sealed

after three years of living with second-hand smoke drifting into my apartment from the hallway via the assorted gaps around my door, i have finally -- and with some degree of positional creativity -- sealed all those effing cracks.

the unstable girl at the end of the hall (she of the middle-of-the-night tantrums and police visits) smokes like a chimney some days and, on the days when that coincides with the wind blowing from the west, the breezes go through her unit and capture all that smoke, pulling it out the cracks around her door and into the hall. there, the smoke collects and then weaves its way through any available opening in its quest to find freedom.

usually, my door is one such opening.

and, frankly, i hate it. since the likelihood of the smoke's source suddenly packing her bags of crazy and moving out is slim-to-none, i realized a solution would have to come from me, within my own apartment. i needed a way to prevent that smoke from getting in.

the already-as-thin-as-it-comes weather stripping i purchased a few weeks ago proved too thick to fit between the door and the jamb. with a small test piece in place, i could no longer close and lock my door. dammit. i removed the test strip and figured i'd be stuck with the smell whenever my neighbour might come unhinged and light up.

and then, this morning, an idea.

40 minutes later, that weather stripping was successfully applied to the exterior of the jamb, so that its edges were pushed up against the perimeter of the door. i can open and close it without incident and, with a few tiny exceptions, there appears to be a fairly secure seal.

i'm quite proud of my ingenuity and handiwork, if i do say so myself. not only might this ensure i no longer have a bathroom, kitchen and bedroom that reek faintly of cigarettes a few times a month, but my white door now has a slender and spiffy black frame that matches all the picture frames nearby.