February - March 2016. Let's Get This show on the Road

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.