Richard, and Recycling, and Racoons…oh my….
We have an odd room adjacent to the kitchen. (In all honesty, we have a lot of odd rooms.) This room was one of the point of entries for not only thieves or vagrants, but also, we believe, for a racoon that left its tracks in the kitchen after we purchased the house.
You read that correctly….
racoon tracks….
IN the kitchen!
We knew early on in this process that we needed to shore up the point of entry where uninvited guests were letting themselves in. To do this, we had to secure the dog door on the exterior door that had been kicked in at some point. With that done, we left the room alone for quite a while as it wasn’t a high priority room (unlike a bathroom or bedroom).
The floor in this room, that we decided to use as a TV room, was fake wood. After seeing the gorgeous floors that Jason (Sandmasters) finished in three rooms on the main floor, we knew we couldn’t keep the ugly floor. Even Jeff said we had to do something (and I’ve established how much he doesn’t like to spend $$). So, he suggested we install the same carpet that we put upstairs and on the back stairs. I am very thankful he did….
For the first several months of renovation, this room was used for storage: book bags, furniture, boxes, basically whatever wasn’t being used at that time. After we found other locations for our stuff, we were able to concentrate on what we wanted to do with the room.
We couldn’t get a door special ordered in any reasonable amount of time, so we purchased a door from a home improvement store (I can’t remember which one now.) and Richard made it work. That’s really been the theme of this remodel: see what we can get and make it work….
Thankfully, Richard likes a challenge.
We still need to paint the door to complete the room, but it’s functional which is what matters the most, especially since the racoons around here are HUGE. One night, one sat staring at Tyler through the basement window. Another day, Richard had to remove a baby one from our recycling bin, after running off the rest of the family (of racoons…not us…just to be clear). Jeff has had to bungy the trash bins closed, and they still manage to pull stuff from the top layer of trash and litter our lawn.
For a cathartic exercise, Jeff and I watch the “Jack Jack and the racoon” clip from Incredibles 2. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and look it up. Well worth 3 minutes of your time.
Our room is mostly finished and functioning as a comfortable TV room now. There haven’t been any other unwanted visitors yet, and I’m hopeful that there won’t be at all.
But I may have to dig out my softball bat just in case…. I may not be able to run up and down the basketball court anymore, but I can still swing a bat….
Racoons…beware!
