Weekend Routine

Before I tell you about the weekend, I have to show you the bathroom vanity with the hardware added.

Very nice.

Now, as you may recall from a previous post, we have a plastic zipper door at the bottom of the stairs to the basement. It’s partly to keep the dust from the work from getting into the basement where we are living. It serves the additional purpose of keeping the cats downstairs while work is going on. On the weekends, though, we like to keep it open, partly so we can go up and down the stairs with all of the unzipping and rezipping, but it’s also nice to let the cats have more freedom to roam about the house. That does mean that we have to scout the upstairs on Friday after the workers leave and see what we can do to make it safe for the cats. If we can’t really make it safe, then the cats stay in the basement for that weekend, but we usually find a way. In the past, it has been mostly about covering various opening with boxes and such. Then on Sunday night, we set everything back to the way the workers left it.

This weekend provided a particular challenge. The bedroom and two offices had open paint containers and other things we didn’t want the cats getting into. The normal solution would be to shut the doors to those rooms, but the doors don’t have the hardware to latch them closed. My solution was to put a dumbbell, wrapped in padding, against each door inside the room. To do that, I tied a rope around each dumbbell with a slip knot, and pulled the rope through the hole where the doorknob will eventually go. Holding the rope as I close the door, the dumbbell is dragged along with the door, putting enough weight behind the door to keep the cats out. On Sunday night, I pull on each rope to lift the weight off the ground, letting the door swing open easily.

Now we’re ready for another week of construction. This week should see the finish of the cabinetry and other carpentry and the continuation of the painting. It’s hard to believe, but this will likely be finished over the next 2 weeks (maybe 2 and a half). I’d better get going on scheduling movers to get our furniture back in place.