Monday, February 16, 2015

This Might Be a Problem...

Well, there isn't really a might be -- it most definitely is a problem.

It's been a cold winter.  It's very cold now.  Just looking at my phone makes me want a cup of hot cocoa.

Feels like -20!  And to rub it in, an igloo picture.  Nice.

I've noticed that it feels cooler in my kitchen than the rest of the house.  I haven't really paid much attention to it.  I have an older home, and I don't think there are as many heat vents in that part of the house.  I figured it was one of the quirks of an older home.

Tonight, for whatever reason, I forgot to turn off the light on the back porch. Nothing major, but it led to a rather interesting discovery.

 I had been in the kitchen getting a drink.  I turned the kitchen light off on the way out of the room, and that was when I realized the porch light was on.  I started to cross the room to turn off the porch light, and I noticed that the back door looked a little odd.

I couldn't figure out exactly what it was a first, and then I realized that I was seeing light through cracks in the wood of the door.  Well, shit.  That can't be good.

To be fair, I think the door has always had these cracks since I bought the place, but they had been sealed.  I'm pretty sure the door is original to the house since all of the woodwork matches, so circa 1935.  I have never seen light shine through the door before.  I forget to turn the porch light off all of the time, so I would have noticed.  

I tried to get a picture of it, but it didn't turn out well enough to show the light in the cracks.  This is what the door looks like though:

See the cracks in the left panel?

So, I'm thinking that the now-open cracks are why it feels so much colder in the kitchen.  I'm guessing that the prolonged, very cold weather has made the wood contract and the cracks have widened. 

Now I'm going to be paranoid all night that the door is going to crack in half, or splinter.  What do you think will happen?  Imagine your own worst-case scenario, then assume it will probably go through my mind at some point tonight when I am trying to sleep.

Silver lining: it's so freaking cold that no one is going to be out tonight, so very little chance of a criminal randomly deciding to kick-in my already weakened back door to rob and/or axe-murder me.  (Yes, that is the way my brain works.  There wasn't a particularly high chance of either event happening in the first place, but it's even less thanks to the frigid weather.) 

On that happy note, I'm off to try and get some sleep. 

How many days until Spring arrives? 





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