There might have been a reason....

that the PO calked the windows shut. I am seriously cold right now, and I am sitting inside on the couch. I can feel a breeze coming through (okay, that might be an exaggeration). I don't remember it being this bad last year, but we messed with the weather stripping while restoring the west-side of the house, so that might be part of the problem. I think we're going to look into blow-in wall insulation.

However the new furnace, with a whole-house humidifier, is going in soon so that should help the dry-air aspect of things considerably.

The new furnace, incidentally, is very exciting to me. We knew, when buying the house that we would eventually have to replace it, as we were the only people dumb enough to buy a house with such a creepy old furnace. However, cost-wise, it never made sense. Based on online calculators, the payback period was up to 15 years. However, our neighborhood association has a rebate program using federal stimulus dollars that is offering 35% rebates for qualifying energy improvements. So that rebate, coupled with the federal tax rebates, made it much more feasible and put payback time at 8 years. Minneapolis residents take note: here is the website.

I don't know how these things work in the real estate world, but I would imagine when we finally tear ourselves away from this house, we will get some money back by having a furnace that doesn't look like it came out of a World War II submarine. Right?

Finally, in a vein completely unrelated to HVAC, we bought the house another Christmas present with our Christmas money from my grandparents (Thanks!!!). We're really just too indulgent when it comes to the bungled house. That, or we're trying to apologize to it for all of the unfinished projects.

This one is for the outside of the porch; there is currently no light there at all.

This one is for the inside of the porch. There is also no light there right now, but there is a hole where we ripped the old one down and put it in a closet. It was ugly, and we killed the electricity to the porch when we rewired the house. It was one of those "we'll just temporarily not have electricity out there, say three months until warmer working conditions?" that turned into two years of no porch lights.