Back In Town

Well, it's been a long hiatus from the blog, and I've gotten out of the habit. There are a lot of ideas rolling around in my head, and not all of them are related to the house.

During my trip overseas, I found out that there are several people reading the blog who I didn't know about. Most of them mentioned that they couldn't wait to see what I really thought of Ireland and the people there. I'm sure they were disappointed to instead be treated to a blog about catching mice.

To that point, sometime between my last post and the time I got home, Ms. Huis caught mouse 43. I'm hoping that these guys are coming out either because it was so cold that they had to move around, or because they ran out of food and had to go looking. I've been all around the basement with Great Stuff foam, steel wool and insulation, trying to plug all the holes I can find, and there have been a lot of them. I'm hopeful that this and the mason next summer will finally close up the mouse highway into our house. I also think it's funny that there have been no more mice since I came back. Guess they know they are doomed. Hah!

We had our first clogged drain this week too. In our only bathroom. Not much of a story there, as a container of Drano seems to have fixed the problem. considering that almost everything in the house turns into a bit of fiasco, it cheers me up to report when something behaves as expected. The Drano did not melt through our pipes, nor did noxious fumes cause the paint to peel off, nor did the clog get worse. It just worked. Amazing.

Although I do feel duty bound to report that the paint in our bathroom is peeling off, just not due to the Drano. Long time readers of the blog will remember that our entire house has a base layer of calcimine paint and that as moisture is applied, the oil or latex paint on top of it often fails. I don't think there is a single room in the house more humid than a bathroom. We did opt to get a fan put in by the electrician, but we are still losing paint. To be honest, I'm not too bothered. we'll get to it, eventually. I'm still more worried about the roof and the gutters.