Winter Projects Update

When winter rolls around, it becomes obvious that I am not a native Minnesotan. I have absolutely no outdoor winter hobbies, unless you count angry shoveling. No skiing, no ice skating, no snowshoeing, no hockey, no broomball (which is a strange sport played by Minnesotans, and I suspect Canadians). The closest things I have to hobbies right now are coffee drinking and going insane, which usually happens by mid-February.

In an effort to delay insanity, I am still working on slowly peeling the paint off the downstairs doors. It is coming along slowly, but surely.I have also decided to upgrade the wall returns for our air conditioning system. About a year ago, my desire for air conditioning trumped my old-house puristness and we invested in a Unico system. While we like the system, the Menard's style air returns really leave something to be desired. The system required 4 of these and we tried to hide them as best we could.

I have decided to replace them with salvaged cast iron wall register inserts. Originally, a register like this would have fit inside a larger metal housing and would have been positioned through the baseboard, closer to the floor. So, even though it isn't really accurate, it will still look a heck of a lot better than the current one.