Ducts R Us

The guys from the air-conditioning company have been here since 9:00 this morning. They pulled out all of the old duct work, which was in a sorry state, and measured for the new ducts. While these two guys went to lunch at a nearby Denny's, two other guys from the company loaded another truck and drove here with everything they needed.

There's a pull-down staircase in the hallway, for access to the attic on one side of the house, and also a small door in the ceiling of my walk-in closet, which gives access to the other side of the attic. Just as I had thought, they needed to get to the attic from both sides. Oh goodie. That meant I had to take everything out of my closet. Clothes, purses, shoes, boots.... the bed is covered with clothes, the little sofa in the bedroom is covered with sweaters and jackets, and boxes of shoes are all over the bedroom. I'm waiting for my husband to walk into the bedroom when he gets home from work and ask "How many pairs of shoes do you need for just two feet?" (It's a given rule that men just don't understand shoes. And do they understand purses?)

The two workmen are now installing the new duct work. I asked them to start on the other side of the house, so they can close up the access door in the ceiling of my closet and I can run the vacuum in there and get all my stuff back where it belongs. While I'm doing that, I may just look closely at everything I'm putting back. I'm sure there are things in there that can go into yet another donation bag. (Who bought all those clothes anyway?)

We thought this was going to be a one-day job, but these guys have already said they would need to come back tomorrow morning to finish up. They also told me that the guy who was here yesterday to give us the estimate and the contract didn't realize what a big job this was. We're paying just one thousand dollars.... one of the guys today told me that our thousand dollars is just about paying for the duct work needed for the fifteen air-conditioning registers in this house. "This here should've been a twenty-two hundred-dollar job," said the one guy here who seems to be in charge. "You're getting a good deal here... but we don't make no never-mind as to their price because we're getting paid either way, whether they make a profit or not."

Well, we signed the contract yesterday for one thousand dollars, and they plan to stick to that price. As for the guy who wrote up the estimate--- I would imagine they're going to re-school him in figuring out the costs of material, labor and (most important to them)-- profit.