Orkin Guy came today. He sprayed for ants, left me some Orkin literature, and, as he was leaving, spent about 20 minutes telling me about how God had returned to earth in a remote village in Africa. He told me about how people would be making pilgrimages there and how if God chose me to see the spirit I would know. Then he pulled out a few pamphlets for me to read and asked me to call him if I had any questions. These pamphlets are titled “Purity…the key to God’s kingdom” and “Celibacy: It’s religious support”. Perhaps my 3-year-old marathon t-shirt was too provocative???
The very first project I ever planned to do on this house was to plug a hole. During the inspection, the inspector pointed out that behind my air conditioner where the wires and things lead into the house was a hole:
He pointed out that mice or other creatures could get in there, and that I should be sure to plug it up. On my very first trip to Home Depot to buy things for this house, I bought a can of expanding foam to plug that hole with. However, when I got home, I found out that the can I’d picked up was missing the little nozzle tube thing you need to spray the foam. I never remembered to return it or even pick up a new can and so the hole has gone unplugged.
Last week, the cursed ants that invaded my house last summer were back. They were in my couch hunting for crumbs. LOTS of them. I didn’t even get to finish my cheerios before I was stripping off the slipcovers, throwing stuff in the washer, and spraying Ortho Home Defense in unsafe ways. After extensive treatment, the ants kept coming back to that corner of the living room where I work all day. It’s clean, but I probably kill a dozen of the stupid ants every day. Usually the Ortho works better than that.
This morning, the third day of particularly irritating ants, I decided they must be coming from somewhere because that corner of the house was full of ant death poison. The only likely place was from the basement. My laundry area is under this part of the living room. I’d never seen an ant down there before, but I don’t spend a ton of time there either.
I go down and find there are, in fact, LOTS of ants. There’s a line of dead ones along the base of the wall where I’d sprayed the Ortho a while ago. There’s a lot of live ones up by the ceiling, on the walls…basically everywhere other than the edges I sprayed. So I sprayed some more and admitted these ants were beating me.
I do not lose. I just know when to call in reinforcements. Orkin Guy is coming on Monday.
However, this afternoon I was puzzling over how the ants could be getting into the basement. There’s no water leaking in there, so it couldn’t be from a foundation crack. Then I remembered - the hole. Sure enough, I checked out the hole and there were ants crawling all over the tubes, wires, and inside of the hole. So, I gave that its own dose of Ortho. I’ll soon make a trip out to get some expanding foam, finishing that very first project that was left undone for 18 months.
First, on the bifold doors, I think I got the wrong term here. I do not mean a door that folds. I meant the kind that open out or in like french doors, but it’s the width of one door and split in the middle. I was looking at home depot and this looked like it, but now after your comments I realized that isn’t split in the middle, it folds in the middle. I definitely don’t want something that folds. I want it to be hinged on both sides so when you open the doors it only takes up half the depth of a regular door. What the heck would that be called?
However, the idea of having the door open into the hall isnt’ a bad one. I’ve considered this before and my only hesitation is that the bathroom door is at the end of the hall:
And that might be tight. (side note: that picture is from the inspection. thank god that carpet is gone, the floors are refinished, and the upstairs is painted.)
I love that sink T.E. posted. That would totally solve my problems with the counter space. I found this picture of it with a pedestal, and I think that it would look great.
Edited to add: The door is a standard 30″ door, and yes, I’m completely gutting the bathroom. The only thing that’s not being replaced is the new window that I replaced last month. I think we’ll even need new walls behind the tile in some places.
The one big renovation project left to do on the house is to renovate the upstairs bathroom. It’s teeny tiny. Seriously, you couldn’t get a smaller bathroom than this. If the girls come in, they can’t turn around in there; they need to back out.
Here’s a picture. The toilet is behind the door.
When the door swings past the sink, it comes within about half an inch of hitting it. Seriously. It’s really REALLY small.
There isn’t a lot I can do to reconfigure it. I want to keep a tub. I don’t want to redo any plumbing.
The tinyness has a few problems. The primary one is that there is no counter space. I have a little glass shelf over the sink (you can see it in that picture), but I still knock stuff over and don’t have a lot of places to put it.
Regardless of what I choose, I’m thinking about replacing the door with bifold doors. That will give me room to expand the space on the sink area a bit. My hesitation is that they might look odd? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house with these doors on a room, so I don’t know. Thoughts anyone?
I didn’t get any built in lifts on the new windows. They were going to charge me like $40/window for a little ledge, which seemed ridiculous. At the same time, it’s a bit of a pain opening the windows without anything. Thus, it’s time for hardware. I have 6 new windows and I think I should also put them on the 2 windows that had been replaced previously upstairs. I think I’m going with these:
They match the period of the house and are very similar to the original 1940s handles that are on the little doors that go into the attic. You can kind of see them here:
And, for $30 for a pack of 10, you can’t beat the price!
My poor neglected blog. The end of the semester is less than a week away, though, so I should emerge soon.
My kitchen renovations began about a year ago exactly - May 5, 2008. Today is May 10, 2009. I still don’t have my cabinets finished. It inspires me to write poetry about Cabinet Guy. Perhaps a haiku.
Cabinet Guy - you suck.
My doors will never arrive.
IRRESPONSIBLE!
Or maybe a limerick…
Cabinet Guy came to my house,
Off’ring cabinets like he’s Santa Klaus.
But to finish my kitchen
the dates - he keeps switchin’!
It turns out the guy’s quite a louse.
Contractor Sal told me that Cabinet Guy had ordered the final doors last month when the siding was being done. I haven’t heard anything yet on those. I’ll give it a couple more weeks before I start bugging both of them.
Once those come in, I should also have the last bits of trim go up and have the side panels refinished and trimmed. That will make the kitchen pretty much complete. However, for a room that’s like 64 square feet, it doesn’t seem like more than a year is justified. That’s like 1 week per square foot!
