Monday, November 3, 2008

Busy

I feel bad for posting so seldom, but we haven't been doing too much house-related work lately; Adam has been working almost nonstop as a volunteer coordinator for the upcoming election, and the rest of our time has been taken up by two new additions to the household:



Said additions will be ten weeks old on Wednesday, and will have been with us for about a month tomorrow. This was one of the perks of homeownership we couldn't wait to benefit from; none of the apartments we've lived in have allowed pets.

We really enjoyed our first Halloween in the house, and we got to meet some of our neighbors from around the Run. We also got about twice as many trick-or-treaters as we ever did in Squirrel Hill, despite the fact that this neighborhood is so much smaller.

In the spirit of the season (no pun intended, really...), I've been haunted by a strange sort of phantom lately. I've recently become fixated on the notion that there are pocket doors sealed in the wall between the living and dining rooms. It's not just that I think they would look very nice there (although they would). My glimmerings of hope are based on the fact that the wall between the rooms seems unusually thick--six inches or more, I think--and that the border between the dining room's hardwood floors and the living room's carpeting seems to be strangely off-center. The carpet extends further into the dining room than I would expect it to, and I wonder if it covers up the remnants of tracks. There's no sign of tracks on the top of the doorway, but it and the sides look like they've been plastered recently. That's another thing: the inside surfaces of the doorway are plaster or drywall, not wooden trim.

I don't have a great picture of it, since our camera's currently broken, but here's one from the inspection that sort of shows what I mean (please ignore the inspector and the haggard-looking prospective homebuyer in the picture.) ;-P



It shows how the carpet extends to the very edge of the dining room, and how strange (at least to me) the doorway itself looks. Maybe I'm just engaging in wishful thinking because of hearing about other housebloggers who have found pocket doors sealed in their walls, but I feel like there's reason enough for vague hope. Unfortunately, I can't think of a good way to find out beyond cutting a hole in the wall, so it's going to have to remain a mystery for now.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Incidentally, on my way home from Michigan a couple weeks ago I had a small reminder of you. I was driving along I-80/90, and crossed under a road called "Four Mile House Rd."

See?

Google maps evidence

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you may have pocket doors. I don't know if your house is built like mine, but on my house the plaster and lathe doesn't extend down behind the baseboards. If your house is the same you could try removing one of the baseboards and see what's back there.

Stacie said...

Responding to both comments:

-Shayla, that's so cool! It's tempting to drive out there and get a picture of the street sign for a site banner or something. :)

-Anonymous, thank you--that is a great idea, and one I hadn't thought of. My loved ones may kill me for temporarily prying off the baseboard, but they would kill me a lot more for drilling holes in the walls, so this seems like a better option. :)