Missing Link

Owning a home can be a very rewarding experience. At the same time, it can (read: is) a very expensive experience. There is a lot that goes into maintaining a home, much more than you would necessarily expect when you’re first looking to buy one.

I’ve found this out the hard way – through trial and error. I’ve found that quite often, things just plain break. And when they do, they need to be repaired, or in some instances, replaced completely.

And, sometimes a lot of things break in a short period of time.

Last Monday I got a message from Ann while I was at work. The message asked me if I made sure the garage was all the way closed before I left (I admit, I hadn’t. I saw it closing, but didn’t witness it close completely). Apparently, when she got home the garage door was half open, and refused to move when the open/close button was pressed. Ann closed it manually and I told her I’d look at it when I got home.

So – I looked at it when I got home, and figured out that the chain that drives the door was off it’s sprocket on both ends and so I went about putting it back on. When I tried it again, the door would close (and immediately re-open of its own accord), and would only open about half way.

Thursday the repair tech came to look at it, and found that it needed new gears in the motor, and we had the option of replacing the gears and keeping the same motor, or for a bit more buying a new motor. We opted for new, figuring it would help later when selling the house. Definitely glad we made that call as the new one is much better than the old.

It did, however, necessitate getting a new remote keypad to enter from the driveway, as it uses a rotating code unlike the old model, so the old keypad wouldn’t work.

Besides replacing the garage door opener, this weekend also saw us installing a garage door insulation kit, a new air filter, ripping out old and rotting caulk from the master bathroom and re-caulking, and – this is the kicker – replacing the mailbox post and dual-mailbox mount because either mother nature ripped the old one out of the ground (breaking off the post about 6 inches into the hole) or a neighborhood hoodlum did.

Regardless of how it happened, Ann and I awoke saturday to discover our mailbox crudely thrown on the ground – which I took to be an affront to my honor (not really…. well… kinda).

So, Saturday we bought a new mailbox post from Menards – with the intention of taking the dual box mounting off the old post and transplanting it onto the new one. Unfortunately, closer inspection of the old mounting showed that most of the wood was rotting, and there would be no easy way to do the transplant. So, Ann and I went off to the store again and bought a couple of 2×4′s, brought them home and cut them into the appropriate lengths. I then took them out, nailed them into the mailbox post and screwed the mailboxes down onto the 2×4′s, creating a crude yet functional mount. It’s not pretty, won’t win any design contests, but is functional.

And so here I sit, waiting for the next thing to break that I need to fix. The joys of being a homeowner.