Beastly furnace

The furnace has to go. HUD loans require that renovations meet certain safety criteria and asbestos coated furnaces like this baby must be replaced. We plan to use all of the old grates and boots throughout the house with the new high efficiency forced air system we'll have installed. The basement is going to look huge with the furnace out of there. The basement was cut up into storage units for the renters and all of that is going as well. Wow, the basement has a 9 foot ceiling! This space has a lot of potential.

Note the yard stick in front of the monstrous gravity furnace...

Look at the arms on this baby.

We saved this entire cast iron face plate.  We're metal people, we'll do something cool with it.

It really cooked.

We'll keep this grate of course, but the duct work that leads to it was installed after the house was divided and runs through an archway on the first floor.  We'll remove the duct work and reopen the arch soon so this grate is homeless for now.

This is the furnace blower that only needed the belt replaced to run for another hundred years...oh well, HUD says the furnace has to go if we want to live there, so it goes.

The new one is very shiny.

The old structural wood and the shiny elaborate duct work is really a gorgeous juxtaposition.

It's so tight to the beams.  The old arms of the octopus and monstrous returns came down about 3 feet.  We had to duck in some places.  Now it's a huge open space.  I can almost see the brewery already.

Oh and let's not forget the new 50 gallon water heater. It's a good thing too since Cheryl and Carol gave us an antique clawfoot slipper tub for Christmas:)