So you know how you get one project done, and then you find yourself inspired to do something else…and something else…and something else?  Yeah.  Me too.  Now sometimes that’s cool and leads to scads of productivity.  But sometimes it leaves you sweaty bleeding and swearing on the floor.

I know I mentioned that we had the house painted (all done, looks good).  Part of painting was getting as much stuff as possible out of the way so the painters had easy access to the house (why hello garage, you’re looking rather full).  This meant coming to grips with one of our more shameful bouts of homeowner failure.  You see, we have a side door.  About two years ago, the side door’s screen door’s pneumatic canister thingy committed suicide.  A few months later, the screen door handle joined his canister friend in death.

We, being responsible homeowners and competent adults, did the only reasonable thing.  We held the screen door shut with industrial strength twist ties and just pretended that door didn’t exist.  For two years.  We are so awesome.

The door was so banged up that the painters couldn’t really work around it.  So we took it down (a process which took all of 20 minutes…I have no idea why it took us two years.  Of course we’ve not yet put a new one up, but we’re pretending that’s because the painters just finished up this week and we have to wait for the paint to cure.)  But, we are now using the side door (by far the most convenient door given where we park).

And since we’re now using it, we wanted to make the side entrance nifty.  It’s a tiny space (you come in on a little landing that’s about 7 by 3…there’s a half flight of stairs up to the kitchen on one side and another down to the basement on the other).  We’d already painted it and lined it with hooks (about three months before the door offed itself and we stopped coming in that way).  But the floor still needed some attention.  For you see, it was ancient crumbly linoleum.  Ancient crumbly brown linoleum.  Ancient crumbly brown linoleum with mystery stains.  It was not attractive.

So I ordered some FLOR carpet tiles…which I will tell you all about…as soon my fingers finish healing.