Whack It With A Hammer

The tried-and-truest solution to so many home problems chalks up annother win! We'd been having a bit of trouble with the front door not latching properly. If you didn't hold and turn the handle a little bit when you pushed the door closed, the latch struck the strike plate in such a way that it didn't depress and allow the door to close; rather, it ricochetted off and the door bounced open again. This was particularly obnoxious if you had your hands and arms full of stuff coming through the door. It wasn't always like that, it developed gradually over the last year. I'm guessing that the doorframe has swollen just a teensy tiny bit with the wet weather. Or maybe the house has settled a tad to the left. Who knows? In any case, it finally got to the stage of annoyance where I starting thinking about trying to fix it.

At first I thought I would have to take the strike plate off, use a chisel or a file to remove a milimeter or so of the doorframe, and then replace the strike plate. Simple, but... the holiday season being what it is, still much too complicated of a project to complete. (I'd need, like, three tools! TNFW!) So I spent the last two months mentally pushing it back to the top of my to-do list every time I carried something in through the front door, and then immediately displacing it with the half-dozen Pacific Arts projects that I needed to do first.

Luckily, during the course of the lovely Christmas Eve dinner we enjoyed at my Grandma Joy's, I happened to ask my Uncle Fred what he thought I should do about it. "I'd try giving it a few good whacks with a hammer, before I did anything else," he said. "Right on the edge of the strike plate, where it bends out."

Now why didn't I think of that? Sure enough, when we got home I took the hammer, gave the strike plate a couple of solid whacks, and voila! The door now closes easily, smoothly, perfectly, and best if all, hands free. I alternatly feel like a hero for fixing the door and like an idiot for not doing it sooner. But mostly I'm just glad I had a good whacking hammer handy. :)

Things I'd Change

The house is wonderful, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. But a common question I get is "So, what would you have done differently?" And I must admit, after living here for nearly a year, I've noticed a few things that aren't quite as wonderful as they could be, such as:

#1 - The door to the sunporch opens directly into the inside-corner pillar supporting the porch roof. There's plenty of room to open the door, but it does rather spoil the view out the window in the door, and it makes it a bit tight if you are carying something large through the doorway. There's no structural reason the door couldn't have been located 3 feet or so further to the right, putting it squarely between the two support pillars... we just didn't notice until it was done.

#2 - We shouldn't have run the radiant heat into the pantry, it gets really warm in that little room when the door is closed. It doesn't really need to be heated, but when we were laying the floor we just didn't think about leaving any spaces unheated. It's not really a problem for dried goods or canned foods, but I've stopped keeping garlic, onions, potatoes, apples, squash and the like in there because they tend to go bad. (On the other hand, the sun porch being unheated makes it a great storage area for that sort of thing. In the future when we have bumper crops of fruits and vegetables out of our garden & orchard, this space is going to be filled to the brim with harvest bounty.)

#3 - The upstairs bathroom door opens right next to the sink/vanity, making the space tight and awkward, right where you want to stand to use the sink or look in the mirror. It's cramped enough that the right-hand drawer on the vanity won't open if the door isn't closed completely: There's also the wierdness of having the closet door open right behind the main door. I should just close the door to the bathroom before opening the closet door, which but I seem to be incapable of remembering to do that. I'm forever banging the closet door into the bathroom door. Both of these issues would have been solved by using a pocket door for the bathroom door. Unfortunately, it's too late to change that. I don't even know if its possible to retrofit a pocket door into an existing, load-bearing wall, but if it is I bet its a real hassel.

#4 - No overhang on the kitchen countertops. They are faced flush with the cabinet fronts. It looks really nice, and I'm not even bothered that it makes clean up slightly more difficult because you can't catch the crumbs in your hand as easily when you wipe off the countertop. No, the real problem is that whenever a liquid spills and runs over the edge, it somehow suctions itself into the crevase between facing and the cupboard or drawer. Sometimes I don't notice the spill right away, only to later find a little puddle in the silverware drawer, or a half-dried sticky dribble down the inside of a cupboard door. What makes this worst of all, though, is that my little brother accurately predicted that this would happen. When he first visited the house, shortly before we moved it, he took one look at the countertops and said exactly that would happen. Of course I argued with him at the time, declaring it preposterous to think that having flush-fronted countertops would make any difference at all. It pains me greatly to admit, Jon, but you were right. I hope you'll be up for helping us redo the countertops - with an overhang this time - in a few years!

That's it so far - and it's really very minor stuff. There are also a few light switches and outlets that could be in better spots, but I don't really think you can ever get that sort of thing 100% right.

Doors: For Going In & Out.

I just realized that I never posted any pictures of the exterior doors after they got their final coats of paint! It's been over a week. The front door is a happy pumpkin-y orange color. It really enlivens the appearance of the house.
Here's the sunroom door, on the other end of the porch. The window had been covered in a protective wrapper for so long we'd forgotten it was there, so it was a pleasant surprise when Nick the painter unwrapped it to put on the final coat of paint.
The reason I was thinking about doors in the first place (which caused me to remember about the pictures of the paint) is that they are suddenly getting a lot more use. Saturday was the first day we let the cats outside at the new house. They had a great time, investigating the porch and surrounding environs. Sanford roamed quite far from the house, but Iggy & Sprout both seemed to think that the ground was too muddy and wet to go far from the porch. Mostly, they wanted to do what all cats want to do: make the humans get up and open the door as often as possible.

You may remember that we installed a cat door in the west wall of the front entryway. So why are we still opening the doors for our feline masters? Well, although all the cats have gone through the cat door at least once (with assistance), it is taking a little time for them to get used to it. Unlike our old cat door, this one has TWO flaps, one on the inside and one on the outside. This is a VERY complicated thing to comprehend when your brain is the size of a hazelnut.

Not that they aren't all genius' when it comes to what really matters: getting us to do their bidding night and day.

Pocket Doors Framed

Both the pantry and the front entryway have pocket doors, and both were framed in yesterday. This is one of the last peices needed to really see the definition of the rooms as separate spaces, so it's fun to have it done. Here's the Pantry:
Also, the sheetrock was "stocked" in the house, meaning there are big stacks of it leaning up against the walls in just about every room. You can see it in both of these pictures. I'm not sure exactly when the hanging crew is going to start, but it shouldn't be too long from now. Talk about defining the rooms as separate spaces...

I had to make one design change to keep us in line with the budget - we had originally wanted to have rounded "soft-line" corners for all the walls, but yesterday we decided to go back to regular 90º corners. It will only save a couple hundred dollars on the sheetrock instalation, but will also make the trim placement and painting much easier. We were looking at the soft-line corners as a way of making it hurt less to run into them, mostly, but of course any corner will hurt if you bang your shin into it hard enough. Robin also says that the 90º corners are more durable, and if they do get damaged are much easier to repair, so that makes more sense for the long run.

Friday - Doors!

Last Friday the front door and the sunroom door were installed. They are still in their protective cardboard and plastic wrappers, and there are no knobs yet, but it's still neat to see them in place. Here's the front door: You can just make out the design of the window, it has three panes. All three exterior doors (front, sunroom & mechanical room) are Codel Smooth Fiberglass.

Here's a veiw from the kitchen, you can see that the sunroom door is in place. It has one large window in it, nearly the whole upper half of the door, but you can't see it yet.
Also, the sliding glass door between the kitchen has been flipped around so that the opening is on the correct side. I don't know if I mentioned it here on the blog before, but the framers had inadvertantly installed the two sliders in the wrong spots. One opens to the right, and one opens to the left, so with them switched both openings were on the wrong side. We've been aware of it for a while, but it hadn't really been a priority to switch them, yet. It's nice to have it done now though. :)

The other thing that was done on Friday is the phone, cable and propane tubing were laid in the utility ditch. It's a good thing too, because it rained Friday night and Saturday morning, re-filling the ditch with water. The water pipe still has to be laid in the ditch, and everything still needs to be connected up. It's starting to feel like we better get these ditches closed up soon, before the weather really changes for the season. Hopefully later this week that will happen.

We had visitors again this weekend, Cary's cousin Andre and his wife Trudel came down from North Vancouver on Saturday and checked out the house. Andre was interested in seeing the pond, so he and Cary bush-whacked through the swamp while Trudel and I looked around the house. We also picked and ate blackberries from our resident blackberry tangle. Yum. Then on Sunday Cary's parents and Grandma Marjorie came out and met us at the site, so we could do the guided tour this time. I sure do love showing off the place. :)

D'oh! Almost forgot the cat door!

That's right, we nearly overlooked the single most important new house feature: cat access. Luckily, Cary realized our folly in time, before we went too far with the siding or got into the sheetrock. Whew! Otherwise, we'd be pathetic door-opening slaves (and not particularly well-trained ones) for the rest of our lives, and nobody, human or feline, wants that.

Instead of putting a cat door in the human door, we're going to put it through the wall of the mudroom/front entryway. It will look nicer, cut down on the cat-darting-underfoot factor, and allow for better insulation than a door-mount. We haven't completely decided what brand we'll use, but we're leaning towards using the small Hale brand one. It seems to have the best insulation and general sturdiness of all the ones I've looked at so far.

Currently, two of our three cats enjoy free access to the outdoors via a ramp that Cary built for them which runs from the balcony of our apartment out into a maple tree. From there they can climb down a leaning tree to another board which takes them to the ground. Here's Sprout enjoying the view:
Unfortunatly Iggy can't use this ramp, since he only has three legs. So he has to ask us to open the door when he wants to go outside, and then back inside, and then outside again... We're all pretty excited about having a house with a cat door directly to the outside that ALL our cats will be able to use.