4.08.2009

Bad Neighborhood

Really, it's the furthest thing from a bad neighborhood. But when we moved into our house, it came armed with an alarm system straight out of the 1970's. Large, yellowed, plastic boxes adorned every window sill and door frame.

These days, if you have an alarm system, the keypad might be the size of a dollar bill. When our retro alarm system was installed, keypads were the size of a shoe box. The weekend we started painting the house I asked ET if we could rip out the ugly old plastic boxes. Mostly because I was being lazy and didn't want to tape around all of them. He actually hesitated -briefly - until I assured him that the alarm company that installed this system probably went out of business a decade ago. He started like any smart man would, and unplugged the power from the source - just in case. He ripped off the cover and went all MacGyver on the box. It seriously looks like they modeled these things after time bombs. I mean, what is all that stuff? Needless to say, there's now a big hole in the wall - where we'll be patching and painting. There are a few more boxes to remove - but the fun part is over.On a side note: This will be our first weekend at home since we moved in a month ago. We have a 3 page to-do list! What fun.