Latch and eye-hook: an image of a brand-new set, the pairing I installed is not shiny like this, and comes from two different packages
Friends,
Things quite desperate. The men were coming early this morning to demolish our front bathroom — the big one that comes out of the hall, the one with the 63 year old cast-iron bath (oh it has a whitish-grey porcelain veneer). Not only did we have to get up and shower early all three of us in a row in timely fashion so each could have enough hot water from our heater not to douse ourselves in cold water but there was again the problem of the cats.
I had been beat out over the bathroom. I didn’t mind Yvette going first; indeed she’d been up since before dawn to watch the Australian open. But I was waiting 20 minutes after she finished to go, and the Admiral darted in before me. He had several reasons why he had to do this, among them his long history as Marot taking baths at (wide) intervals across a 24 hour cycle. He would be without a tub once the big bathroom is gone. I could carry on taking showers any time and they were not going to shut the water off right away.
There is no tub in the now working small bathroom off our back bedroom, the one the project manager keeps calling confusingly “the master bathroom.” How is it a master bathroom if it’s small and has no bathtub? Answer it is attached to the “master” bedroom, i.e., ours. It does not matter that is it small it seems. We are now getting a much smaller oval mirror there since the one installed was too big for the space really and had bright chrome when we wanted burnished nickle fixings throughout. A palatial room it’s not.
So I went into the kitchen (still working) to have my juice, cereal and tea and fill a large kettle with water so that across the day if the people needed to shut off the water we’d have enough for water, coffee, tea, whatever.
Suddenly, the Admiral is there while I’m eating my cereal: “What are we to do with the cats?” Me: “We agreed to put them in our bedroom.” He: “No, where should we put the cat stuff?” So I follow him to the front big bathroom (which she calls not so confusingly the hall bathroom) from which we moved a lot of stuff last night. (Including a two level bench of toiletries, medicine, paper supplies, creams &c&) The question was, Where should he put the two huge buckets of “Tidy Cat?” Me: “I don’t know,” then “our bedroom.” “Where in our bedroom?” with all sorts of reasoned troubles as to where it should be kept over the next number of days. Me: “Oh fuck off.”
Rudeness puts us in the wrong in our house, so I gave in (irritated still about my coming cold shower) to the extent of going with him to survey the problem, and found the cats were already in our back bedroom. Immediately a new problem emerged: as I opened the door, one darted out (Ian, the ginger tabby). You see the door to our back bedroom does not close. The lock attached to our doorknob doesn’t work. The door to Yvette’s room does close; the lock attached to the doorknob has remained working all these years. Why I can’t say.
The admiral: “We can’t keep them in. But don’t worry, they’ll spend the day there hiding once the workmen come in.” Me: “what if they don’t? what if they get caught in the front and one of the workmen has left the front door opened and at long last curiosity and temptation overcomes one f them?” He said, it wouldn’t happen and anyway the front door would only be opened once in a while.
Me: “All it needs is once.” (I have ever loved the IRA riposte to Mrs Thatcher’s glee when they failed to blow her to bits; “we only need to succeed once.”)
I went to take my shower, but as I did I saw on the inside of the our back bedroom door the long defunct latch and eye-hole I had installed shortly after we bought said cats and found that as kittens they just would not let us sleep. Crawling all over us, restless and playful all night. So with great difficulty I installed a latch and eye-hole all by myself.
No good. They threw themselves bodily at the door, hurled themselves repeatedly. So we didn’t use said latch and eye-hook. I did install a set to my workroom-study after the cats ruined the wiring in my room which attaches us to the Internet and the Admiral decreed no cat was to be admitted to my workroom for any length of time whatsoever ever after. They were older by then; I was awake; they didn’t seem as determined as I would go in and out, and this set has stayed more or less. It’s worn and sometimes I have to put it back in by hand, but cats are small creatures, so it does.
Well back to this morning. Looking at the failed latch and eye-hole, I thought I would take the eye-hole and latch off the back of the door and put them into the front of the door so even if the cats could get in permanently (no latch whatsoever), now the cats couldn’t get out (once the latch and eye-hole were in place and connected).
Then on the other side, the front, I re-discovered an old discolored eye-hook high up on the threshold cornice. It had been installed many years ago by some previous tenant or owner, perhaps to keep animals out of that room, perhaps to keep children out. It had long ago lost its eye-hole. So I didn’t have to put in a new latch, just the eye-hole.
Immediately another problem: it was too high for me to reach. So I got one of our spanking new folding chair-ladders. But then once up there I couldn’t maneuver well since a bookcase is how shoved up against this door threshold along the hall. I banged away hitting my hands and found alas the screw wouldn’t go in with my hammer. Did I ask the admiral sitting in his nice comfy rocking chair in the front or living room for help?
No. I would get a load of reasons why the latch and eye-hole were not necessary; then why it was impossible for them to stay up there. He would declare they would get pulled out quickly. Then he would return to his ipad.
I admit I thought of it as I tried to screw that eye-hole in. It just would not go. I kept hammering at it. When I get it a little more in I tried twisting. Hopeless. Then hammer again and all that would happen was I was loosening it as it moved this way and that in the plastic.
I tried a nail to make a hole thinking once I had a hole I would twist the screw in, but all that did was put a nail in my way. And I had no means to pull it out. My wrench is too big to grasp a nail. One of the workmen was watching me. “Could he help?” I said, “Oh yes, thank you.” I gave him my useless wrench. He said, “No I’ll go get my own tools.” When he returned, he said he didn’t need my ladder. One of his tools was his hand. He had some kind of sharp pulling-thing and out came that nail, and then by hand he twisted the screw in. He then by hand pushed the latch slightly over so it fit.
I thanked him profusely as he walked away.
Where were the cats all this time? They had come back into the back bathroom while I was taking my shower. Cats naturally are where I or the Admiral or Yvette are. When I came out all I needed to do was shut the door. Then when they heard the men come in and saw me struggling with latch and eye-hole and box of hopeless tools, they scurried under our bed. So that’s where they were while I worked at installing an eye-hook to match the already put-up latch.
Yes to day the men are here to demolish the front bathroom.
By the way the weather is very warm. Balmy. We keep being promised (threatened) with winter but it’s not been cold for a couple of weeks. Green sprouts are seen in our little garden patch. I know it’s said tomorrow the temperature will go down to the teens (the high for the day). I hope the poor flowers do not go kaput.
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
1:47: Bulletin: 63 year old cast-iron tub proving nearly indestructable. They are attempting to haul it out as is.
Too much Downton Abbey. Today our project manager for our bathroom stopped by. She noticed what now may appear a wide hall which leads from our front hall into the kitchen. She thought this delightful as she recognized one could walk round and round our kitchen, dining room, front room and end up in the hall again. Now it contains two bookcases against the wall: one for DVDs, CDs of books read aloud, film studies books; the other reference books. Above one a shelf with umbrellas, hats, stuff for vaccuum cleaners, irons &c. She asked what was it used for before did we think? The admiral said maybe a pantry. He’s British and was thinking when he was a boy w/o a fridge; they had a pantry near a wall for cold stuff. (I doubt that; though I grant it is square enough to be a little room. Another neighbor who has not renovated the space out of existence put a desk & computer in it.) She said, “Oh, yes, it’must’ve been a Butler’s pantry.” Butler’s pantry? This woman has been watching too much Downton Abbey. Ours is a 1400 or 1800 square foot house, 3 bedrooms with one and one-half baths. There is no space whatsover for butlers and housekeepers, much less staff and dogs.
A friend: “Twenty minutes of Downton Abbey is too much Downton Abbey.”
Diane: I do like butler’s pantries–as long as I don’t have to have a butler!
Me: Funny, funny. This is a woman who is sensible; she was in earnest – until I asked her if she had been watching Downton Abbey last night.
JIll: Glenn and Patty’ house was built in the twenties and the kitchen was obviously designed for “help”. A very narrow galley with maid’s quarters with it’s own bathroom. Patty’s wanting to tear down the wall between the bedroom and the kitchen so she can have the kitchen she’d love.
Me: Well this is a 1947/8 house, designed for Father Knows Best types. I believe Jane Wyman ahd “help” (as I recall even black), but that euphemism covers women coming in to clean for the day, or do the wash for the day. It could be as a realtor Patty is used to using silly puffed-up phrases, so “Butler’s pantry” could be not literally meant, but my hunch is she was partly under the spell Fellowes manages to cast which makes viewers identify wit the characters they see.
Jill: A friend of mine actually did have a house with a butler’s pantry, but I (and I suspect she) thought it was a description of a kind of room and not for an actual butler. She didn’t really like it because she was always having to walk between the kitchen and the butler’s pantry.
Diane: Yes, a butler’s pantry is a room between the kitchen and dining room, usually narrow and usually for storing china and silver, that has nothing to do with an actual butler. at least in middle class homes. I suppose at one time, and this would have lasted to 1947-8, it was part of the prestige of having a dining room–and one well separated from the kitchen, whether or not there was a maid or cook in the picture, which there wouldn’t have been after WWII. I knew of homes built as late as 1970 with a butler’s pantry!
Me: Well then maybe it was more than a realtor’s euphemism. It’s a small room off the kitchen, between the kitchen and the hall. The dining room which is a square room, not that large but not that tiny, is on the other side of the kitchen. The kitchen itself might be called a galley kitchen as it narrows down after the square area which now contains a fridge, dryer, clothes washing machine.
The house is intendedly middle class and probably when built middling middle class. When I moved in in 1983 I was told the area had been “exclusvie” by which was meant no Jews and no Negroes (that was the language used). There were still some southerners left in the area and there were officers and their wives in some houses. I’d call it still a middling middle class area — some houses (very fixed up, or renovated and enlarged) go for very high sums, especially where the zoning is for larger plots.
I never minded the walking. I’m glad to have these hall spaces which nowadays would not exist, probably be seen as “waste.” I line the areas with bookcases and where I can’t fit a bookcase I put a picture.
Diane: Yes, these so-called wasted spaces are wonderful bonuses to us, from a time before every square inch was calculated. I have bookcases in a hallway too and am glad to have to room.
Me: It’s the very lack of calculation that makes for the sense of enjoyment; you feel you can wander about. It’s not really that as the spaces are not that large but they are there, sort of extra, not calculated to be priced. When I call this a 3 bedroom house with 1 and 1/2 baths I’m using old terminology from my childhood in NYC. The house would not be so described today. But however they would do it they would not be able to name the halls and calls that rentable space.
Come to think of it we would not say 3 bedroom house, we’d say 6 room apartment (front room, dining room and kitchen are the other three). My study-workroom is one of these bedrooms, the small one.
Diane: Yes a sense of enjoyment, of breathing room.