"The closet the gas furnace is in, is not ventilated. The closet does not have a roof, but opens up into the attic. He does not think there is enough fresh air making it down to the furnace, and he does not think the fumes from the furnace are making it up into the attic." the closet is actually very well vented if it is open to the attic at the ceiling (roof?) of the closet. "He has instructed us to nail some gutter pipe (gutter pipe, because it is square, and will fit the limited space better than round pipe, but to mee gutter pipe seems awfully small diameter) into the closet to increase circulation. One peice going 12 inches into the attic, and another peice 12 inches off the floor. To me this seems awfully suspicious, I cant see how this will work, and I'm scared." I usually install a ceiling in gas furnace closets using ductboard (doesnt burn) from inside the attic. Usually a 5 or 6" vent pipe from inside attic..12" above insulation with a bug screen. the pipe goes thru ductboard ceiling to where the air intake of the gas furnace is located. I've started putting an inline manual damper..open when furnace is in use..closed for cooling season. "He also noticed that someone has stapled fibergalss insulation to the inside of the closet door, and we should remove that. That the entire door needs to be replaced with a very tight fitting door." Someone was trying to overcome the temp transfer from top of heating closet being open to attic. Bat insulation is not a good idea..but ductboard works well. and door should be weatherstripped. while the venting will supply the air needed for the furnace, it won't vent fumes. there shouldn't be any fumes if furnace is operating properly..there are vent pipes attached to the equipment that vent out of the roof. as for the smell...it could have been a sealant that he used or many things. I would call the original person who did the install and tell him your concerns. Granted there are better materials to use but it sounds like he/she was on the right track. better to close in ceiling and make it air tight and bring fresh air to the furnace than to leave the ceiling open to the attic. just my experience here in hot humid La. it may vary if your area is different. best of luck.

Believe it or not, there's actually one of those HGTV shows that covered your exact situation. I can't remember exactly which show it was, but I remember Pat Simpson being the host. It's not the show where he does the actual work, it's the one that he narrates and the homeowner works with actual carpenters. Basically what you've described is what they did. They had a wall to wall "desk" with roll a in cabinet (think file cabinet on wheels) on one side. I believe the desk and above shelves were painted black and matched the roll in cabinet. As for the above shelves they used threaded rods (think really, really long screws without a head or a sharp point)to hold the shelves, hung down from framing material in the ceiling. The threads were attached at the top and bottom by corresponding nuts. The shelves were pre-drilled to accept the rods and countersunk to accept and help hide the nuts under each shelf. It looked like the shelves were about half the depth of the desk. The whole thing had a modern look to it and gave the impression that it was almost "floating". The shelves were cut just short of the width of the inside of the closet, but not attached to the sides of the closet...hence the floating look. FYI, to me this post makes perfect sense...then again I've actually seen the show. If this sound like perfect Chinese to you let me know.

Ask for what you want and keep at it until you get it - assuming that is what you contracted for of course. Some of these things cannot be fixed later or will cost a fortune to fix. I had to "train" my GC. he has finally succumbed to the fact that I am "very involved in the details". He does not love it and I had to listen to some comments initially about "how involved" I was but he has come to accept this is how it is going to be. At times he sees the benefits too -I understand what is going on, I am prepared for the next step with required materials or decisions needed. I had to thicken my skin- I want to be liked and he does not love my involvement but hey, at the end of the day I am writing really large checks and will be stuck with the work they complete. My lesson learned - I need to stay ahead of the GC, do my research on upcoming activities, know what I want in terms of specs, don't assume anything and be there the day the work kicks off on any given new activity to ensure it happens to my specs (ex: when laying flooring, electrical, countertop etc). Then I need to continue to monitor as the work progresses to ensure nothing comes off the rails and the end results are what I want. There are times unforseen things come up but that should not be the norm. Sounds like a lot of work? It is and some days I wonder why I have a GC if i am doing all this but in the end I am getting what I want. I did a sanity check on my GC experience on this forum and based on the replies i got my experince is apparently the norm and considered average. Regarding cabinets and crooked ceiling, I had the same problem, i was off 1 3/4" over a span of 5 feet. After a couple of days of mocking up several alternatives we ended up with the molding level to cabs and a gap at ceiling. While it was not my prefered approach the ceiling was so far off in such a short run no amount of visual tricks masked it so "the shadow had to become my friend" as the best alternative. that issue was one i battled with my GC on for a 2 day period, was definately not what i wanted but in the end i learned there are some issues in construction that will not come out exactly as planned due to technial issues - that was one of them. Hope this helps.

We offer first to family/friends. If nobody wants it, it goes to charity. My MIL was sure her house stuff was worth money. It wasn't. However, family members were happy to take the big furniture, so she didn't feel bad. Oddly, the various tschotskes DH and I couldn't stand, made her several hundred $$$ from an estate liquidator. Who knew, LOL? There is a wonderful charity here run by our city. They collect ONLY business clothes - cleaned, pressed, on hangers - suitable for job interviews. Low-income residents can go to their various training classes, which include what to do/not to do on job interviews and how to properly fill out job applications. For those attendees who don't have nice clothes for interviews, the charity allows them to pick two outfits for free. When my DH and I retired, we brought them enough to fill an 8' clothes rack. My MIL just passed away and I realized many of her clothes also qualified as "interview ready". DH and I cleaned out our closets again. His was clothes that had gotten too small or shrunk (he's fond of 100% cotton and some of that stuff shrinks more than others). I had hung on to some of my favorite work clothes, including some designer stuff, but finally decided after five years of retirement it was time to pass them along. So there went another 8' clothes rack out of the house last week! We also sorted through our books. We have around 2-4,000 books at any given time. Out went a load of those yesterday to the local library for their monthly sales. But the core of our collections remain: my art books, his hobby reference books, and the fiction novels we deem worth keeping and re-reading. Of these, only the art books are worth anything, and only to collectors. After I sorted through my art books we asked a couple of friends if they were interested in any that we planned to get rid of. They took two paper bags full. They were happy and so were we! Our collection is valuable only to us, especially since much of it is out of print. I used to give very elaborate dinner parties in the '70's. I had six different sets of interchangeable dinnerware and handmade bronze flatware, with lots of serving pieces collected from various places. Entertaining has changed and nobody does this stuff any longer. The main part of the dinnerware was a classic Mikasa bone china with an embossed gold rim, in a service for 12. None of my Millennial friends was interested in it, but fortunately one of our younger Boomer friends was complaining about her grandmother's soft-paste china. Such patterns can't go through the DW so she had to hand-wash it, so as a working mother (she was the breadwinner, in fact) it was too time-consuming to use often. She was familiar with our china and said she would be thrilled to have it. Made her ecstatic, and opened up space for new plain china for us. Yes, I still have the bronze flatware. Nobody else wants it, like silver it has to be kept polished or in bluecloth. Doesn't take up much room in a drawer. Oddly, one of the modestly valuable things I own might someday be thrown out by some relative who doesn't realize what they are. Back in the psychedelic '60's when impresario Bill Graham presented unknown local bands at the Winterland ballroom in San Francisco, for publicity they did not only posters, but fliers and postcards. I have half a dozen pristine, unused postcards of concerts listing Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Cream, Moody Blues, Blue Oyster Cult, etc., stuffed in a box in the garage.