@oldmtwoman It’s really interesting (and entertaining) reading about your experience with goats. I hope you will post what you find out about growing food during a solar minimum and what people did to survive during solar minimums. I would like to read that and I think many other people would too.
@lovinglife it is very educational (and inspiring) to me to read about you how you are staying warm at very low temps by heating with wood.
The Portal to Hell hall closet: @oldmtwoman @muffy @lovinglife thank you for the encouragement! Well, today I spent nearly an hour trying to crowbar the shelf-supports out of the closet walls, and I have given up!! I have hope, though, that the former (deranged) owner did not actually use superglue or cement, because I can get the shelf-supports to wiggle when I attack them. But I can’t pull them out of the walls. I am going to have to break down and hire a handyman to do it. Maybe a chisel and hammer are needed. Here’s hoping the handyman doesn’t take out huge chunks of wall in the struggle.
So I turned my attention to filling in the cracks and crevices in the closet door frame with wood filler. This is a real door frame, on both the outside and inside of the closet, and there are working doorknobs on both sides of the closet door. It must have been a real door to somewhere at some time… hmm… cue the Twilight Zone music… My guess is, if I broke the wall at the back of the closet, I’d find myself in my neighbor’s apartment, not Narnia. In old buildings like this one, big apartments would get chopped up into smaller apartments. Anyway, the closet door frame is badly cracked in many places, and I got a lot done today filling up the cracks with wood filler. I’ll need to buy more wood filler tomorrow. I can fix, sand and paint the frame and the door by myself. Oh, and it looks like at one time, the former (deranged) owner painted over the closed door, then wrenched it open after the paint dried, so there is definitely sanding to be done. I tried to take out the doorknob and failed. Nevertheless, I feel very good about all the repairing to the cracks. Wood filler is easy to use.