Peel Away - 0 hours

Tonight, Marissa and I attacked the bathroom again. Might as well, since no one is allowed to actually use it.

First we spread newspaper all over the floor to protect the tile. Then, Marissa spackled the wall where the chair rail was removed, but tile was not put up. I smeared Peel Away all over the medicine cabinet. Unlike the traditional chemical paint remover that we used before, we did not require extra ventilation, special masks, enormous rubber gloves or goggles to apply it. After the glop was applied, we covered it with strips of Peel Away paper. Now we give it 48 hours to let it do its magic in a nonhazardous, environmentally friendly manner. Before and after pictures coming soon.

After all of that, we put paint tape over all of the tile chair rail so that we can get to painting tomorrow. Our bathroom may be nonfunctional, but it will be beautiful.

So I hoped you enjoyed my little You Tube experiment last night. Little did I know that Marissa would discover a real pest in the house this morning. ANOTHER MOUSE (possibly mice). Mouse droppings were discovered in the pantry. We suspect that the invasion started no more than a week ago because Marissa had only recently reorganized the entire pantry and the "mouse smell" has only been around for a couple of days. Joel disinfected the entire pantry. The mouse was pretty finicky about what it tore into. Ramen noodles. Deep-fried mushroom batter. But not the steel cut oats or barley. It clearly prefers junk food. So there were no great food losses. Joel has laid two peanut-butter laden mouse traps in the pantry. We'll see if we catch it tomorrow.

Last year, we had a mouse problem too. There was a little family of mice living in our livingroom wall. We had a contract with an exterminator due to an ant problem that was inherited from the previous owner. The exterminator's traps were not quite what I expected, but they worked. Trap model #1 was a sticky pad. We laid one in a dark corner of the living room. Sure enough, the next night I hear pleading little squeaks resounding from that corner. Because Joel and I don't actually wish harm to the mice...we just want them to relocate...Joel kindly tried to dislodge the mouse from the sticky pad. But it was REALLY stuck. I was no help. I was begging Joel to do something to help the poor little mouse, who was clearly having a major panic/heart attack. In the process of trying to pry its tiny feet from the pad, Joel suffocated the mouse. Eternally traumatized, we refused to lay any more of those sticky pad traps. So the exterminator recommended poison. He provided us with plastic boxes with a door on the side and white blocks of "food" laced with poison. The poison was supposed to cause the mice to become very, very thirsty (I think, b/c of massive internal bleeding). They were supposed to run to a water source and die. We were suspicious of this method b/c we knew that their home was in our walls. If they died in our walls, it would stink really bad...oh, and it sounded like an awful, painful death. For reasons never fully given, the exterminator said that it was this trap or none at all. So we did it. Some time later, Joel found a dead mouse under our couch. He did not reveal this to me until today because he did not want to upset me. A few months later, Joel and I spied some traditional "break your neck" style wooden moustraps with plastic swiss cheese on the end at a garage sale. That is what we used tonight. The mouse will die, but I hope that it will be quick. No undue anxiety for the mouse followed by inadvertant suffocation. No crazed running around the house searching in vain for water that will do you no good.

The up-side to all this is that we sanitized all the floors so that Theo will not pick-up a mouse-bourne disease--if there is such a thing. Our downstairs is pleasantly clean right now.