Measure twice, cut once, then call a carpenter

Well, at least we don't have to live by these words of wisdom (yet). As Carmen's post suggests, we're looking at putting a new door in our house to separate the basement suite from the rest of the house. To our dismay, the size of the opening doesn't match up with any standard door sizes...

Now the only questions left to ask are why is this the case and how do we fix it? As for the why, we have two complementary theories.

1. When the previous owners laid tile in the kitchen, the thickness of the new sub-floor plus the thickness of the tile and grout reduced the height of the door from the bottom
2. Perhaps there used to be a door in this peculiar door-shaped opening and rather than remove the old door-jams, they simply plastered over them, reducing the width from each side and the height from the top

So now we are left with a few different options:

1. Exploratory Surgery to determine if there are door-jams inside the wall, and where exactly they are.
2. Do some creative construction to make custom jams to fit an already cut-down door.
3. Give up on the idea of installing a door and put up a bead curtain

And in case it wasn't clear from this post, any comments or suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

I hate home construction

The only thing I have to say is "Why don't people sell 78" doors?"

Hello? Snow? Where are you?

Okay, I'm glad to see that I wasn't wrong about the snow being gone before Halloween, but to Carmen's credit, the snow did all disappear a couple of days after the fact.

But it's now mid November with no sign of snowfall in sight. That one foot teaser actually had me believing that we were going to get two white Christmases in a row, but I guess that there is still time for the white stuff to come back...

Who ever said that all nighters were for students???

One of the things that I looked forward to the most about finishing my degree was the knowledge that my days of pulling those fabled "All nighters" were now behind me. As of last night, that bubble has officially been burst. That's right, I was in the office from 6:00PM last night to 4:00AM this morning and all I can say is: "Thank god for coffee!"

Christmas shopping!

For the first time in my life I have got a jump on my Christmas shopping, and I have to say I am proud of myself. Only two more gifts to go. For my family anyways, we plan on waiting until boxing day to shop for Dan's family in order to take advantage of the sales. But until then I can relax and concentrate on stocking stuffers. :)

It's nice to be home

Well we are back after our very quick trip to Saskatchewan. Angela's shower was a success and I am glad we went as it was one of those once in a lifetime sort of things. I must say a huge "Thankyou" to Becky, the host of the shower, she did a great job and made sure it was a memorable occasion for everybody.

Despite having only been gone for one night I sure missed my new bed. I have been truly spoiled. It was especially nice to crawl into after traveling 5 hours in our van for the second day in a row. I must put in a complaint now that I think every rib on the right side of my body is out. I also discovered how much of an impact the position of the baby has on my bladder. The trip to Saskatoon took the expected 5 hours with no unexpected bathroom breaks. The trip home however took 7 hours and I now have a survey of acceptable and unacceptable bathroom stops between Edmonton and Saskatoon.

But enough of my complaining, the trip was defiantly worth it, and I am glad we went.