While on the lifestyle shows all over the TV ‘open plan’ is the big thing, for me the ability to close off unused or little used areas of the house makes heating and cooling much easier.
The door between the kitchen and laundry was a pain, and reduced the amount of usable space in the room, so I removed it some years ago. That, however, proved to be a problem. That doorway could funnel out a surprising amount of warm air and every time we walked past it there was a cold draft coming back in.
Over time we have worked out a method of installing a cheap, effective and removable method of closing it off while still allowing access – a blanket door!
To install we first screwed three cup hooks into the top part of the door frame, which was easy enough, we then inspected our blankets and found a single blanket which was long enough to go from the top of the door frame to just above the floor. It was somewhat wider than the doorway and so needed to be folded over to the right width. But that was no issue.
To join the blanket to the hooks, we originally just had holes in the blanket, but Linda came up with a much better long term solution – She inserted two safety pins at each attachment point of the blanket then hooked them over the cup hooks, which works very well.
To ease access during the day we often have the blanket pulled back to one side and hooked over a fitting we use to store brooms and mops and such in the laundry, again, just using a hole in the blanket. The hole would most likely tear through with time so I wanted to strengthen it with a reinforcing ring, but on inspection found that we had none. On searching through the garage, however, I found a series of grommets (a wonderful word, which can be surprisingly effective as an insult) which I had purchased many years ago. I found one which fit the hole very well.
For virtually no cost to us, using existing materials and fittings we have been able to close up a chink in our armour against the cold. When the blanket door is deployed it is remarkable the increased level of comfort experienced when passing that doorway, and it allows the heat from the fire to remain where we need it!
