Okay, well, it’s week three and it did not go as planned. I hoped to be showing you a painted closet with new storage system, but that is not happening. I did get the closet emptied. That’s worth something, I guess? Cleaning it out didn’t go as quickly as I hoped for several reasons. One is that I have a complicated relationship with time. I live my life in a virtual time void—I’m convinced something should take just a few minutes and hours later I’m baffled why I ever thought that. You’d think I would have learned to be better about this at my age, but clearly I am also naive about my failings and ability to change.
Another reason things went slow has to do with an old house problem we have. I wish I could we say we have solved this problem in the almost 20 years we’ve lived here, but alas no. That problem is the occasional mouse infestation. We have repeatedly sealed SO MANY HOLES in the foundation and after each sealing we’ll have 2–3 years with no mice. But then bam!, one (or two or three) invade our house. This happened three weeks ago—we saw the telltale signs in the kitchen sink cabinet and we set all the live traps and caught two mice. Then it was peaceful. The Man of Action looked around to see if any of our weather proofing had failed in the basement and shoved some steel wool in a couple of little holes.
And then our water heater failed. Seems unrelated, but stay with me. We have a basement “load in” area with an outside stairwell covered by metal trap doors. (Remind me to tell you the story of why that is someday.) The plumbers used that door and stairwell to come in and out and load/unload the water heater. So the door was open down there for a good amount of time the day they were in. And we think a mouse came in.
Want to know how we discovered that mouse? I WISH it was the usual “see droppings, set traps” story, but sadly my life isn’t that boring. INSTEAD. I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed one night and the Man was long asleep in the bedroom. The bathroom is located right over the basement door. You can probably see where this is going. I’m getting undressed and out of the corner of my eye a small black blob runs out from under the radiator. I scream bloody murder—I thought it was a big bug at first and I do NOT like bugs. I grab desperately for the bathroom door handle and realize that black blob is a mouse and scream again even louder. The poor thing is so freaked out by a large creature screaming at the top of her lungs that it runs around in a 8-inch circle at speeds so fast it was just a blur.
At that point I hear the Man yelling, “I’m coming!” as he stumbles out of bed and I FINALLY get the bathroom door open and run through the whole house to the living room to stand on the couch in my underwear trying not to succumb to cardiac arrest. The dogs are completely useless, of course. They’re scared because I’m scared. The Man of Action is standing at the bathroom door wondering what I saw when I manage to yell, “CLOSE THE DOOR!” Omg, this story is long—so sorry. Suffice it to say after locking the mouse in the bathroom, the Man caught it the next morning (in a hugely comical way that involved practicing capturing it under a Tupperware container because it wasn’t setting off the live traps—it was really tiny) and took it away and we’re mouse free once again.
Why am I telling you this? Because I need you to understand my horror as I started to clean out this parlor closet and I thought I saw a mouse turd in the stacks of fabric and I PANICKED. I was convinced there was a nest in there. So I couldn’t continue without the Man’s help. Here’s how we emptied the closet: I stood on a chair outside the closet while I directed him what stuff to throw away/donate/keep. This process was not efficient and may have involved a lot of frustration on the Man’s part. I mean, I sympathize, truly, but there was no way I was getting off that chair.
Funny story, turns out it wasn’t a mouse turd. I believe it was a tiny piece of dried flower. (I had a bucket full of dried flowers in that mess of a closet.) There was no nest and only two “turds” and mice don’t work that way. They shit constantly and everywhere. So that waste of two days was unnecessary except from a sanity standpoint. I would have LOST IT if I had to deal with another mouse running at me. It might have resulted in having to move out of this house. Remind me to tell you the story of a bat landing on my head while we were sleeping in our apartment—it was the catalyst for buying this house and moving into it.
ANYWAY. Here is the empty closet:
And here is the cute window in the closet:
It’s fully trimmed out! And has an adorable little shade, which I had completely forgotten about. All of our closets except one have built in lighting, which is something the previous owners did right. This light is in dangerous disrepair though, the wiring is not in good shape and it’s not a quality piece of goods to start with, so I will be replacing it. The shade on the window I am keeping though.
So I need to clean these walls down with TSP and then de-gloss them and the trim before I can paint. I’m fairly sure this is oil-based paint—it looks original and never updated. And we’ve had bad luck painting latex over the old paint in this house. We didn’t do it right. Here’s how to do it right. I also need to spackle the dents in the plaster on the right there. Interesting story (not as long as the mouse story, I promise) about this closet: It held a Murphy bed that swung out on a pivoting pole when we moved in. It was a cool original feature that we agonized over for a long time. Eventually we took it out and re-homed it with a friend because it took up the whole closet and was weirdly small at the same time. If we wanted to use it as a guest bed we would have had to order a custom mattress and our guest wouldn’t be comfortable anyway as it was about a foot shorter than a twin bed. It was sad, but I wanted that closet space for storage.
The other thing that happened this week is that so many deliveries happened. And we braved IKEA in a pandemic to pick up the pieces I need for the closet and the base of the built-in bookshelves (part of the IKEA pieces pictured at the top of this post). AND MY DESK CAME IN! So excited about this! I have to say the ordering and delivery of this Oscuro desk from Article is one of the most seamless online buying processes I’ve experienced. Delivery scheduling was prompt and handled through texts and the Ryder delivery personnel were so polite and friendly. Highly recommend.
I’m going to open that box, match the black on the desk to a Benjamin Moore color and then use that to spray the two Target cabinets I purchased to go alongside the desk. I like the detailed pattern in the cabinets, but I want that wall of furniture to feel cohesive, so paint will accomplish that. Argh! So much to do! Pray that I do not have any more mouse scares and check back next week. Hopefully lots of (appropriate) things will be painted.
