Things I must fix

A friend of mine at work was overly amused when I told her of my unique way of closing my busted back door. Well Mary, just for you, here it is in all it's reckneck glory...

Yup, it's a 2x4 wedged between the door and the side counter. Makes getting to the microwave interesting.

The door jam is falling apart and hence the door won't latch nevermind

lock. Until I have a chance to rebuild the entire door jam, this is locked.

Kim has taken to calling me Cleetus (sp?) I'm enduring the hillbilly jokes.

Barely.

The list of Spring repairs is growing. Besides the door, I have...

• Rebuilding the door jam and replacing the door on my son's bedroom

• Sealing the cracks in the foundation at the back of the house

• Sealing the leak in the cold storage room

• Repairing the back fence and hopefully finishing the remaining sections

• Taking the junk to the dump

• Getting rid of the concrete debris I dug out of the ground last year while

repairing the sidewalk

• Finishing the hallway painting - stopped when I realized my ladder not only was insufficient, it was non-existent. (hint hint)

Lots to do with a limited budget. We

knew when we bought this house, being that it was 80 years old, that there would be much to do. It amazed me just how much. Most of it is simple matters of bringing things up to code. We replaced old windows and doors, fixed electrical issues, fixed walls, plumbing and the like. Other projects like the new patio, backyard walk, painting, and landscaping were more to make this place livable without putrid colour

walls.

I think the projects that creep up on you unexpectedly are less daunting. When you suddenly have to change all your plans to replace a ceiling that falls down there's no time to get upset about having to do it. At a certain point you have no choice.

Here's the aftermath of my kitchen ceiling collapsing. The light scared the hell out of me. The ceiling was leaking near the light, when it was down we realized it was leaking right above the light fixture. taking it out to replace it I realized the wiring was bare. The water was dripping on bare live wires for years!

We removed almost 50 garbage bags of pure shit from this mess. Never again.

I do enjoy doing the jobs around here,

I have put my heart and soul into many things that have improved our home with them, the lives of the inhabitants. It's nice to sit back with a cold one at the end of a job well done, or, just done... And admire one's handiwork. I'm not trying to avoid the work coming, on the contrary, I can't wait for a nice warm dry day to start. I just hate the 'list'.

The end result will be worth it. Here's my back yard after a couple of years of labour. Looks nice. still more to do, but I'm proud of it. This summer this will be my optional course. Maybe the trellis Kim asked for?

Cheers.