13 posts tagged “home repair”

You all know that I'm fucking nuts, so this will come as no surprise.

On Monday, I was at work, bored, staring down an afternoon with little to do. I did what anyone with a serious mental illness would do: I faked a headache and left work to go work on the house!

I put in a good five hours, feeling pleased that I was getting closer to being ready for my drywall contractor to work next week. The next morning, it occurred to me that I already had an excuse in place, so I called in sick. Good thing I did.

At about 9:30, my drywall contractor called to say that his schedule had changed. He could either start on Wednesday or he wouldn't be able to get to it until the new year.

My people, you know what I did. I said, "Start on Wednesday," and then I threw my ass in gear to get ready for him. I knew I had at least two more days of work to do, so I figured on at least 16 hours. It ended up taking a little longer than that. It was my first and hopefully my last home remodeling all-nighter. Because it's one thing to pull an all-nighter, sitting around eating pizza and studying. It's another thing to spend all night standing on a ladder, scraping, peeling, sanding, and priming.

At about 8 pm, I broke for dinner and went down the block to the nearest fast food place. In the shape I was in, I would normally have gone through the drive-thru, but the bathroom in my basement is sooooo cold. I was willing to face a little public humilation in order to put my ass on a toilet seat that was not glacial.

I took my pee break and went back out to order some dinner. People stepped away from me in line. At the counter, the cashier recoiled. Now I knew I was dirty, but until that moment I hadn't realized just how dirty. I had a cloud of dust and debris around me--the pulverized particulate of fifty years of bad wallpaper choices. And probably not a little in the way of lead paint chips. The cashier didn't even bother to ask if I wanted my food to go; she just bagged it up and handed it to me from arm's length. Only then did I notice the little semi-circle of dust and detritus that I'd left at the counter where I'd been standing.

But wait, there's more. At midnight, about 15 hours into my ordeal, I was dying. I could see I had at least 3 more hours of work and maybe 5 hours. I went out to the local quickie mart for coffee and another pee break in non-artic conditions. An elderly man stood by the counter chatting with the college age cashier. Clearly the old man had reached that point in life where he no longer really needed sleep, so he'd taken to hanging around pestering cashiers at all-night quickie marts.

When I approached with my coffee, the old man smiled at me and said, "Why don't you let me get that for you?"

I was already in a slightly stunned state, but I managed to say, "No, that's okay. I got it."

He persisted, but I already had my money out on the counter.

Having failed to buy me a coffee, the old man said, "Do you have some place warm to stay tonight?"

Yes, that's right, my people. I was so bedraggled looking that I was mistaken for a homeless person. I schlepped my crusty, dusty self back to my 2 bedroom gulag, and went on with the work. At 4:30, I put the last strokes of primer on all the cut wallpaper seams, and dragged myself home to shower and sleep for a few hours.

For the record, I do not recommend this, but I do now have sheetrock on my walls.

I've just gutted my entire house, right down to the studs, and am slowly rebuilding it. After months of nothing but demolition, I'm finally starting to reverse the process. My bathroom contractor is working today to get ready for my tile guy. The insulation guy worked yesterday, so the house is nice and cozy now. (Right, except that I have to put the windows back in.) On Tuesday, the sheetrock guy comes to start putting my ceilings and walls back.

Just as soon as I wrap up my work in the attic: 2 more ceiling joists to sister, one more ceiling fan mount to install, plus 3 more fixture mounts for other lights. I'd planned to sister all the 5 ceiling joists that need it this weekend, but Tuesday I created a little emergency. While trying to rip out a piece of planking in the wall that had bowed and split--thereby preventing the sheetrock from being flush--I discovered that two of my ceiling joists were actually resting on that plank, instead of on the exterior load-bearing wall. The reason? when the foundation failed in the 40s that wall bowed out about three inches, and the joists slipped off it.

Which is how I broke my nose. With all that weight on the plank, it was under a lot of pressure, so when I finally managed to pry it off the studs, it came loose at high speed and whacked me in the face. I blacked out for about a second, before that little quiet voice in the back of my head kicked in. You know, the little voice that whispers, "Maybe you shouldn't take that short cut," and "Get up and check the door." My little voice said, "Don't fall off the ladder."

I didn't. I managed to get myself down the ladder, my head ringing, and my dust mask filling up with blood. As I was just starting to wonder how badly I'd fucked myself up, I heard this soft groaning sound and looked up. Above me, the ceiling was sagging about three inches. Not terrible, but likely to become so.

This was at about 8 pm, and who was I going to call for help? Sure, 911 would take care of my face, but they wouldn't do anything about my ceiling joists. So I went out to my truck, grabbed the jack, and a couple of 2 x 4's on my way back through the garage. I slapped one 2 x 4 up to the ceiling with a pair of screws (thank you, trusty cordless drill), wedged the other one up under it, balanced on top of the jack, and cranked the ceiling back up to the proper height. Contrary to my expectations, it worked perfectly. After all, that little jack was designed to lift one quarter of my truck, so it was strong enough to lift one tenth of my ceiling.

Then I could worry about my nose. Luckily I still have a kitchen sink, so I went it and pulled the dust mask off. Blood, lots of it. I washed off a bunch of it, but I didn't have a mirror, so I couldn't really see what the damage was. I had half a bag of ice in the freezer, so I grabbed that, stuck it on my face and drove to my temporary digs.

I kept the ice on it for about five hours, and that seems to have done the trick. I have a bump, a bruise, and my eyes are a little black, but my nose is straight. I'm pretty sure it's broken, because I can feel it wiggle when I laugh, and my eyebrows actually hurt.

Episode 2 was me calling into work sick the next morning. Only I didn't stay home. I couldn't. I went to the house and crawled up in the attic to sister in the three joists that just couldn't wait for this weekend. Then I had to repair and replace the plank I'd originally been intending to fix when it bitch slapped me. I won the rematch. 

Because I think I bought the wrong size. Or it doesn't match the rest of my decor.

This is me after a day spent in the attic. Yes, I'm wearing a bandanna, goggles, dust mask, and a head lamp. It's fricking dark up there. And eerily quiet. And full of moon dust-like insulation. And pixies. But I wasn't supposed to tell anybody about the pixies.

Oh, right, what was I doing up there? Installing ceiling fan braces. There are few home features I hate more than wobbly or rattly ceiling fans, so I believe in attaching them to serious braces fastened to the studs with heavy deck screws. Also, I love ceiling fans. I'm installing them in the bedroom, the office, the living room, and the kitchen. I'd install one in the dining room, but that just seems like overkill.

To prepare for this adventure, I loaded up my backpack with all the tools I thought I might possibly need for the adventure, including my newly purchased cordless drill. I don't own 200 feet of extension cord, so I figured that would come in handy. I should have taken snacks.

The kitchen was easy. I had to enlarge the hole in the ceiling a bit to accommodate a 4-inch electrical box, which is standard for ceiling fan braces, but the brace went in easily. From there, I crawled to the pantry, where I installed a new electrical box, and ran the wiring to the light switch. Then I schlepped over to the office, dragging all my supplies and my plywood platform with me. (Because squatting on joists for hours at a time is unpleasant, it's better to have somewhere to sit.) Once again, the hole in the ceiling had to be enlarged via drill and hand saw. Then I had to shim one end of the brace to make it level, but it went in easily enough.

After that I slithered over to the bathroom to repair a hole in the ceiling and install a new electrical box. Seeing a trend? Yes, most of the light fixtures in the house had been attached directly to the ceiling without the benefit of a box. While doing that, I realized I'd forgotten a box to install in the hallway. And it was getting dark. And the dining room light fixture opening was in the wrong place. I wasn't going to be able to get it all done in a day.

Still, I was dead-set on getting all the ceiling fan braces installed, so I persevered. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. I crept toward the bedroom, but as I felt about with my foot, digging through layers of blown insulation looking for the next ceiling joist, I found ... nothing. No joist. Not where it should have been anyway. In most modern houses, joists and studs are installed at 18-inch intervals, or sometimes 24-inch intervals. Things are slightly less predictable in old houses. I once lived in a house with 21-inch center studs and joists. How I discovered that, it's a long story.

This house, though, this house ... it mostly has 24-inch centers, except where it doesn't, namely in the bedroom and living room. There, the ceiling joists are 36 inches apart. Too far to install a ceiling fan brace. So I get to plan another day in the attic and this one will be a doozy. I'll have to drag a bunch of lumber up there and sister in some more joists, close enough together to support ceiling fans, and to provide a bit more stability in those ceilings.

Am I starting to regret buying this project house? Oddly enough, no. I'm kind of looking forward to the project. As sick as that is.

No, I'm not pregnant. Stop it with that, okay?

I do, however, have an electrician. He's at the house *right now* doing electrically things. Shhh ... don't scare him away. These Kansas electricians are delicate, shy little creatures.

Oh, the unspeakable, you wanna know about that?

I got my new Rammstein CD. It is full of delicious guitar crunchiness and snarling vocals and ... Edith Piaf. For reals. That's not what's unspeakable, though. I love Edith Piaf. What's so horrific is that I think Till Lindemann isn't just my Armageddon Fuck* anymore. As long as he's willing to sing Edith Piaf songs, I might, just maybe, possibly want him to call me the morning after the world ends. If you're scared to click on it and listen, don't be. This song is fairly quiet and suspiciously ballad-like.

The song is Springtime in Paris, with part of the refrain being "Springtime bleeds in Paris." (It's Rammstein, there's got to be pain or blood or something.) But they also borrow the refrain from one of Edith's most famous songs:

Oh, non, rien de rien / Oh, no, nothing at all.
Oh, non, je ne regrette rien / Oh, no, I regret nothing.

Till has a little difficulty wrapping his mouth around the French, but it all sounds lovely, replete with roaring guitars.

*For those of you not familiar with the concept of Armageddon Fuck™ let me 'splain. The AF is a person whom on a surface, conscious level you find disgusting. Not merely unattractive from an aesthetic viewpoint, because sometimes the AF is physically attractive to other people, but a person whose behavior or general demeanor or social status or public personna repulses you. No way you would ever want to have sex with that person ... unless the world were going to end in the next hour or so and you knew you would never have to see the AF again and he/she would never call you. One shot, death imminent, a chance to fulfill all your most embarrassing, skankiest sexual fantasies. Because secretly, subconsciously, you really do find that person attractive.

As an example of the concept: a certain relative of mine who shall remain nameless, her Armageddon Fuck is Leonardo DeCaprio. Now plenty of people find him attractive and plenty of them would be happy to have him call the morning after, but my sister unnamed relative finds him kind of skeavy and way too popular. Unless the world were going to end. The lead singer of Rammstein, however, is the prototype Armageddon Fuck. I find him physically repellent. I like big bruisers, especially with a little gut, but he's a greasy, sweaty, hairy, sneering, contemptuous, chain-smoking *shudder*. Except when he opens his mouth and sings. He can count to four and make me weak in the knees.

I must go rock out. More on Rammstein and the house develops tomorrow. 

'Cause I know you all have been dying to hear more about my house-hunting saga.

It turns out I'm a wheeler and dealer, because I stood by my low offer and didn't budge.  I win at real estate chicken.  Here is the house I am planning to buy, assuming all the inspections and stuff come out okay. This is the view from the south, at the attached garage and breezeway porch.

The good news: I like the house and the neighborhood (it's the same neighborhood I live in now)

The bad news: the house is being sold "as is," so whatever wrong with it, I'll have to fix. (Hence the low offer.)

All of this morning was taken up with inspections: the regular inspector, the termite inspector, the sewer inspector, and the structural engineer consultant.  Among the things to be fixed: a steadily bowing foundation wall on the north side that'll have to be braced with I-beams and possibly a deadman anchor.  Awaiting bids on that little project. Many thousand dollars, which is why I'm paying $25K less than the seller originally asked, which is also $25K less than he bought it for.  (Maybe he didn't get a good inspection beforehand.)

Among the cheaper fixes: termite treatment for a small porch off the kitchen.  Somehow, I feel like it's a bargain, because the termite inspector uses a doggy!!!!  It's true!  This is Crocket, the specially trained termite sniffing dog.

Sadly, this particular pose of Crocket's means there are termites under where she's sitting.  I lof her.  She has beautiful floppy ears and a curly tail and spotty toes.  *kisskiss*  Oh, right, and I'll have to have the termites treated.  Look, people, if you have to have a termite inspection, hire an inspector with a sniffing dog.  It totally takes away the sting of finding out you have termites, because after she told me about the termites, she kissed my hands and let me skritch her soft ears.  Try that with a regular termite inspector.

The house had previously been a rental and one gets the sense that the owner got in over his head and just gave up.  The house has been unrented most of this year and maybe here's why:

Nice new faucet...oh, wait.  Except under the sink, the water lines are still attached to the old faucet.  Huh?

The bathroom also has about three inches of layer underlayment and linoleum, which is particularly interesting since the doorway to the bathroom is all of about 5'8" high.  I can barely go through the door without ducking.  Part of the problem is the layers of flooring, but the door is just short.  Not even 6' tall.  Thankfully, the bathroom is NOT built for gnomes and it's about twice the size of my current bathroom.

Let's see, there also a creepy basement, complete with creepy shower.  Looks like a nice place to scrub up, right? Also, ancient phone wiring still in place.

Oh, right, you probably want to know what I like about the house.  Well, it's got some lovely space, including a huge kitchen with a breezeway porch that connects to the garage and houses the laundry.  Whew!  Would not want to do laundry in that creeptastic basement.

Oh darn.  I was also going to show you the 30+ year-old air conditioner, but that must be on the inspector's camera.  At any rate, it works.  It's huge and ancient and it fired right up and started cooling the house.  Unexpected to say the least.

Common sense dictates that one should not disable the furnace in the middle of winter.  So, it's probably never a good idea to replace the thermostat in February.  Which is exactly what I did this weekend. 

There was something about the fact that is was 70 degrees outside, the sun was shining, and the hardware store had programmable digital thermostats on sale.  Since we moved into our little hobbit house, we've been saying, "We need to install a programmable thermostat."  They save money and trouble by relieving you of the need to remember to turn the thermostat down when you leave the house.

So, Saturday, while Hubbicula was off photographing some sort of sporting event, I disassembled the old thermostat.

Yup, that is an old fashioned mercury switch thermostat.  Hurrah for little glass tubes full of mercury.  As I pulled it away from the wall, I remembered that I am a plumber, not an electrician.  The schematics for the new thermostat showed red, white, yellow, and green wiring.  I wondered: what if I have a blue wire instead of a green one? 

Luckily, at that moment, Hubbicula came home.  And said, "I thought you weren't supposed to change the thermostat in the winter."  Had to throw that in my face.  Of course, I still feel triumphant, because it only took about fifteen minutes to hook up the new thermostat, something we've been planning to do for two years.  Sometimes you have just have to take the plunge. 

Of course, now I have to figure out where to take my mercury for recycling.  Oh, and I have to paint the strip of wall that the new thermostat doesn't cover.

Now for a low, low price, you can get authentic Depression-era home improvements!

Having seen on the news that the temperature was supposed to drop precipitously, Hubbicula and I decided we were really overdue to frame out the new door that goes from the basement to the garage.  Never mind that we installed the door more than a year ago.  Since then, we've just put up with the way heat and cold leak in and out of the gaps around the door.  No longer!  We took a bold approach, though.  No measuring or going to the hardware store for supplies.  Oh no, we took a page right out of my grandaddy's home repair manual. 

Without regard for whether they were the right height or width, we tacked up some old boards we had in the garage and stuffed in some miscellaneous insulating materials.  And by miscellaneous, I mean rags.  Yes, that is a sock and part of an old t-shirt.  Yes, I stuffed rags into a gap in the door frame.  And there, where the door framing doesn't fit against the wall, because the wall isn't plumb, that is just another random chunk of wood nailed in the gap.

In my family, we frequently make reference to an old wedding ring commercial that proclaimed: "A diamond is a thing of beauty forever."  Our version is typically: "Well, it ain't a thing of beauty, but it's gonna be a thing forever."  In the case of this particular door framing job, I'm going to venture that it's neither a thing of beauty nor a thing forever.  I hope.

Still want me to come to your house and fix things?

How many houses have you lived in? How is where you live now different from where you grew up?

A lot.  A lot lot lot.  Which is why I am now going to write a novel about it.

1. I came home from the hospital to a little house in Bethany, Oklahoma, where the streets were and still are dirt.
2. When I was a year old, we moved to another tiny house on Polk Street in my "hometown" of Hugoton.
3. A year later we moved to a big old house on 10th Street, which had been cut into two apartments at some point.  Because I wasn't in school yet, I stayed home with my mother and my grandad, while they remodeled it back into a single house.  I remember quite vividly the day after they built an interior staircase, and I stood at the open doorway to what had been the exterior staircase, watching them rip the stairs off the side of the house.  Can you guess where I got my home remodeling urge?  At age three, my main toys were various sized nails and screws, a hammer and pliers, and some scraps of wood.
4. I'm going to count my grandparents' house, too, over on Harrison, just two blocks from the train tracks and the grain elevators.  It was my real childhood home, where I was always a child, spoiled and doted on.
   
5. After my parents got married, they decided to build a new house, but in the interim, we moved to a house on Trindle, which was much smaller than the 10th Street house.
6. Then the landlord on Trindle sold the house and we had to move again, because the new house wasn't finished yet.  We moved to the horrid little Blue House, where everything was blue.  The carpet, the paint, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything.  Also, it was only two bedrooms, and with seven of us, it was like hell on earth.  On top of each other all the time.  Also, the air conditioner didn't work for shit.  Also, the hot water heater didn't work at all.  Also, you couldn't run the drier and anything else at once.  Also, did I mention that everything was blue?  I hate blue.  That house was so bad I would have been ashamed to invite my friends over, if I'd had any friends.
7. At last, the new house was done.  Mom's new house.  It would never be our new house, because Mom had designed it and picked out everything in it.  All the carpet was the same, all the furniture the same, so that all the bedrooms looked the same.  It was like living in a motel.  Salmon carpet, ivory walls, and freaky faux-Danish furniture.  Oh, except in the kitchen where the floor was tiled in brown and the counter tops were orange.  Fucking 80's.
8. Then I left for college and lived in a dorm room for a while, which I don't really count.  My junior year, I moved in with Allen, my football buddy, and two architecture types: Ken and Jen from Colorado.  It was the first time in my entire life that I had my own room.  At 19, my first room.  It was about 9 x 10, with a sloping ceiling in the attic.  I had enough room for a twin bed, a small dresser and a milk crate for a night stand.  It was lovely.
9. After two years of that, I moved into my very own apartment: part of a huge Victorian, where my bedroom was the formal dining room, complete with chandelier, and my bathroom was the butler's pantry.  That's where I also had the cat ghost.
10. I made the mistake many college co-eds make.  I agreed to move in with my boyfriend.  He picked the house and it was a dump.  I'd moved out in about six months, and so I only count it as representative of why you should never trust someone else to pick out your living space.  It was located in the flood plain of the '51 flood and it flooded.  We didn't get water in the house, but we got it right up to the underside of the floor boards.  Mosquito central, nasty filthy place, and then we got a dog--which boyfriend also picked out without any consideration for my opinion.  Spastic little dog.  Nice enough, but never destined to be my dog.  Then, my cat got shot by some hillbilly neighbor.  I was done.
11. After that, I moved into one of my favorite homes: an apartment in the old Wareham Hotel.  Elevator.  Restaurant and bar downstairs.  Swank.  Soundproof.  Beautifully tiled old bathroom, walk in closet.  My own.  Pigeons walking by on the window sills outside.
12. Then I got a job in Japan and moved into a traditional Japanese apartment in Nakazawa, upstairs from the Quickie Mart and just down the hill from a massive Shinto shrine.  Tiny bathroom.  Tiny kitchen.  Two lovely 6-tatami rooms that opened out on a balcony that overlooked a few thousand acres of rice and the Honshu mountains.  I had tree frogs and mud swallows and a stray cat. 
    
13. I made another mistake.  I moved in with my sister and remodeled an apartment in a house I didn't own.  A story better not dramatized.  Another lovely living space, but one I had to leave when my sister got remarried and sold the house.  Au revoir.
14. I followed that with a dinky little subsidized apartment in a brick WW2 era complex.  Subsidized because I was making about $18K a year working for Planned Parenthood.
15. After two years there, I got married and moved to Florida, where Hubbicula and I resided in a craptastic apartment in a craptastic complex for about a year. 
    
16. During which year, I did mountains of research to figure out where to buy a house.  I drove endlessly through neighborhoods and researched property values and sales trends, and we looked at five houses.  House #5 was perfect, except that it didn't have a garage.  It was a lovely little Arts and Crafts Bungalow in a suspect neighborhood a block from the interstate.  Still, it was perfect, with oak floors, original tiled kitchen counter tops and ten-foot ceilings.  And thousands of little lizards living in my yard, sneaking up my walls, sleeping in my potted plants.  Loved that house.  Almost nothing to remodel in it, except for the urgent need to paint over every room in the house.  Pepto-bismal pink in the living and dining rooms.  Dining room had exquisite paneled walls with a plate rail and a lovely chandelier.  Hideous other colors throughout.  No remodeling until the end, when we got ready to sell it, then we redid the front porch and I redid the kitchen ceiling.
17. That brought us back to Kansas, where we spent two months living with my parents.  It was...okay.  Hubbicula might have other things to say about it, but living in the suburbs was never our plan.
18. So we bought the house we have now.  The tiny, adorable little limestone gnome cottage.  The house of the charming screened porch and the leaking basement.  I have mixed feelings about this house.  I'd probably love it if it weren't the size of a postage stamp.  Oh, and if I didn't wake up on rainy nights and panic. 
    

I believe that's an adequate survey of my various homes, and I'm frankly shocked to discover that I've lived in 18 different houses.  No wonder I'm tired of moving.

What's different about my home now and my childhood home?  Well, not a lot.  It's in Kansas, surrounded by Kansans.  It's a lot bigger town than my hometown.  90,000 people vs. 3,000 people.  It's humid here, but not brutally windy.  We've got eight movie screens instead of one.  We've got squirrels and cottontail rabbits instead of coyotes and jackrabbits.  I don't know everyone yet and I'm related to almost no one.  Still, it's Kansas.  I've got that going for me, which is nice.

My whole life is under construction these days.

At home, my sisters came to visit over the weekend to help me get my basement half-bath functional.  It's a nasty little specimen of manly gas-station hell hole proportions.  So we yanked the toilet and sink, scrubbed the stone walls, installed sheetrock on the open studs on one side, moved wiring, installed a new light fixture, reinstalled the sink brackets, and after I paint, I'll reinstall the sink and toilet.  You think I'm crazy for home remodeling, imagine me plus two 'Zilla sisters.  All of us inherited the "I don't know, but I'm not afraid, and I'll figure it out," gene from our mother, so we pretty much waded in and wrought havoc until we reached the other side with most of the work done.  (I even managed to do some re-wiring, although traditionally I'm the plumber and Hubbicula is the electrician.)  Today, I'm nursing some blisters and a burn on my drill bracing hand, and a pair of enormous bruises--one on the inside of my arm and the other on my right boob--my drill grip.  Because drilling into limestone and concrete requires all the body weight I can bring to it, plus one of my sisters leaning into my back.

At work, my whole office was covered in a fine layer of dust when I came in this morning.  Perhaps concrete dust.  Perhaps asbestos dust.  Perhaps magic pixie dust.  Perhaps stripper dust.  At any rate, the electricity was off in the whole building this weekend, so we came back to some interesting things--like a defrosted fridge and a fax machine on the fritz. 

On the walk to work, they've ripped up the street north of my house.  The street I have to cross to get to work.  Last week, I was able to simply sneak past the barricades and scurry across the street, which had been stripped down to its underlayment.  I felt like a political dissident, trying to sneak across the Demilitarized Zone to the safety of South Korea.  This morning, I found they'd gouged long channels three feet wide and two feet deep into the underlayment and piled mountains of dirt everywhere.  So, no more sneaking across the DMZ to safety.  I had to walk three blocks over, one block up, then three blocks back to get to my regular work route.

I think I'm ready for a vacation.

Maybe I had literary ennui yesterday because I was thinking of my laundry room. 

When we bought the house, it was nearly the deal breaker.  It looked like the stage set for the next Saw movie:
You know me, though.  I'm fucking crazy.  So, we hauled the old washer and dryer--a real pair of uglies--that we got with the house and then scrubbed and scraped the walls and floor.
Tonight I put the last coat of paint on the floor, so check back for pics of the partially rehabilitated laundry room.  After the floor cures comes the exciting part.  Momzilla and Dadzilla are buying us a new washer and dryer of the non-ugly variety.  Also of the variety that will wash more than three bath towels at once.

The strangest thing about the laundry room when we moved in: no dryer vent.  None.  No sign that there ever was one.  Plenty of evidence that the dryer had been vented into the laundry room for the last 40 years--archaeological layers of lint.  I vented the dryer out the window, but owing to the age of the dryer, we quickly got some archaeological lint there, too.