Descent into [My Personal] Hell

It's really difficult to summon the courage to crawl under the house when looking at the hole:

 

 

At least someone thought to wire lights down there which helps, but not a lot.

 

 

What you can't see is the smell and it seems to smell worse this year. Like dead, mildew-ish air. Rotting things. I know it was stuffy last year, but I don't remember it smelling this bad. Maybe this is from plugging up all the holes? Although there are still ventilation openings all around the crawlspace, it definitely doesn't get as much air flow as before. Hmmmm....

I donned my homemade bio-hazard suit and ventured forth with my bucket of tools crawling through spider webs, over rat shit while fighting with fiberglass insulation. Detaching the ducts wasn't easy. Whoever attached them did a great job so I needed a variety of tools to cut through wire, remove nails and splice tape.

In the end I removed a lot of duct work and insulation:

I took it all to the dump.

I had hoped to remove the furnace, too, but I didn't have a clue where to start and I worried about how heavy it was or the elaborate electrical system. Then someone warned me about the Freon they use to pump the heat and how I will need to drain it first because if it's left under the house it could offgas and become very toxic. Oh great. So now I need to figure out how to find and hire someone qualified to remove it and quickly before the rats figure out I left all those holes in the furnace and decide to crawl up into my walls. I also still need to figure out how to move the metal parts under the registers and patch up the holes in the floor.

Welcome to my personal hell...this is not fun.