It Never Hurts To Ask

I’ve been spending a lot of time on eBay the last couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to buy some hardware so we can tie off some loose ends at the Devil Queen. You know, little stuff like turn on the goddamn heating and air system.

I killed-off the evil chip-board beast many moons ago, but I still haven’t finished my own improvised return-air box yet. It’s basically intact, but I haven’t cut out any grill openings yet. Why not? Mainly, because I don’t have any grills, so I don’t know how big to make the cutouts.

Anyhow, last week I finally found a set of matching grills on eBay that I think my wife will like. This is harder than you might think. Most of the grills had one or more of the following flaws:

1) Wrong period. Art Deco is nice but it doesn’t match the Devil Queen at all. Since they’ll be going in the main hall (the first thing everyone will see), it has to look right.
2) They were wall vents. These are built out too far to be used as floor grates. They’d stick up a couple of inches, so everyone would be tripping over them.
3) Too angular of a pattern. My wife wants something with lots of curves and/or flower-like patterns to match the Queen’s feminine character.
4) Fugly. No one wants that even if it is period.

Here is what I found.

I put a maximum bid of about $50.00 on each of them. When I turned off the computer, I was the high bidder. The next day I checked eBay only discover that I’d won. Great, right? Nope. I’d only won one of the three grates. What the hell was I going to do with one grate?

I emailed the seller and asked if they had any more of this type of grate. They informed me that was it. Then I emailed the high bidder. I asked if they’d be willing to sell them to me for more than they’d won them for. The high bidder sent me a very nice email saying that they needed them for an old farm house they were renovating. In the off chance that her husband had miss-measured the openings (she hinted that this had happened before) and they didn’t fit that they’d let me know.

I thanked them for the email and pretty well figured that was the end of that. I went back to eBay and started my search again. This was my next choice.
As it turned out, I missed bidding on these because of my trip to Eureka Springs. I was a little disappointed, but they still weren’t my first choice so I didn’t really mind looking for some more.

Not an hour later, I received an email from folks who’d bought the first set of grates. The husband had miss-measured and they couldn’t use them. If I wanted them, they were mine. YES! So, I put a check in the mail and all I need to do is wait.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes.