If you give a mouse a cookie...

There is a cute, little children's book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The basic plot is that a boy gives a cookie to a mouse, who then wants a glass of milk, and a straw, and a nap, and a bedtime story, and a bunch of other stuff which eventually leads to him wanting another cookie. This is why we set traps for mice instead of giving them cookies.


That said, here is what happens when Loralee wants to get the piano tuned:

First, she decides that the piano needs to be refinished, and so does the piano bench.

It doesn't make sense to bang the piano around after it's tuned, so she has to refinish it before the tuning. It looks spectacular when it's all done.

Then, since the piano is pulled away from the wall, and she has been wanting to repaint the great room anyway, she tapes everything up so she can paint. After all, we wouldn't want to move the big, heavy piano back into place, then pull it out again to paint, and then put it back again, would we? No way!

Taping the beautiful fireplace mantel was tricky!

But before Loralee can paint, she needs to replace the outlet behind the piano. ALL of the outlets in her house are loose—cords just fall right out of them. Also they are ugly. So she has to replace at least the outlet behind the piano. And all of the other outlets in the room (ten, in total).

old outlet; new outlet

It makes no sense to paint and then make holes in the walls so she decides to remove the phone jacks and the cable TV (coaxial) jacks from the walls before she paints. When the jacks are all removed she has to repair the holes they left in the walls.

The former owners of this house must have really liked TV. There were three sets of outlets just like these in the great room. There are two in the living room, two in the big basement room, and one in each bedroom. They loved them some TV!

Then, since Loralee doesn't like the light switches either, she has to replace those.

Loralee doesn't like the carpeted coving that goes up the wall, so she has to remove it before she can paint. Fortunately it comes off easily...and she found a quarter behind it! Then she must wash the walls that were covered by the coving. (You can see the coving in the phone-jack picture, above.)

Finally she can paint the room. Primer and two coats of paint do the trick. It looks awesome—so clean and fresh!

Now Loralee nails in some wooden base-boards up to replace the coving.

Looky-look!
No more phone or co-ax things in the wall, and no coving!

At last she can untape the room, uncover the fireplace, put wall plates on all the new outlets, and put the piano back where it belongs.

There's still a little bit of cleanup to do, but it looks pretty nice!

Loralee still wants to paint the doors in the great room, put up curtains, get the fancy clock repaired, and maybe refinish a few chairs. In the end, she remembers that she still wants to get the piano tuned.

Please don't set any traps to kill her.