I am not sure where to begin – this has been one insane experience. Andrew and I took the loan we got for our roof and stretched it to be able to have central air and heat put in. This would not have been possible if we hadn’t gone with Mitsubishi Electric, but after doing a lot of research – we determined that this system would be the right fit for our house. However, I had no idea what a disastrous mess awaited me by making the decision to even put in central air and heat.
We were told that it would take two days to put this system in, but as these things go – two days quickly turned into four days. Because our old house is 120+ years everything took longer, was harder to cut, and created the most horrid mess. The first day when they were cutting into our hardwoods and working in the basement went smoothly, it took them longer because our basement is basically a bomb shelter, but I didn’t feel too stressed. Then the gates of panic opened the following day, and I am still recovering. When they were cutting into the ceiling and working in the attic, that’s when everything went wrong.
Though Andrew and I had cleaned the entire attic the week before, in hopes to keep the mess at bay – it turns out the mess was hidden beneath the floor boards and spilled out of the ceiling like an avalanche, black soot covering everything in our home. Not only were we dealing with black soot pouring from every room in our upstairs, but turns out our lovely farmhouse does not have your traditional plaster on its walls or ceilings of the horsehair variety, but instead has a type of plaster that is much older, harder and thicker. Which is great on many levels, but terrible to cut into. The guys working on our house were burning through their proper, and expensive tools left and right. They eventually had to use a sawzall to cut through our ceilings. It was a disaster of a day.
One of the guys was excellent, and tried his hardest to keep everything going smoothly, and the other guy drove me crazy. He made several mistakes, and one big mistake that nearly brought out my high kick reflex. I don’t want to get into it, but it about broke me. When the second day was over every room in our house up and down – was covered in at least 5 inches of soot, even our bulldogs were filthy. The second they left my neurosis went into a red zone, and I spent the next six hours cleaning every inch of our house, including our bullies. I had to do this twice in four days because of the mess that came from installing the system in our home, but that is the only way I didn’t flip out and make grown men cry.
To top it all off, what appeared to be a huge black tube hanging on the side of the house turned out to be the largest black snake I’d ever seen! Pretty sure that wasn’t a good omen.
The other issue I have is when you own an historic home any work done to it (at least for me) feels and sounds so much worse. I worry about it constantly, and is anyone considering enough how old it is? If I had my way, the people working on our old home would be handling it like it was made of glass. Only then would I feel any confidence in what they were doing. Andrew doesn’t worry about that they way I do.
Now that it is finally over, I can say this – we love it! I mean that, it’s so quiet and I can’t tell you what it feels like to have a warm home (except you probably already know) but Andrew and I haven’t lived in home with proper heat or air since we left our parents, so for us, this was HUGE. I am so grateful the process is over, but I might be even more grateful to have central air and heat to begin with…let’s see how the summer goes.
That white pipe is hiding all the outdoor bits.
