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around 10:30am my father stopped by my place on his way to market basket to help me install a new door bottom. we installed the previous door bottom back in october 2015; in just a month, my former spanish ana destroyed it from her incessant coming and going into the backyard for her smoke breaks. these are probably not the most durable of door bottoms, but just the only one i can find at home depot. i've had the replacement since 2015, but only now getting around to finally replacing it. taking a door off its hinges is a two person job; i might be able to remove it by myself, but putting it back on definitely requires two people. the fact that we've done it before worked to our advantage. however, i did forget that we were never able to actually remove the hinge pins, because we weren't able to remove the bottom caps.

instead, we have to remove the hinges themselves from the door frame. since we had the old door bottom (minus the insulating fins), we used it as a template to figure out where to drill the screw holes. we also used the old door bottom to figure out how long the new bottom should be. once the new bottom was tightly screwed onto the door, we put the door back onto the frame. that was actually the hardest part, as the french door was actually quite heavy (which is good, you don't want an exterior door to do so light somebody could just smash through it). while my father put in the few initial screws, i was in charging of either lifting or lowering the door so the hinges sat flush with the door frame. we were finally done by 11:30am. now i no longer have a big gap underneath my back door that i can see through, and the 5 fins of the new door bottom will keep the draft outside. the only loser here is the door snake, now out of a job. i'm sure in a few years, when the door bottom wears away, the snake will be back.

my father left for market basket while i rode the bicycle to the cafe. i biked this time because i wanted the exercise and didn't want to worry about parking, either at the cafe or back at home. my mother fixed me a bowl of rotisserie chicken noodles.

my plan today was to do some patch work, a combination of wood filler and caulk, and depending on how long it took it dry, i would also apply the first coat of primer paint. however, paint prep work is like doing an audit on the overall condition of the work surface; if there's something wrong with the house, i will find it. i already knew the molding around the bottom of the porch columns had a bit of rot. when i gave it a closer inspection, i discovered all the molding were rotten, and the rot had gotten to small parts of the columns themselves, like cavities.

while thinking about what to do for the column rots, i went ahead patching any holes or uneven surfaces with wood filler. plastic wood works great, but it dries pretty fast, and i could already see the surface of the wood filler drying up in the can as i did my patch work. after that i went ahead with the caulking. basically any seams where water my collect needed some caulk. the hardest parts were the joints where the arches met the columns; space was tight, i couldn't get the caulking gun nor even my finger down into the gap. instead i would dribble caulk into these crevasses then using a wet paper towel press the smooth the caulk into place.

i finally stopped working by 3:30pm. my other plan was to go back to home depot to buy a miter box to cut the molding strips into the right angles. but it was already getting kind of late, and since it'd be raining tomorrow and friday, i wouldn't be working until next week anyway, so i can just wait until the weekend to buy it.

there's some molding strips in the cafe basement. one of them is about the same size but has a different pattern. i might use that, or buy some additional molding.

i also helped my father install a new exhaust fan at the back of the cafe. the one was making a loud noise, not worth trying to fix as the fan itself is coated in sticky black grease and he has a bunch of spare fans anyway (salvaged from old restaurant equipment like commercial freezers). we attached the fan to the cable cord using wire nuts and then my father screwed the fan to the wall by the window.

i went home where i had a rotisserie chicken croissant sandwich again (i got another croissant from the cafe).