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.

Duct Work Complete + New Tool Purchase

Well almost. We need four 4 inch long screws to permanently secure the plywood. But R was intent on watching *** Favre whoop the Dallas Cowboys (and who could blame him) so the next time he makes a hardware run he will pick up the screws.

This is where we were at when I last posted.We next cut a piece of 2 inch thick pink foam insulation (from the scrap pile) to fit the opening. We used our table saw to cut the insulation. We get a nice edge plus it is the fastest method.We placed it in the opening and pressed the insulation into the ends of the two ducts.
This left an impression.Using a piece of duct that is the same size. We marked the insulation. We cut out the holes using a jig saw after drilling a 1 inch pilot hole for an opening to start cutting.
We ended up with this. We used the cut out insulation as a template to cut out a piece of plywood (from the scrap pile)to fit the opening and the ducts.
We removed the insulation and plywood so that we could install 2 adjustable elbows and then inserted the pink insulation back in place.This left us with a female end on the adjustable elbow and female ends in our remaining spare duct.
We anticipated this problem and purchased crimping pliers to put the ridges on the duct to make it a male end. This tool was just under 15 bucks and can also be used to put the crimped ends on downspouts. The tool does all the work and strength is not needed. Move along overlapping one ridge which will keep your spacing equal.We then moved on to attaching the remaining ducts, making sure to screw and tape each joint.
This is what it looked like after the last duct was installed. We also used strapping to support the ducts.But what about the plywood piece??? We cut the plywood into two pieces before we reinstalled it. We needed to do this because the adjustable elbows needed to be at a slight angle to line up with the existing duct. The pink foam insulation was pliable enough to get over the elbows but the plywood was not.
Here is the finished project. Keep in mind that before this the opening was basically exposed to outside temperature air which kept the basement slightly above freezing in the winter. This also was a freeway for mice, spiders, and whatever else that felt like crawling into the basement.While we were finishing up we noticed another piece of duct that was slightly askew where it attached to a floor register duct. R was unable to install a screw because of the floor joists so we opted for adjusting the duct as best we could and then taping. I can't say enough about the aluminum tape. It is less than 10 dollars for a large roll and easy to install. A quick trip around your furnace while it's running will tell you where you are leaking expensive conditioned (heated or cooled) air. Look for leaks at points where one duct attaches to another. I found numerous leaks along the trunk line because the large rectangular duct is actually made out of 2 L shaped pieces. This yields a lot of seams that could leak.

*** It was a great game and I was cheering for the Purple People Eaters (Vikings) to beat the Dallas Cowboys. Rarely will a person from Michigan cheer for a Minnesota team (never for the Twins!!!) but today was a rare occasion. So until the end of football season, the occupants of Gear Acres are Minnesota Vikings fans. Damn that was hard to say...but not as hard as this......

Gooooooo Vikings!!!!!