Saturday, December 5, 2020

Toasty

 The room I use for my office gets 90% of the heat from the furnace. If I close the door, I can easily have it be 85°F in here while the rest of the house is under 60°F. Thank you terrible housing design and construction from the 50s!

But I can't actually close the door because I have cats. The dogs are also an issue, but the cats just make it impossible. And Guido is personally offended by a door that isn't all the way open -- if I leave just enough room for the cats to walk through, the big dog can't figure out how to get out, and Guido will be sure to push it open all the way. I needed a door that opens from the bottom, not the side.

I'm not the genius that I sometimes think I am

So I was thinking about how to attach some sort of blanket to the door frame so the heat stays in and the critters can go under it. Then I remembered that every time I think I'm being terribly clever, it turns out that most of the world is already ahead of me, and I googled "door blanket".

Interior door frame with split curtain covering the gap
Technically known as a magnetic insulated curtain, but it's a door blanket

The darker stripe in the middle is actually an opening that is held together with magnets. Once you walk through it, it reseals on its own. The whole thing is attached to the door frame with velcro, so I can take it down if I need to. I left an eight inch gap at the bottom on one side so the cats and the little dog can go through, and also to get some fresh air. The big dog has figured out how to get through in one direction. I'm sure he'll figure out the other direction one of these days...

Anyhow, it's nice and toasty in here, and I had to turn down the heat in the house a bit because I was getting too hot. That means I may need to move the birds to a different room since they are in the coldest part of the house, but it's not like it really gets that cold here.

Look, this dog can figure out what to do with her legs:

Fluffy little dog lying on a dog bed
So much fluff it's hard to find her legs


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