Home owner woes

[inulro]

Moving right along to The Stupid.

I've been wondering why it's so much colder downstairs this year than previous winters. We're well acquainted with the fact that our front door provides all the weatherproofing of a wet tissue, but, well, it's worse than it was. Eventually I worked out that it's due to one of my half-finished DIY jobs. You all may remember that I ripped up the carpet in the front hallway at Easter and never finished the floor. There's one hell of a draft coming through there. Oh well, at least I figured that out *before* I had the floor finished, as was my original plan. That's not going to help with draft proofing. So it's out to buy laminate flooring very soon. Paying off my loan early is going to have to wait another month or so - I have the money and I'm not going to sit here freezing for the rest of the winter. This also means I have to go to Ikea, as I haven't seen as dark a colour laminate flooring anywhere else. This stuff is Not Cheap, but I don't want wussy light coloured wood - wouldn't go with the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac walls anyway. I do not, however, have enough spare cash lying around to do anything about the front door.

Plus, Jason has a week + off work over the Christmas period. I need to keep him occupied somehow while I'm stuck at work.

But oh, it gets better. It's also been bloody cold in the area between the kitchen & the bathroom downstairs. On Wednesday I was collecting the vacuum (which we keep in that area) and discovered rays of sunlight coming through teeeny tiny cracks in the *back* door. Even if I had money for doors, I'm not paying for a new back door - I think we've opened it twice in the whole time we've lived here. If we want to go out back we use the patio doors. So it's off to B&Q to look for options for filling these cracks (which really are small, and you can't see them unless the sun's coming in at the right angle). If the solution turns out to be Gaffa tape, there will be photographs.

I'm decidedly unimpressed that our Convergence plans may be scuppered by falling down house syndrome. Though it could be worse. The boss is moving to Australia in just under 2 weeks, and has to move out of his house so the renters can move in at the end of the week, and his roof sprung an enormous leak in the storm on Saturday.

Comments

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I already had the idea of plastic sheeting as a definite possibility for the back door. Our windows range from excellent quality to pretty damn good - it's amazing how cold a house can be with good windows when you've got enough other problems.