Some previous owner of our home closed up this return air vent in our dining room, but didn’t do much to fix it with a long term solution. There’s no longer any ductwork running to this vent. It’s just a hole in the floor that’s been stuffed up with some insulation and a brown piece of paper.
This register had become a major dirty spot, collecting all sorts of toddler food droppings. It was gross. I needed to find a way to close it up or cover it so that it would no longer be the nucleus of nasty.
The “right” way to fix something like this would be to patch the hardwood, so you wouldn’t even realize there had been a hole there. But that would be so so much work, plus refinishing the floor. It’s not worth the effort in my opinion. I needed a less complicated solution to the problem, at least for now.
I decided to work with the existing register 1) because it already fit the hole. And 2) it’s strong enough to walk on/stand on and I’m not sure anything I create would be as strong.
My first idea was just to cover the register with thin strips of wood (what I had in the house), but even at a thickness of a quarter of an inch, I was afraid it would become a tripping hazard. The wood made the vent more noticeable as well and this is a design issue that might be better off downplayed.
So my second idea was to cover it with something thin — as thin as possible. And that’s when I remembered they make sheets of magnet that you can stick to vents. I found them at Home Depot in the HVAC aisle (a three pack for just under $5), but they were really hard to locate. The intention for the product is to block air flow to unused rooms, etc. But since I was still using the metal register, I figured the magnet would stick to that just as well. It was the perfect size and it was super thin!
But before I could plop down the magnet, I needed to take care of the register itself. It was pretty scratched up and the faux wood grain wasn’t exactly attractive in the first place. I painted both the register and the magnet with a coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint. I thought about painting some design on the magnet or decoupaging paper on top, but again, I reminded myself that this was a probably a situation where less is more. It doesn’t really need to draw attention to itself.
I replaced the register and covered it with the magnet. You can see the indent of the gridwork through the magnet, probably from gravity but more likely from Elise walking on it. I’m not really sure there’s anything I can do about that. I tried slipping a thin piece of cardboard between the register and the magnet, but the magnet didn’t lay flat enough. I think I’m just going to learn to live with it. It’s much better than it was! At least now it is wipeable or sweepable. I can take off the magnet and wash it. Awesome.
