(written on October 8th from notes taken previously)
First stop of the morning was getting gas and then distilled water from the neighborhood market in Pea ridge. From there I headed over to the hill to find my heater core flushing stuff, which, no joke, turned out to be in the very last of who knows how many bins that I went through in my shed. 😒
The next thing on my list, however, was super encouraging. To neighbor Dan’s, where he very kindly and graciously welded up the dump trailer door and didn’t charge me a dime. 🙏
He even welded a shim onto the frame to help the door close, at least decently well. 🙏
So now I have a dump trailer door that closes reasonably! 🥳🎉🥳
That’s going to make it a heck of a lot easier to sell. 🙏
Back at my mom’s place, we headed over to look at a duplex by the lake. We looked at it on Zillow before, and she had gone out to look at it with a friend of hers, so we were going back to look at it.
It was small, and the driveway was crazy steep, which I wasn’t thrilled about (thinking about my mom walking down a steep driveway to get the mail in inclement weather).
Aunt crazily, the garage (and yes it was nice that there was a garage) was so shallow that the only cars that would fit in it would be the Z3 and my mom’s little Juke. 😶
Not the best. 😅
Decent price. Decently close to the things they needed to go to, but definitely… not optimal.
We headed back to the house, and then went over and looked at a brand new unit in a quadplex and Pea Ridge. Being brand new, everything was nice, but it was very small. I think it was maybe 1100 square feet or so? Yes, it had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but the bedrooms were tiny. Even the master was tiny.
And all the new construction is carpet free, so it echoed quite badly. Of course, once stuff is in it, it would echo less, but still… hard floors everywhere means louder living.
Price was decent, though, and location is great… ish.
From there I headed back over to the Hill and got going removing rust from around where everything was welded, so I could start painting it up a little bit.
Spent a little while chatting with my sister Heather while I prepped everything. I also spent some time… a lot of time 😅, removing the wood from the rear frame.
Did I mention that part? 🙃
In the process of getting everything bent and what not with the door, some of the metal got bent in, so Jim had cut a piece of wood to fit inside the frame channel, and then we pounded it in hard to keep everything straight while working on it.
We succeeded in bending out the metal that had been bent in, but it was such a tight fit that getting the wood back out… 😅
Anyway, so I got my drill and started drilling it out bit by bit. Took forever, but eventually I got it out, and I spent a bunch of time with my drill and wire brush sanding rusted spots down and then painting.
Progress.
Great progress. 🙏
🥳
Anyway, rust ground off, paint coat one on, wood drilled out, and paint coat two on. 💪
Grabbed dinner with Jim and family and hung out with them for a bit, bid them good evening, and then headed out. Unfortunately, as I was backing my van out to take some stuff over to my storage shed, I ran over one of my bins full of stuff, crushing the bin, but gratefully, not damaging any of my stuff. 🙏
After getting everything put back in the shed that needed to go there, I headed back up, cleaned up the mess from the busted bin (having brought an empty one from the shed with me), and then headed back to my mom’s.
It was after 10:00 when I finally got to my mom’s place, but we chatted for a bit, and then I veged out, and called it a night.
If I mention it was hot?
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
And I was a roasting inside my van. 🥵
[sigh]
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
