Fire Safety (aka we will no longer die in a burning house!)

So, as part of the adoption process your house has to pass a Fire Marshall inspection. We have a check list of what they will be looking for and we've started getting our house ready. One of the requirements is to have a smoke detector in every bedroom used for sleeping as well as one in the hall way and living area. When we walked around our house to see if we had enough smoke detectors we discovered something a little disturbing... we had NO smoke detectors. None. Zip. Zero. You know what makes it weirder? When we bought the house all the windows were screwed shut and the guy who used to live here was blind... can you say 'something sounds wrong here...'?

So, we spent some time last weekend installing smoke detectors. 

This is the brand we went with:

See how it says "kitchen" on it? We got kitchen smoke detectors for every room, not just the kitchen area. Why is this? Because kitchen smoke detectors have a button on them that you can push to make the smoke detector shut up if it is going off in error. 

If you ever have to add some smoke detectors to your place, they're pretty easy. They come in two parts, one that screws into the other.

First you attach the base to the ceiling. It should be near the door, but not directly against the wall. 

Then the actual smoke detector part just screws into the base.

Funny thing is, if you read the instructions, you're not supposed to put a kitchen smoke detector in the actual kitchen. Goes off on accident too often. Instead you put one directly out side the kitchen. For us the best spot was in the den above the bar area.

Another requirement for our Fire Marshall inspection is a 5 lbs. fire extinguisher. I've seen people with these little fire extinguishers in their kitchen, under the sink. It seems like a good idea whether or not you technically have to have one. When I asked LJ to pick one up from the store, that is what I expected. I did NOT expect this big guy:

I put it next to the sink for some scale. This thing is pretty dang big. I'm going to have to figure out where we can keep it. It's not exactly inconspicuous. 

Oh well... it's still worth it!