Hood Ventilation in Real Time

9 - 9:30:
Our exhaust dude has just arrived, and hopefully by the end of the day, our hood will be hooked up. Let's see if I can keep up with the updates. So far, he's brought in a sawz-all, and has apparently hit something tougher than he expected. This makes us slightly concerned about what is actually in that section of the wall. Stay tuned.
10am:
There are scary sounds coming from the kitchen. Discoveries:
1. The red tile goes all the way up to the ceiling on that side of the wall, too.
2. The space we're hoping to go through with the ductwork appears to be filled with blown-in insulation. (not sure if this is good or bad yet)
10:30:
There's a hole in our wall. Usually a statement of this sort makes me terrified. But it's all good. It looks like that area is indeed empty (aside from the insulation) so he's going to be able to send the duct through and out to the back porch. Hooray!
12:30:
Ooops! So much for the live blog. Well, the project is pretty much done. It's amazing how the professionals can just take care of stuff. Nice. Photos to follow later. We have a functioning hood that blows the nastiness outside! Hooray!
Update: photos.
They're not great shots, but here's the hole in the wall:



and here's the length of duct work that goes through the hole:

Hood project, kitchen discovery, boiler check

Today's post is a catch-up on a few little issues of note.

Hood Project:
First, as you can see from the Flickr pictures, we got the hood up. Actually, our good friend Matt got the hood up. Thanks, Matt! So it's functioning as an air re-circulator and light. We're working on getting a guy here to hook up the duct-work, which is what those pictures are about.

Kitchen Discovery:
While Matt was working on getting the hood up, he discovered that a large part of the wall by the hood/stove area appeared to be magnetic. Weird. While digging around in that wall, looking to find a way to thread the new electrical connectors for the fan/light through the wall, he discovered some strange red metal:

Upon further investigation, it appears that this wall was at some point TILED IN RED TIN! Amazing! Here's a tile Matt managed to pull out of there:


Also, keep in mind that the floor (see earlier post) was a green marble-ized paint job. Whoa!

Boiler Check:
Yesterday, our plumber came and did the check-up and clean-out of our gas boiler (it had been two years since we'd had it done). He also replaced the glass that lets us see the water level. Nice. So we're all ready when we have to put on the heat.

That's about it from 83 Durant. We're putting away the air conditioners, getting out the cardigans. I love fall in New England. My book deadline looms, but hopefully we'll do some fun things and have some blog posts next month.