About that dirty ductwork. . .

A day late and $10 more.

We were supposed to have the ductwork cleaned yesterday, but at 7am the phone rang and this cheery voice said, "Mrs. King, would you mind if we postponed your job?" Before I could struggle to form a coherent thought (I am NOT a morning person anymore), she rushed on to inform me that a lady with FIVE kids had called and asked for a rush job because the ductwork in the house seemed to be clogged up and they had no air conditioning.

Well, what am I going to say to that? "Sorry, I'm a mean witch, and I want you to get your sorry posteriors here TODAY as scheduled?"

So because we had to move stuff away from vents so they could get to them to do the cleaning, our furniture was left sitting in the middle of a lot of rooms for an extra day.

They got here at about 9am today. Two people worked steadily from about 5 hours to hook stuff up to the vents, blow air through, run brushes through, and otherwise clear all the junk out of the vents.

Now I am in the process of soaking the registers from each vent in a solution of soap and bleach, then scrubbing them with brushes (I'm using Jess's toothbrush for the fine cleaning... think he'll notice???), cleaning the floor that was under the register, and putting them back. It is tedious, hurtful work.

The vents were such a mess they had to take both ends off instead of just one, and push stuff through. I don't know if they got any live mice sucked up, but they did find at least one decaying corpse hanging onto the edge of one vent. (Yuck!)

AND he did remember to put the wire mesh barrier up to try and prevent any new incursions of mice.

So a day late, but their part of the job is done. As for the $10, that's for the vent I forgot down in the basement that wasn't included on the estimate.

Now to finish cleaning and putting everything back together. Jonathan is working on the basement, running the sweeper, and taping up the one duct the mice had chewed through, and putting the ceiling fabric back in place.

Tomorrow I'll try to finish the rest of the cleaning and get the rest of the registers back and let the guys help me move the furniture back in place.

and I hope it is a LONG time ... how about NEVER... before we have such a mess again.

I hate mice!