Editor’s Note: We received a lot of great submissions to R&R’s “I’ve Never Seen That Before…” contest, and while we’ve already chosen the winner and two honorable mentions -  which are featured in the Nov/Dec issue of R&R -  some of the other entries were too good to not share. Hence, we’ll be sharing some of them here on the blog in the coming weeks. (See "Model Trains," "A Cat Catastrophe" and "Oh, Rats.")

The following submission comes to us from Doug Kelly of Restoration24 (Apex, N.C.).


A homeowner called and asked if we could check her ventilation system for cleanliness. She also complained that her bathroom was always cold in the winter and hot in the summer. In fact, the homeowner has had this problem since the house was built 17 years ago.

So we determined that yes, in fact the ventilation system needed cleaning. We let the homeowner know that we would also figure out why the air flow to the bathroom was inadequate. Well, during the cleaning process we found not one, not two… but five pairs of dirty underwear that had been stuffed down in the supply duct to the bathroom.

Apparently during the construction process (17 years ago) someone needed (on five different occasions)… well you can figure it out. Fortunately, no pictures are available. By the way, the homeowner was very happy with our efforts.