We all love the drama of the big reveal. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, the fruits of your hours, days, weeks, and months of labor, and the goal you've been striving for since the idea of your project first popped into your head. Everyone gafaws at the before and after photos that show the tremendous progress and upgrades made to a room, and I doubt there's many people who wouldn't rather enjoy the end result of a job well done than the dirt and grime that often comes in the midst of a significant bit of DIY construction. All that being said, you can't get to the finish line of your race without taking everything one step at a time.

Yes, the individual and often "insignificant" steps of a project, no matter how mundane or simple, are what ultimately make a project. Many times these steps require a fair amount of detail, patience, and thought to be successful, even if they will ultimately be hidden within walls, beneath the floor, or in the case of the item I've been working on of late, within the ceiling.

A while back I touched on some of the prep work we've been doing in the attic to get the HVAC duct work functioning to the best of its ability. I was back at it this week, but I've been working on some duct work that will ultimately serve a much different purpose. 

The bathroom exhaust fan is a critical component of any functional bathroom. It helps to reduce the humidity and odor that can occur in a bathroom, keeping the place in good shape regardless of how heavily the room gets used. In our master bathroom we're planning to use a super quiet inline exhaust fan. This means the fan will not be seen when you look up in the bathroom, but it will be located in the attic, never heard, and will be fed by a few duct boots positioned strategically, one above the shower door, and one above the toilet.

To mimic the other vent/register covers in the house, we'll be using 8" x 8" Reggio Register decorative vent covers. The exterior of these covers are 8" x 8" but the interiors are 6" x 6". Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any good 6" x 6" duct boots that would allow me to mount the decorative vent covers to them. However, I was able to find an 8" x 8" duct boot that I figured I could make work.

One of the things I hate about duct boots like this that they are not a rigid square, they are just flexible metal. My plan to make this work would not only allow us to mount the vent cover to the duct, bit it would provide a rigid edge to the duct boot, give the drywall an area to screw to, and ultimately provide a solid backing that the vent cover itself could screw to.