this morning and due to some health issues of her own, she's not going to be able to come up to be with me after all. I don't say I won't have them come install the grille properly before I go into the hospital. After all, I'll need somebody here with me for a night or two. But for my mom, I think I would have made more of an effort to get it done and not settle for Good Enough.