Question About Humidifiers

Okay! I can't take it anymore. Right now we have two problems happening inside our house: (1) the air is extremely, excruciatingly dry and (2) dust. Lots and lots of dust that quickly settles on everything inside the house. Now, I know that the dry air is because it is winter. But the dust? I think it is because last summer Chad "un-finsihed" our attic that had been finished by the POs several decades ago in order to get to some electrical wiring. After removing the carpet and the boards, we found blown-in cotton (I think) insulation in between studs in the floor. I think this is the connection, although I could be wrong. I can dust and then an hour later (not exaggerating) there is already a thin layer of dust. I'm concerned about the quality of air we are breathing. I've heard that whole house humidifiers can alleviate the dust problem but I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with air quality. Does anyone have any experience with whole house humidifiers? We do not have radiators or anything - we have a gas heater. HELP! Due to the fact that 90% of my life is reading and researching for school, I have not done any humidifier research yet except to look it up on This Old House's website. I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction so I can just begin to read about them. Are whole house humidifiers bad for the wood work in old houses?

Snow Day(s)

We've had a little snow here in Indianapolis...good excuse not to do any work. (not that we've needed excuses lately)

Things I Love About Our Old House

When we started looking at houses, I'm not sure we even considered a new house. For one, old houses have history. There have been lives lived here and it is not all sterile and new feeling when you walk in. Secondly, as soon as I walked into this house I said: this house feels sturdy. It is a brick house, has all the original woodwork, wood floors, and many original detials. I think the sturdy feeling and the details are what finally pushed me into really wanting this house. It certainly wasn't the wallpaper or the seventies kitchen, I can assure you.
Posted here are some of the things that sold me...and the things that to this day I look at and just love about the house. To first picture is our mail slot. Obviously. I love that we have a mail slot. And I absolutely love that we have a mailman who walks up to every one's porches and puts mail in the mail slots. I especially love that ours specifically says "mail" - just so there is not any confusion. That is not our pizza slot, folks. It is for mail only. It also accepts cash.

The pics below are of the mail slot on the inside of the house. There is actually a door that you lift up to retrieve the mail but it was hanging on by only one hinge. We removed it and put "fix mail slot door" on the bottom of the priority list. Besides, I like seeing the old sticker on the inside. I've taken a close-up pic so you can see it better. It says Penn Greg Mfg. Co. out of St. Paul, Minnesota.



The picture to the left is our fireplace mantel. I adore the green bricks and the windmill tile. I'm actually looking for some information on the tile. I'm just curious if anyone out there has anything similar and possibly who manufactured it. If anyone knows anything about it or has seen a similar one, please leave a comment!


The final picture is one of our door knobs. I guess you could tell that, right? I love the fact that all of our doors have the original door knobs. Most of them have the keyhole hardware and several still have the keys in the doors. This particular knob is in our bedroom and still has this string attached to it. Sure, it's a little dirty but the string was there when we bought the place and will continue to remain there.

So that's all I have for now. As soon as we can get more motivated (which might not happen for me until I get my thesis finished) we'll start posting some pics of some work we're doing. Right now we're hibernating from the cold and I'm concentrating on finishing my last semester of grad school.

Oh yeah - one more thing: Go Colts! Happy times for Indianapolis. I'm certainly not a football fan but I appreciate and applaud their efforts and am excited for all of the positive energy in Indy right now!!