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After The Great Ink Disaster, fixing the office door that didn’t latch all the way became an urgent project. I even stayed up after my overnight shift to get it done.

As a new house settles, there may be a door or two that no longer latches properly. Loose hardware or changes in the weather can also cause this problem.

First, we made sure that the screws in the strike plate on the door jamb were tight, and that the plate was still flush with the edge of the doorframe. Then, we checked to see that the screws to the latch plate on the door were tight. In our case, all of these were still in place.

Then, we checked the hinge screws. Tightening the hinge screws can fix a sagging door, while loosening the screws slightly can fix a door that is too tight at the top. After examining where the latch hit the strike plate, we determined that the screws needed to be loosened slightly—in other words, our door needed to sag just slightly more. We loosened the screws at the top of the door slightly, and the latch was fixed!

If this hadn’t worked, the next step would have been to adjust the strike plate. This would have involved chiseling out enough wood to accommodate the new plate position and enlarging the hole for the latch, then reinstalling the plate.

We were happy to have an office door that latched again. No more ink disasters for us (we hope)!

Have you had any problems similar to our ink disaster? What was the solution? We’d love to hear from you!

I left for work at around 5:15pm, and Eric arrived home about an hour later. James was very excited, and Libby had her “I’m in trouble” posture, which is always bad news.

First, Eric saw a few sheets of paper on the floor. As he walked up the stairs, he saw more paper, envelopes, and staples. Then he found this mess (excuse the iPhone photo and Eric’s foot, which he included to demonstrate the size of the disaster):

Yep, that’s black ink, all over the carpet. The door to the office was no longer latching all the way closed, and James had broken into the office, shredded paper and envelopes, and punctured multiple ink cartridges—two black and one yellow. As usual, Libby helped.

James was rolling around on the carpet, foiling Eric’s clean-up plans. He brought James to my work, and then continued scrubbing the carpet. Eric first saturated the area with Folex carpet cleaner. Most of the ink came up with the cleaner, paper towels, and elbow grease. A couple days later, he steam-cleaned the carpet using our Bissell ProHeat carpet cleaner. First, he pre-treated it with Bissell Tough Stain Precleaner, then he used the Bissell brand cleaner. We had tried using generic carpet cleaner at our house in NC, but it left weird green spots on the carpet.

After Eric’s cleaning efforts, the stain is barely noticeable. We can only see it a little bit if we lie on the floor and look at the tips of the carpet fibers. I may go back and try the Folex again to see if we can wipe out the rest of the stain.

And James? He’s still our goofball.

In our next post, we’ll show how we fixed the office door, with hope that a disaster like this will never happen again.

We picked up these fun yin yang bowls from World Market recently ($12 for both). Eric and I love to cook Chinese food. We even took a dim sum class a couple of months ago, where we learned how to make and fold different types of dumplings and spring rolls.

Each bowl says Yin on one side and Yang on the other, with a yin yang design at the bottom of the bowl. The set comes with chic black ceramic spoons and black chopsticks. I liked that the bowls are larger than most of the Asian-themed bowls I’ve seen in these types of sets, measuring 5.25 x 3.25 inches without the handles.

We thought these would be perfect for the next time we made won-ton soup or fried rice. Now I’m off to peruse our cookbooks for some new recipes!

Do you enjoy Chinese food? Do you have any favorite dishes (ceramic, edible, or otherwise)? Let us know in the comments.

Speakers had been high on Eric’s priority list since we closed on the house. One of our selections when the house was built was to have the house wired for surround sound. Eric had begun researching speakers years ago, back when we lived in Raleigh, NC. We visited a home theater store there, where they demoed several different brands of speakers. We listened to speakers made by Definitive Technologies, Polk, and Canton. The speakers made by Definitive Technologies were at a smaller price point and were the ones we were originally considering.

Before moving into our new home, we considered our options for setting up our home theater. The two major options for home theater setup are to do it yourself or to have a dealer install and set everything up for you. We visited a home theater dealer in Richmond and obtained some quotes that included installation and set-up. This particular dealer, however, was more focused on setting up true “home theater” systems (think movie projector and real theater seats) than the more typical TV-receiver-speakers-components set-up that we wanted.

Another factor in our decision-making process was that we decided to join DirectBuy about a month before we closed on the house. We decided to buy our Samsung TV from them and learned that we could also buy our Denon receiver and speakers from several different companies at a discount. Considering that our house was already pre-wired for surround sound and Eric is handy with electronics, we decided to DIY our home theater.

We chose Canton speakers because they are high quality, work well for both movies and music, and have a clean look to them. The 3 major types of surround sound systems are in-wall, bookcase, and stand speakers. Stand speakers were out, because they would defeat the purpose of having built-in wiring high up on the wall, out of reach of our pets. So we were left with either in-wall speakers or bookcase (“on-wall”) speakers. In-wall speakers require cutting holes in the wall in order to mount them, making them more permanent residents, if you will. So we decided to go with the bookcase speakers, because they can be removed more easily when moving out of the house or when replacing them.

To my delight, I found that Canton offers color options for their speakers other than black. The system that we chose, Movie CD 202.2, came in a choice of silver, high gloss white, or black. We chose silver because we thought they would blend in nicely in the living room, where we’re planning on painting the walls sage in the near future. I did not want black speakers if at possible, because I thought they would stick out like a sore thumb.

The speakers were on back order, and we waited weeks for them to arrive. We were impressed with the nice packaging they came in, including real cloth wrapped around each speaker. This is what they looked like after the unboxing:

After a quick trip to Best Buy for some speaker cable, Eric was ready to set them up. Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll discuss the set-up process.

If you could DIY or design your own home theater, what would it look like? Let us know in the comments.

I’ve tried lots of different types of fabric placements, but they always lose their shape when I wash them. Ever since I first tried some lovely silver woven placements from Target, I’ve been a convert.

My favorites are the Chilewich placements, but they’re a little pricey. So I was ecstatic to find some greenish-gray ones on sale at Crateandbarrel.com for $5.95 each. At first I tried these beauties on the bar in the kitchen, but the green didn’t stand out:

So I moved them to the dining room table….perfect!

They clean up easily with just a damp cloth. For ground-in food or stains, I use the same vinegar-water solution that we use to clean the kitchen. Check out Chilewich.com to see a rainbow of placemat options. They also have rugs, purses, and all sorts of other inspiring stuff. Oh, the possibilities…

Do you have any favorite table accessories? We’d love to hear about them!

We were not paid or perk’d for this post; I just really love Chilewich!