Pre-filter, New Doors

So our awesome new powerful pond pump has been pureeing fish and then getting clogged by their sad, lacerated corpses.

Gross.

We've lost both Thor and Jupiter, veterans whom one would have thought had the age and wisdom to... not swim into a sucking vortex of doom.

So I decided to make a crude "pre-filter," as they're called in the pond biz.  I got a cheap black bucket and drilled holes in it using a small keyhole drill bit.  You want to make enough holes to give the pump unimpeded water flow, but not so many that the thing loses all structural integrity.

Ultimately, I'm planning to fill it with very coarse lava rocks to keep out the little fish; but as it is, it will at least keep the big fish, who are larger than these holes, from Vita-mixing themselves.

So far, it seems to be working fine.

Meanwhile, our favorite carpenter, Javier, made us a pair of swinging doors for the living room. We needed to be able to keep the cats in the living room with us without losing air circulation. Matt and I were stumped for years--we though of turning wooden screens into doors, but that's expensive and it's hard to find a design that would harmonize with the house and have small enough holes to keep the cats in. Then one day Matt spotted some decorative aluminum panels at our local hardware store and had a brainwave.

I'll be painting the woodwork and trim, but I think we'll leave the metal as is.  The paint would only flake off, anyway.

The cats are mayhem-prone, so we don't like to let them into the front of the house unsupervised.  But of course, they often run off to the kitchen to counter-surf while we're watching tv, the little hellions. Hence the doors. Now they can't escape bonding with us! Yay!

Thanks to Chuck and Ladonna, whose Christmas present funded these doors.