Hello Stranger!

Before I tell you about the great peep-hole we installed, I thought I'd give you an update on my experience with solar panel holiday lights. You may remember that I could not get any light out of the Halloween set I put up and was about to give up on solar lighting. Lo and behold:

A little button in the back that could either be set to "auto" or "off." Apparently even though the box said that the lights automatically turned on at dark, the default setting in the back was "off" and I had to switch it before anything would happen. So I am stupid and now I know better. The solar panel does appear to work. The light set was jumbled up on our floor for days before D noticed the switch and turned it to "auto." And, like magic, we had little orange lights. A few days late, but at least we know they're worth storing for next October.

(Trust me, there's a button under the red arrow. It was hard to get a shot in focus without the flash, but I wanted you to see the orange glow.)

Now to the task at hand--telling you about the peep hole we (and, as usual, by "we" I mean D) installed. It was scary because it involved drilling a hole in our door. But it worked and now we can see who is knocking before we open up. I feel much safer.

The first step was a pilot hole. The instructions said to drill a pilot hole on both sides and then go right to the big, 1/2'' drill bit. Well the door was so strong, we had to drill two sets of pilot holes to work our way up to 1/2''. The tiniest one, which I think was 1/8'' (this was a few weeks ago--it might have been even 1/16'') and the first one to actually be able to make it through the door:

Then round two, which took off a little bit of the edges as well:

 And then round 3, the giant 1/2''. Scary stuff!

The final hole. Fortunately the bigger bit carved out most of the edges that got all wonky with the middle bit.

Here's the finished door. You can see the tiny chip at about 2:00--we filled it in with a marker and I doubt anyone will ever know:

I see you!