Replacing Metal with Wood

This week is filled with appointments and outings so I figured it was best to keep the next project on a smaller scale that doesn't involve any crawling under the house.

Not a thing was accomplished yesterday. I had three appointments and R spent the day working on G's sprint car. Today was similar but without the appointments or working on the sprint car.

We basically picked up all the tools that we ended up carrying down to the basement for the duct redo. It's astonishing how many items were needed to crawl under the house and screw some sheet metal together. We also tidied up the basement for the furnace guy that is scheduled to show up on Thursday.

During the tidy up, we decided to burn some scrap wood that even R determined was not worth saving. That meant it was half rotted, too small, and covered in bent nails. Every time I suggest that we throw out this or that, he will remind me of the the time he had just the right trinket needed to make a repair. He never mentions the hundred times we had to go buy something because we couldn't find the item we were looking for among all of his junk...I mean precious trinkets.

Neither one of us were overly excited about starting another project today so we just prepped the next project location. This entailed a quick run through of what will be needed and how I.....I mean 'we' wanted to do accomplish our next project.

"WHAT'S THE NEXT PROJECT?"

Oh, did I forget to mention it?

Our next project is replacing the ugly metal cold air return in the foyer. When they removed the radiators and installed the forced air system they placed a cold air return right in your sight line when you come into the foyer. We are hoping that we can improve the looks of this cold air return.

We are replacing the very ugly bent metal cold air return register with a wood cold air return. Just like the other duct work that was installed shoddy this cold air return was a hack job just as well. They over cut the opening and what they did cut is ragged. They also removed one section of the base board.The register on the top is what was installed and the wood grill is what we are installing.
We drew some reference lines to see just how crooked the opening is and how much we will need to remove to make it straight and square. The opening will need to be slightly smaller. We will use the same oak flooring that we used to repair the floor elsewhere in the house.

The new wood grill will need some wood added to three sides so that it sits away from the wall to allow for air movement. The grill will also be painted white just like the baseboard.
R found another use for a scrap piece of rigid foam insulation. It works great to kneel on to protect your knees from the hard floor.

He was able to use a chisel to square up one corner and then we called it quits for the day.