Installing a pet door

Meet Maddie and Henry:

They (mostly) get along, but Maddie, being a dog, will take advantage of any opportunity to eat Henry's food. While Maddie likes to inhale her food in 30 seconds or less, Henry prefers light snacking throughout the day so his food is always out (he also likes to be petted while he eats, but that's a story for another day). For a while, we just kept Henry's food in the basement, since Maddie had an inexplicable fear of basements that stopped her from going downstairs (she would happily go up and down stairs, as long as they didn't lead to a basement, any basement). Over Christmas, Adam's nephew cured her of this fear by showing her that, hey - there's food in the basement! From that point on, if your back was turned for even a moment, Maddie would hightail it to the basement and furiously inhale Henry's food (she looks innocent, but she's a sneaky one).

Now that we were going through bags of cat food like it was water, we decided to invest in a $20 cat door. And several weeks later, I finally got around to installing it.

Installing it was pretty simple: trace the paper template onto the door, drill a hole in each corner, then cut it out using a jigsaw. One side of the cat door screws into your door and the other side is attached using sticky tabs. Easy peasy.

Installing the cat door also inspired me to finally do something about the ugly doors in our basement (one leads to the laundry room/Henry's food and one leads to Adam's studio). Several coats of primer and paint and a couple of new door knobs later:

Of course they're not nearly as nice as the doors we installed upstairs, but it's a big (and inexpensive) improvement nonetheless.

Next step: paint the walls (and the baseboards). Oh, and as for the pet door - it's a huge success! It took Henry a little while to get used to it, but now everyone's happy (except Maddie I guess).