i would like to say a few words tonight on quality.

i live in a house, actually sort of a basement apartment. i do not own a car, so some things are difficult for me to do. for instance, it is not easy to bike several miles to the nearest lowe’s or home depot to purchase home improvement items.

so over the first month of living here, i kept a list of things that needed to be fixed, and come rent-day, i wrote a letter with that list and enclosed it with my check. one of the items i wanted my landlord to attend to was the 1/4 inch gap between the bottom edge of my front door and the threshold. this gap exists because the threshold is a bit lower than the carpet, and in order for the door to be opened in over the carpet, 1/4 inch or so of the bottom of the door had to be sanded off.

this was becoming a problem because i was now sharing my apartment with several species of roach, some spiders, some beetles, and a bunch of millipedes. i didn’t know exactly what would fix this gap, but i envisioned a rubber strip that could be easily attached to the bottom edge of the door–which would completely block the gap when the door was closed, but would still be flexible enough to allow the door to be opened.

my landlord implemented an interesting solution: he took three nails and 29 inches of molding (a long wood strip, about 1.5 inches high and 1/2 inch deep), and he nailed this piece of molding to the inside bottom edge of the door, blocking 29 inches of the gap (my door is 33.5 inches wide). interestingly enough, the new molding allowed the door to be opened only 45 degrees comfortably, maybe getting 75 if you really shoved the door into the carpet. i said to him, “hmm, but you can’t really open the door all the way.” granted you /could/ manage to get into the apartment. his response was “but what more do you need?”

thinking to myself

sometimes, i wonder if certain “special” people go out of their way to pick the wrong solution to a given problem, when the correct solution (and i mean correct in that platonic, objective, written in stone by god kind of obvious way) is so much more elegant, simpler, easier…?

so tonight, i went down the “weather-striping” aisle at lowe’s, and wouldn’t you know it, i found several varieties of flexible rubber and rubber-metal strips, known as “door sweeps”, which can be attached (in various ways) to the inside edge or under side edge of a door to block a gap without preventing the door from being *open-able*. so i decided to purchase one for $2.48, essentially a 36 inch long, brown, self-adhesive plastic strip with a flexible edge.

upon returning home, i took great satisfaction in prying the wood molding off of the door. then i cut the strip (per the instructions) to the 33.5 inch width of my door, i peeled off the paper backing along the adhesive, and i stuck the doorsweep to the bottom inside edge of my door, completely covering the entire width of the gap, while still allowing the door to be opened with ease.

next issue: on recaulking a tub…