Lipstick on a Pig

Let me get one thing straight here: yes, I am a girl and I like girlie things. I value a sense of style, like beautiful things, appreciate quality and believe a home can tell you a lot about the people who live in it. But I also believe that a home is like a family member. As in all relationships, it has to WORK for the consideration of its inhabitants. It has to be reliable, comfortable, secure, bring joy and be a respite from the outside world. When nurturing a home into becoming a family member, it is like nurturing any other relationship: you get back what you put in.

I feel the need to say all of this based on some meetings I had today with 2 HVAC contractors and an exteriors contractor. The HVAC contractors seemed to pussy-foot around the "bad" news, e.g. (and these are nutshell-versions that describe the upshot of the danced-around points):

• "The return for the basement furnace is grossly undersized. We'll have to cut into the dining room floor to create a properly-sized return...maybe we can help you find some decorative iron covers that will be in keeping with the style of the house."
• "Adding supply vents for the attic to the existing ducts that service the 2nd floor will result in over-venting of that single run of ducts. Would you be OK with new, exposed ductwork running along the ceiling of the finished attic?"
• "We're gonna have to cut away some of the drywall in these soffits to terminate the ductwork if you plan to install radiant heat flooring in the basement so the furnace can work more efficiently on the 1st floor. Are you OK with us cutting into the drywall?"
• Meeting with the exteriors guy: "If you want to get the house back to the original style you should keep this stone around the bottom, do a siding exterior with a scale finish at the peaks. Me: "We do want to try to get the exterior back to it's original style, but we need to find sustainable materials that can be installed as seamlessly as possible to increase energy efficiency. The look of the house is important, but the MOST important thing to us making the house as energy-efficient as possible. We're willing to sacrifice the former for the latter." He gives me a quizzical look.

I had to work really hard today to convince all these guys that I REALLY AM much more concerned with how the house WORKS than how it looks. When I start worrying SOLELY about how the house looks I may be enlisting the services of an interior designer, but not them. I'm not gonna worry about furniture placement in the dining room at the expense of a properly-placed and functioning air return.

Which brings me to something funny we found today. As Steve and Caton were taking down drywall I joked with them "find any dead bodies yet?" They did find several beer bottles, some other ill-placed detritus and this:





Next to the piece of conduit (sitting on the sill of the electrical panel cabinet), at first I wasn't sure exactly what it was. Upon further examination I realized it was a lipstick tube. Empty.

Clearly, the previous builders must have used it all up on this big pig of a house.