przed

Ha. And I repeat, ha.

Tonight, Bob and I are recovering from hauling the fridge out of that alcove in order to do the proofing. We manhandled and half-inched the fridge out and viewed what no one has seen for decades. I knew it was going to be horrid back there, and it certainly was. But you know what made me want to hunt down the "rehabbers" (yes, they're snicker quotes, why do you ask?) and harm them?

The fact that they didn't think it was necessary to put baseboards behind the fridge.

There. were. no. baseboards.

What there were, were lots of were holes and cracks in the walls down near the floor (which was also exceedingly badly laid, we discovered, so there's that as well). I told BB we were lucky that we hadn't been snowed under by mice years ago. We put down the anti-mouse foam around where there should have been baseboards, and I did as much cleanup as I could stand while the foam hardened. I cleared out some gunk that might have been interfering with an air intake section of the fridge. Then I manhandled the fridge back into place and put the kitchen back to rights.

We've probably effectively mouse-proofed the kitchen (or at least I most devoutly hope so) and I suppose we can consider that a win. 

But no baseboards. No. Fucking. Baseboards. Those guys deserve to be peed on by many, many, many mice. I certainly hope our mice can be aimed at them. Idiots.