Up until recently not much has been taking place at the old
homestead; or at least nothing too exciting. The lack of heat in the house was
enough to deter me from spending any significant amount of time there. My focus
has been to sort through all of Mom’s old stuff and start getting rid of what
is not needed or wanted. A task that inadvertently derails me every time. The
memories and curiosity always take over and what should have been an easy,
breezy chore becomes an tenuous, time consuming distraction.
Jim, on the other
hand, has vowed to do at least one thing everyday.
New garage doors were delivered in early February. Low
temperatures did not stop Jim’s over zealous enthusiasm. He had them installed
and working within a week or two of delivery. I was the one on premise to
receive the doors and was a bit concerned after the driver repeatedly warned me
of the dangers of installing garage doors yourself. Jim got some help from
Ethan to relieve my worries a bit and all went as planned. Well almost.
Funny thing happened after everything was installed and ready for testing. One of the rafters was ever-so-slightly lower than the rest. Low enough to stop the door from rising. A few rail and hinge adjustments and all was well. Beautiful!
After the successful
installation of the garage doors but still pretty cold outside, Jim decided to
see what was behind the old drywall upstairs. We have plans to move walls and change
the layout upstairs anyway so, with hammers in hand and handkerchiefs around
our faces we started to remove the old walls and insulation. If anybody needs
to relieve some stress, come on down. There are two more rooms upstairs.
With the promise of warmer days ahead and the need to have a
working bathroom at the work site, we
had the water turned back on. While planning for the worst but hoping for the
best we weren’t too disappointed to discover a couple of leaks in the old
pipes. This, of course, took Jim’s attention away from the drywall smashing and
moved it to the plumbing.
He has decided to replace the majority of the old pipes with
new PEX tubing to eliminate any soldering and to remove the chance of future
broken pipes. Lucky for me he’s an engineer.
So you ask what have I been doing while he’s having all the
fun? Well, while he’s beside himself researching insulation and buying plumbing
supplies I have had bigger ideas. I have been spending many grueling hours
scanning online auctions for useful home-improvement items. So far we have a
brand new shower base I got for $17, a brand new shop-vac I picked up for $6, a
bar refrigerator for $20, a desk for $9, a pre-lit Christmas tree and a 60-cup
coffee maker for when all us Hofmanns get together.
