Venting about the floor vent

After almost three years of living in our house, I have determined that the people who lived here before us were, for lack of a better word, idiots. 

Okay, that's not kind and maybe a bit harsh.  They probably weren't actually idiots.  But they sure were challenged when it came to "do it yourself" fix-it projects around the house.  They might not have been idiots, but they should definitely have learned somewhere along the line that maybe it would have been a better idea for them to call someone to help them with various renovations that they tried to do before they put this house up for sale.

Case in point: you see that hole in the middle of the floor?  That's a furnace vent.  In the middle of the floor.  First of all, I'm pretty sure that at some point, they decided to widen the doorway between the kitchen and dining room to give a more open concept feel.  Which I'm not really opposed to, and in general, it does work for our house, and I'm glad of the extra space.  However, it means we have a furnace vent in the middle of the space between the dining room and kitchen.

The second problem: see how the vent and the vent cover thingy are lying on the floor next to the hole?  Yeah, well, somewhere in the process of either making the hole or redoing the floor around the hole, the hole became too small/too big/completely the wrong size to properly fit a vent cover on it.  That black piece is supposed to screw into a little lip that should be around the hole.  Except there is no lip.  So the black thingy just sits loose in the hole, and the vent sits loose on the black thingy, and Nathan likes to pull it off and play with it.

And then yesterday, Reuben walked through the kitchen, stepped on the black thingy, and wound up with his leg down the hole.  Twice.

*sigh* and *grumble*

I'm not entirely sure how this thing should be fixed.  Maybe we should be the ones calling someone to come fix it for us.  Figures...