It's been almost a week since I had the energy to post. We've been recovering from a round of home renovation: exterior painting, new eavestroughs (gutters to some) and downspouts, replacing three-quarters of the windows, replacing the gas furnace, installing central air and having the chimney rebuilt and relined. Three of those projects were going on at once, making us feel as if we were the intruders. It was an interesting study in people.

The painters were good guys, neat and efficient. The only problem was that they started with two guys, then left one to finish up - fine except my wife and I had to pitch in at the end to help him remount the window shutters. That was a puzzle because the guys who first put them up had not used consistent screw hole patterns, and the painters had not labelled them when they removed them. Live and learn, eh?

The eavestrough guys were also neat and efficient, although far from quiet. They were a French Canadian Mutt and Jeff - a big strong fellow and a small quick one - who made a perfect team and seemed to make the job fun. They laughed and joked the whole time. Luckily my French is just good enough to be sure that it wasn't all about me!

The window installers should give lessons to other contractors on how to behave. Considering they had to enter every room in the house, they caused a minimum of disruption and cleaned up so well there was no trace of them ever having been there, except for the new windows. They also bought our discarded window air conditioners!

The chimney guy was fine. He made a heck of a mess taking down old bricks and mortar, but cleaned it up nicely. He even hosed down the driveway when he was done. Funny thing: he had the loudest speaking voice I've ever heard, which likely comes from spending most of his life up on a roof talking to his helper on the ground.

I would recommend any of the tradesmen I've mentioned so far. If you are in my general area and want any of the names, just drop me a note.

The heating and air conditioning was another story altogether. I got four estimates and, against my instincts I went for the lowest. I probably wouldn't have done that except the costs of the other projects were starting to mount up.

As much as you try to do regular maintenance, when you've owned a house for twenty-five years some of the components and systems just have to be renewed, and a bunch of them seemed to come at once. We should have replaced the windows when we bought the place, but we had two little kids and other financial priorities. We had put in five new windows over the years, but there were still twenty to go so we decided to bite the bullet and put in vinyl windows. That meant we could no longer use window A/Cs because drilling holes in the vinyl voids the warranty. That in turn meant going to central A/C, and that meant a new gas furnace. The existing one was 22 years old, so it would have been due soon but probably not for two or three years.

Anyway, I tried to save a grand or so on the heating & cooling equipment, and ended up paying for it in frustration.

The house, which is about 60 years old, originally had a coal furnace in the center of the basement. When we bought it, the coal burner had been converted to oil, quite a common upgrade in these parts during the 1950s. At least you didn't have to shovel coal and breathe the dust. By the time we bought the place in 1981, the oil burner was overdue for replacement, natural gas was a lot cheaper than oil, and cleaner burning to boot.

What we didn't know was that we were sold a furnace at least a third too large for the house: 120,000 BTUH when we only needed around 80,000. This year, every one of the four estimators brought that up, and every one also said the furnace was installed illegally, as it was only 22 inches from the service door to the wall, when the building code requires 24 inches (now 600 mm). Fine. So the cowboy they sent to install the new furnace left only 16 inches clearance, because it meant less sheetmetal work. Then he failed to show up the second day (Friday) to finish the job. I spent the day trying to contact the company, to no avail until the installer's boss called me at 4:00 pm to ask how the job was going!

The local gas utility used to inspect installations, but now they'll only come the first time gas equipment is installed on a property. They leave it up to licensed contractors to follow the code on replacement jobs. That makes no sense, of course. If the licensed contractors' work needs to be inspected sometimes, why not all the time? After all, you're not dealing with a bathtub that might leak, or a driveway that might crack. If a gas appliance goes up in smoke, it can take half the neighbourhood with it.

The gas company was kind ebnough to inform me that if, in the future, a repair or service person determined that the installation was not up to code, they could shut off the gas until the defect was corrected.

The boss came Monday (the cowboy did not return), expressed his great disgust and proceeded to spend several hours of hammering and tinsnipping and "kicking the thing eight inches" to meet the code. So guess what? When he was done I measured the clearance at 21 inches! Oh no, he said, you measure with the access panels removed. Okay. 23 inches! After much argument, he says he's staking his licence on this installation being acceptable and "nobody's going to shut you down for an inch!"

Easy for him to say. Guess who will not be on my list of recommended contractors. Live and learn, eh?