Disaster Confessional: The Hole Truth

Sorry about the pun title, guys.  We can’t help ourselves when given this sort of material to work with.

We have the word “disaster” in our name for a reason.  Both our houses are filled with plenty of disasters, and we both cause plenty more through DIY antics.  To help us make sure to share this stuff on the blog, we thought we’d do a “confessional” post and each talk about a shameful “quirk” of our homes that we have been living with.   Of course, instead of a whispered secret we’re posting this on the internet.

“I have big gaping holes in my walls.” – Naomi

It’s true.  In the middle of most of my walls I have big gaping holes.  You can go right ahead and look at my home tour if you want evidence that I haven’t been exactly hiding this from you.  But I also wasn’t like, “look at our beautiful trim work, plants, and also those holes in the wall.”  So let me make it even more clear with a few big red arrows.

Here is one being all evident in my dining room:

The one in the master bedroom could not be more blatant:

And there is even one sneaking around in the living room:

And that’s not even the half of it!  That is one quarter of it.  (There are 12 of these holes throughout our living room, dining room, hallway, office, guest room, and master bedroom.)

I hardly see them anymore, but they probably jumped right out at you and were really obvious.  I’ve gotten so used to them I just look past them.  They’re actually the openings for our air system and they’ve been like this since the renovation.  The openings were originally covered by just plain old industrial/office style grates, which I hated and would not let back on the wall after they were taken down.

Now, since we’ve installed trim right up to the bottom edge of each opening, our old grates (and most grates, actually) won’t even fit without cutting into the trim.  Besides that, GRATES ARE SO EXPENSIVE.  Did you know?  It’s ridiculous how much even really simple ones cost, let alone the nice and ornate ones that I want.

I have enough problems without adding grates to the picture.  So I’ve been stalling, living with the holes, and contemplating what sort of DIY-magic I can apply to this problem.  For over a year.

And as for whether we’ve ever dropped anything down there and lost it… yes.  Yes, we have.  I’ll tell you about THAT disaster some other time.

“My house has a major security flaw. As in, three holes in the door. (Please don’t break into my home.)” – Sage

Yep, there are three holes in one of our exterior doors.

When we did our final walkthrough of the home the day we closed on it, we noticed that a few door knobs were missing. Most were interior, but one was the exterior door in the basement. We learned that this was because when the seller had the home inspected by the fire department (a requirement before you sell a home), they’d had concerns about some of the doors that required keys to open them from the inside. I guess this is a fire hazard because if the door was ever locked and then the house caught on fire and you couldn’t find the key, you’d be stuck inside. I’m not sure why it wasn’t a fire hazard that there were no batteries in the smoke detectors, but…that’s about par for the course in our house buying process.

The fire department wouldn’t sign off on the house until the seller removed those problem knobs. Theoretically she should have fixed them before we moved in, but when it came down to it we were more concerned about the fact that it took her two weeks longer than expected to move out, we had to live in a hotel, and on the day when we finally closed she was still in the process of moving out. So we were more than willing to deal with a few door knob issues just to move things along.

BUT, that left a bit of a problem.

Indeed, that’s a not-insignificant hole in the door. And then I went and made the problem worse. You see, one of the first things we did after we moved in, second to painting the living room, was install keyless locks in all our exterior doors. I wanted to get the locks changed asap because who knows who out there has a key, and I figured that while we were at it we might as well invest in some fancy schmancy keyless locks. We went with the Schlage Camelot Keypad Lock (affiliate link – read our policies) which were $99 each on Amazon when we purchased them.  They were super easy to install on our two upstairs exterior doors.

They are amazing because I don’t have to bring a key with me when I go running, and no more fumbling in my purse when I get home from work. Plus we can program multiple codes and then revoke any of them — so we have our personal code, and then can create (and deactivate whenever we want) special codes for repair people, etc who might need access to the house.

But the basement door was another story. There was already one hole in the door from the deadbolt the seller had removed. But the hole was too small for the new keyless locks. So I went and removed the door knob below the existing hole (which had a small thumb latch lock, but it didn’t work).

Which created two new holes, both of which are also too small for the keyless lock.

So clearly I need to make one of these holes bigger in order to install the new lock, and then patch over the other two holes. But so far it’s been a never-ending project where each step begets a new problem: bought a drill attachment to widen the hole –> it’s too big to fit in my drill –> bought an adapter that was supposed to fix this problem –> did not work –> bought a new drill attachment that’s the right size –> impossible to use without a circular guide to hold it in place against the door… you get the idea. So in the meantime, we have holes.

(Update: I fixed the holes at last! Get the scoop on how I enlarged one of them to fit the new lock, and then patched the other two.)

In conclusion, we’re sorry if we’ve destroyed your image of us as perfect in every way. But we just felt that it was important (and entertaining) to be truthful with you, our dear readers. And when we finally fix these problems, you’ll be the first to know!

 

(Sharing at A Bowl Full of Lemons.)