Of clothes dryer and hornets

You might not expect much of a connection between a clothes dryer and a hornet, but bear with me.

We are installing a washer and dryer in the upstairs bathroom. This is supposed to save two trips on the stairs for each load of laundry, and with three kids, that's a lot of trips. Couple problems, though. Dryers need vents. The only place to put a vent was through the roof. Martin, the best neighbor in the world, is pretty handy at these things, and between him and me we measured where the hole should be (got it exactly right) and installed a pipe that went down the inside of the bathroom wall and came out where it would hook up to the dryer. We have another neighbor (second best in the world) who's a plumber, and he ran a propane line and re-plumbed the bathroom for the washing machine. Then, I have a friend who's a contractor (and I'm not referring to Mario Mareno of Inferior oops Superior (hah) Building Services who took my money and abandoned our addition, but that's another story), who could get the appliances into the bathroom. You see, the washer and dryer are 27 inches wide and the door is 24 inches wide. He widened, then repaired the opening  nicely, but in the process, his table saw blew a circuit breaker.

We're getting closer to the hornets. He was plugged into a circuit in the remodeled garage, which has a sub-panel safely enclosed in a kind of doghouse at the site of the abandoned addition. (Have you figured out the hornets yet?)

Good old helpful me, I opened the door to access the panel, and noticed several flying insects. My steel trap of a mind figured out what was going on even more quickly than the construction guys, and we three made a hasty exit. They had a spray can of stuff for such emergencies and I was appointed the one to poison my own house. I flipped the door open and gave the paper wasp nest a good dose of liquid death and backed away. We killed a little time to let the critters expire in peace, then I gingerly re-approached the panel.

(Maybe you're wondering why I have been writing "hornet" all this time if I'm erudite enough to recognize a paper wasp when I see one?) Everything looked still, so I pulled out the insulation that had been stacked in there against winter cold (yes, the addition  project has been abandoned that long). What to my wondering eyes should appear but a large cloud of angry yellowjackets! Seems they had a large four-level apartment buried in the fiberglass, and I had just ripped it open!
I made my previous exit look lackadaisical by comparison, and the big brave constructions guys, who had a large head start on me anyway, ran even farther than I did. I think they got a better view of the cloud because they weren't inside it! I managed to sustain only about eight stings.
They still itch. I eventually got them sprayed, too, but we hooked the saw to another circuit. When I took these photos today, I learned that the larvae can survive being sprayed, and several had hatched out, but seemed to be suffering the effects of walking on poisoned comb. I gave the nest another dose anyway, in case any of them figured out that they needed to fly directly out of their cells.

For all that, the dryer isn't running yet. It needs to be converted to propane, and Martin rightly chewed me out for not following his advice—I had bought an obscure brand of appliance. Now I have to wait two weeks for an expensive part. I take small comfort that the salesmen lied to me about it at the store. I can't return the dryer—the doorway is too small.