Hot Air

So, the Home Depot total for bathroom remodeling just passed the 400-dollar mark. Why did I get discourage and stop my exact cost factoring? Two trips to the Home Depot Tuesday night to fix the dryer vent, which doesn't even travel through the bathroom.

You know when an old appliance is moved you get a chance to clean the floor before they put the new one in? Well, I wanted to clean out the vent. It travels above the boys' room before going to the outside and on laundry day their room is at least 20 degrees warmer than the rest of the house. A couple weeks ago I had inspected the dryer vent from the outside while the dryer was running and air was not coming out, so I figured there was too much lint built up inside.


I stick my hand up the ratty-looking elbow - layers of caulk and nasty duct tape and start to pull out some fuzz. I stick my hand up further and realize I've just run out of pipe. I felt lint coated on dryer lint all over the ceiling's sheet rock, all over the insulation and the electrical wires in a two-foot radius all around the 4-inch vent hole in the ceiling.

After some more feeling around I discover the vent duct more than away from where the elbow had been dangling. I was pissed. I've never seen such a half-ass job. Oh, wait. Yes, I have. The original PVC toilet flange was installed wrong making the bolts poke through two tiny holes instead of the long curved slots where the bolts are supposed to slip in straight down. Oh, and the sheet rock and cement board gap for the underpar shower tile job.

Needless to say I killed the laundry monster's nesting spawn then cut a bigger hole in the ceiling to fix the problem. Any you know what? I gave up. Luckily my friend Heather has more patience than I and was able to figure out that if we cut a foot off the 5" vent part it would angle into the ceiling and over the existing 4" one.

I all but jumped for joy when, for the first time ever, the Buzanowski home had mechanically-made hot air blowing through that vent.