"Don't mind the cat"

It was an indoors sort of day. So I made a neat improvement to our bathroom door. The door will close but nothing will keep it closed; the knobs didn't turn the latch. Ralph is very curious about closed doors, like most cats, and she loves the sound of all running water. She drinks from the sink, and sometimes from the toilet. I think she's just offended when we close the bathroom door. And no matter which guest is sitting on the throne, she pushes the door open to say hi. Last week I found a lovely new mortise set and with some modification to the setting in the door (notched out the knob and lock holes 1/4" more towards the jamb) I installed it. Everything is flush and it stays closed like a dream! I lock it just because I can. What fun to have privacy from the cat.





















Look! It has a skeleton key! The key is far cooler than the thumb lock. And if I get tired of that I can switch this set to another door that needs latching capability (There are four more with lesser need). I'll try opening the original to see if it's anything I can fix.

I cleaned the paint off the knob hardware by soaking it in hot water with dishsoap, and then vinegar and a toothbrush seemed to put a nice patina on it. The other hardware I've cleaned in the house looks bronzed, but this definitely has remnants of a sealed shiny brass finish. Which maybe gives me a clue to the finish on the missing original light fixtures in the rest of the house? Another house we toured nearby before chosing this one has its original ceiling fixtures, polychromed, flowery brass. I'm waiting to repaint or refinish the door and trim until we decide what to do with the 2006 builder's-special bathroom.

J's leg is stronger than brick!

Scratch the wimpy attic door installation, we went tough this weekend and whacked out the ant-infested back steps with a sledgehammer. The steps were several layers of soft bricks set onto a rough pile of concrete with many gaps serving as bug nests, and worsened over the years by tree roots. The tree wrapped itself around the corner of the laundry room, 10-ish inches from the steps, and was one of many cut down last year before we bought the house. Maybe the tree company wanted extra for the intricate work of dislodging the stump from the corner of the house. Maybe they just suck. The 2' tall stump needed to be reduced to make way for the 2x10 ledger board, so I carved chunks from it with the reciprocating saw. The heart of it is knotty, red and hard, as it's somehow still alive, and it took about 25 minutes to slice an 8x3 section out of the top. So I stopped short of my stump-removal fantasy. Enough was carved away to install the board for the new 7' square deck section, which replaces the steps and gives us somewhere to stand with the groceries while we unlock the door. By the time we get to the deck extension the stump should have dried enough to cut away.

We weren't sure what to do with the remaining rubble from the steps; few of the bricks in the step section were stronger than the ant-infested mortar holding them together. Especially the purple ones. We finished off most of them and are filling in the mystery ditch under the dining room with the rubble.

As a purist, it hurt to remove the original steps and metal tube handrail, but the steps hadn't been cared for, and accessing their poor-quality guts to stop the bug problems would have required the destruction of the brick sides anyway. There was a somewhat modern flyswatter embedded in an internal patch; perhaps the ants have been there for years. The mortar in the side sections was soft and damp, like white sandy clay and must have been ant tunnel heaven.

A bag of frozen brussels sprouts and three aspirin before bed worked great for J's minor leg+sledgehammer accident. J is concerned that if the step bricks are this soft (softer than his leg!), will the house foundation bricks hold the ledger board screws? I'm hoping so, they seem to be a different type and are still in good shape, despite the tree stump and roots.

From VanDykes Restoration I ordered a new mortise lock set, $16, for the non-functioning bathroom door latch. It had the option of a thumb-turn or skeleton key lock, and I chose the key. It seems cooler, plus you can peek into the bathroom when the door is locked!

Furniture Rearranging

View from the back steps! See how the sky really sets off the phone lines.









It's intriguing to see my cat wrote a blog entry. Maybe I should give her a journal to purge her bug fantasies. In any case, I'm never doing a show at Halloween time again. For nearly four weeks straight I've done little cooking or bathing, trying day and night to finish clients' Halloween costumes and costumes for a show at Theatre Jacksonville. The show opened last Friday night and I've been recovering, and grooming. Today was a glorious day because there were no phone calls before 9 AM. Tonight we're going to see a movie and the fair is this weekend. It's super to be normal again.

This week I'm going to install attic stairs in the kitchen ceiling so we can turn the current attic entrance back into a closet, and start scraping and painting the exterior windows. The shabby shape of the exterior looks appropriate in the fall, though. Maybe we'll paint inside instead. I've also rearranged our dining room and nook furniture to make room for a tall cabinet Tolerant Mom and I claimed from a neighborhood yard. Hurray for mom mini-van. It originally was a bathroom cabinet, circa 1929. It's in nice shape and I want to integrate it into the kitchen re-do.




Since I was taking photos anyway, here is a glamour shot of another cat, sleeping on our clean laundry. Did she fall asleep doing yoga?

For the record, I do actually scoop Ralph's box regularly.

I am pretty.

Hello, it is I, Ralph. I am writing this because K is too busy making party costumes and show costumes to bother writing. She thinks this will write itself. So I have decided to take some time to do this for her. Today I also need to chew my back feet, watch the squirrel near the fireplace, and sit on her. I am busy. The least she could do is scoop my box. However, outside my window she planted a butterfly garden, pictures of which I am including. I am grateful because everyone knows how much I like things that make bugs. I am a simple being who likes bugs, rodents and I like to chew them as well. Cockroaches taste like liver, but the little flat ones aren't too bad and fruit flies really have no taste. I am really excited to chew a rodent some day. But enough about me. Here are pictures she took last week. It was hard to get the card out of the camera, dumb buttons aren't user friendly and I don't have posable thumbs. I think they did that on purpose.

















This is my broccoli. It is as excited to be there as I am excited to see it. They should make kibble with broccoli in it. Maybe I will make a letter campaign.

I am going to ask that my claws be trimmed. It is hard to type. Maybe I will write more later. I am pretty. This was fun. Goodbye.