13 August 2015
Sonny and Ian finally
arrived at 7:20, obviously still recovering from their two-day vacation at
Sean’s house. They spent the morning
putting more shingles on the house north wall.
I spent the morning (and early part of the afternoon) fabricating and
installing the KOMA® blocks for the three exterior electrical
outlets and the patio hose bib. The
Goodro’s truck came at 8 bearing the new Anderson 400 Series 54611 Frenchwood
patio door… which took every bit of all four of us to get off the truck and
into the sun room... that critter ain’t light. By lunch, the stapling duo was out of shingles
except for a case each of 4″ and 8″. In
the ideal world, we would have done the east wall of the sun room (where the
patio door is to be installed) before doing the north wall, thereby allowing us
to use perfect shingles around the door where they will be highly visible and to
use all the leftover less-than-perfect shingles on the north wall where nobody
but the propane delivery person will ever see them. So, now that we had the patio door and the
guys were running out of shingles, I decided to have them switch horses and
install the door. Even reading the
directions, we couldn’t figure out how the framework for the sliding screens is
to be attached to the rest of the door frame. Checking for a Utube video didn’t
yield any results… but did distract us from the approaching downpour until I
noticed the lake getting awfully damp… which sent Sonny and Ian scrambling to
get power tools back into the garage while I sheltered in Kate’s woodshed and
called Sean. Everyone agreed that
further time spent on the door this afternoon would be fruitless, so while the
guys loaded staging onto Ian’s trailer, I beat feet into Brandon for some last
minute grocery shopping. All was on
track for a 6 o’clock dinner when, at 5:15 while I was in the bathroom shaving
and just about to get in the shower, Tim Williams from Spafford’s showed up
unexpectedly. Threw on my bathrobe to
see what he was about. Asked Tim when I
would see their bill for installing the well pump and pressure tank and he
said, “Not until we (Spafford) are sure that you are getting good water into
the house.” LOVE that attitude! One conversational bit led to another until I
heard Marty & Merry’s front door close and saw them heading up the hill,
meaning it now was 6 o’clock (yikes!) and I was as unprepared as you can get to
receive dinner guests. In spite of the
inauspicious and very hectic start, dinner was great (shrimp cocktail,
spaghetti with my homemade sauce, garlic bread, walnut brownies, Ben &
Jerry’s, and a decent Willamette Valley Pinot Noir) and the company (as always)
was even better.
