Home Improvement

Since I can’t really go to Home Depot [it’s not worth it unless it’s an emergency, and nothing is, so far], and since I can’t really go out [except to walk], I’ve kept myself busy with little projects.

In 2015 I built an outdoor cat enclosure, or “catio”, in our back yard.  It’s something I’d wanted to build for a while, and finally convinced hubby the cats would [1] be safe from predators and [2] hidden from 99% of public view.  We have a pretty small back yard and the 6’x6’x3′ catio takes up about 1/3 of it!

The Fire Department was called in 2017 to the 3rd condo [first floor studio, which had been recently renovated and was empty] and I couldn’t reach the owner. Thankfully he showed up just as they were about to force the door, but it gave me an idea.

My last post about basement flooding was in June 2018.  The only basement wall still in need of waterproofing was the long wall in Kathy’s cage, which borders the River.

I have added 2 new projects to my list of things to do in 2020.  Even though I haven’t done anything yet on the existing list, I added two more.

I know most people have doors & locks on their basement cages.  We never have.  When I moved into the condo back in 2012 the cage door was already leaning against the wall around the corner from the cage.  I never felt the need to put it back on.  Until now. 

Despite taking almost half a year off from blogging, I managed to accomplish a lot! Being on furlough for the first 5 weeks of the year with nothing to do but projects helped immensely, but I think that’s in part what caused my burnout.

The 3rd heating zone is our master bedroom.  I installed the smart thermostat in there back on November 30th, but didn’t have time to feed the wire through the wall until this past weekend.  Since you have already read all about our other 2 smart thermostats, I’ll keep this post very short.

Last May I started de-mousing the foundation around our front stoop with hardware cloth. I only got a bit of the right side done. This past weekend I stapled hardware cloth around most of the front stoop in an attempt to keep ahead of them!

This past May I spent about 6 weeks completely cleaning and overhauling the girl cave.  I removed 2 large trash bags of crap, and moved a bunch of stuff to the basement for storage.  I didn’t take any “before” pictures, because, well, I guess since I wasn’t really in a blogging mood I also wasn’t thinking ahead to “before” pictures.