Changing out the cold air intakes

When we moved into the house, we noticed that all of the cold air intakes for our furnace were large and irregular in size. They were the original wood grates and when you looked inside, the vents had become gross gross gross. Right away, I wanted to change them...

Upon inspecting the situation in the basement, I quickly realized that the ducting for the cold air intakes was actually non-existant - basically, there's just a closed-in section between two joists (does that make sense?) that also lines our foundation wall (?!?!?!). This means that the air that being pulled in for reheating also passes all along our cold foundation wall before returning to the furnace. Blah! How is that efficient? With that in mind, I realized that eventually I would want to put in proper insulated ductwork and pull the cold air intakes away (at least a little bit!) from the cold exterior walls of the house.

So what does this have to do with right now? Well, with the plans to refinish the floors underway, I knew it would be important to resize and change out the vent covers now so we went out and bought some pretty art deco inspired vent covers from Home Depot. We chose 4x10 aluminum floor register in a nickel finish by Decor Grates from Elite.


Luckily, through all of our other reno projects I worked hard to salvage original floorings and molding. So the hub pillaged our supply, framed in a smaller hole and pieced matching hardwood into place. The difference is a little noticable but when the floors are done, that should disappear.


And with the new cover, voila!