Hotspur.us

I find it rather rude when someone something decides to throw a sweet rave in my own garage and doesn’t even have the decency to at least invite me for a free drink. Now admittedly, with the Jeep in the garage there isn’t an awful lot of extra room. Judging by what greeted me this morning though, I’d say the garage crashers had one hell of a good time.

You are probably wondering what the hell I’m rambling on about this time? This is what….

I decided to take the Jeep to work this morning. Instead of going into the garage through the house, which is what I usually do, I figured that I’d be wild and crazy this morning and open the garage from the outside. I pull open the doors and lo and behold one of the milk crates that is usually perched high above on wire shelves is laying by the rear passenger tire, it’s contents spewed as far and wide as physically possible in such a confined space.

I’m already running late for work, and I’m wearing a suit, so I’m not impressed that I’m going to have to clean this mess up before going to work. (Yes, I did consider just running it over, it is a Jeep after all.) I pick up the crate, jam all the excessive stuff in it and, since I can’t replace it on the shelf without climbing on the Jeep and STREEEETCHING (I’m wearing a suit remember), I figure I’ll just put it on the workbench which is in the front of the garage.

There I am, crate held aloft (it won’t fit beside the Jeep, our garage is small tiny microscopic) squeezing through the tiny passageway, when I see something resting against the driver’s side front tire. What the hell is that? It took me a few seconds a bit (I’d only been awake 45 minutes at this point) to realize that it was the little set of drawers that neatly contained all kinds of different nuts, screws, bolts, nails. It was no longer where it should have been – resting snugly in place – and the contents were no longer contained. To make my morning that much better, I realized I was not able to get around this new obstacle.

Still holding the milk crate aloft, while contemplating resting it on my head to give my arms a break, I realized that the entire front of the garage was a disaster. BJ’s bike was laying at the oddest of angles. The baseboard (stained and nearly ready for installation in the first floor bathroom) was knocked askew and now twined through the Jeep’s bumper. And there was a bunch of other items that had earlier been neatly stacked carefully placed tossed quickly on the workbench that were now laying in a jumble on the floor or on their way to the floor.

My brain was unable to process what was going on. What it was able to process was that:

A. I was going to be late for work.

B. I was not going to be able to pull back into the garage after work.

C. I really needed to put this milk crate down.

Being in that early morning haze, I decided that the only way to put the milk crate down was to climb over the Jeep’s bumper in order to reach the front of the garage (baby brother parked smack in the middle of the garage width ways). How I managed that in a suit will remain a mystery for the ages. That done, I dropped the milk crate on what appeared to be a sturdy pile of stuff, squeezed back to the little set of drawers which was spewing pointy items all over the floor, kicked it away from my tire as best I could and managed at long last to get into the Jeep.

Checking my watch revealed I might be able to get to work on time. I started to back out when I heard this strange “SHHHHHHH” noise. I looked around. Nothing. I began to move again. “SHHHHHHHH” What the hell was that?  And then THUMP! Down came my skis (still in their airline bag thankfully) right onto the hood. Startled by this new development I was unable to stop and THUD! they fell completely out of the rafters and landed on the garage floor. Which is when I looked up and noticed that some of the viking tent poles which were also in the rafters (yes, that’s what I typed, don’t ask) were somewhat askew and in possible danger of falling.

I gunned it.

I arrived at work just on time (it’s amazing how much difference leaving 15 minutes later than usually makes in a commute when it comes to traffic patterns). I’d been mulling over how hard the skis must have hit the hard top when they fell out of the rafters (and trying not to think about what knocked them out in the first place) during my commute. I figured it was just best to go ahead and see if there was any damage on the roof. Which is when I saw this.

(clickity to make bigger – I included measurements of my hand for reference on the photo below)

I took this one when I got home….It is of the back of the roof.

(I took the following two pictures the following morning with the little digital camera for better detail)

I looked a little closer at my hood and saw this.

Closer inspection led me to see some additional prints on the windshield and the rear window. Now typically when I park the Jeep in the garage I’ll leave a window down. Fortunately BJ had been the last driver and so the windows were up and the doors were locked.

Which is good. Because I don’t even want to think about what kind of damage whatever left those prints would have done to the interior.

Which leads me to this. What the hell was in my garage on Monday night? And, is it coming back?

The forecast was supposed to be lovely so I thought I’d take the Jeep to work this morning, not that I have the soft top on any more mind you. After all we’d had plenty of cold, wet weather and I decided (right before a patch of lovely sunny, 70 degree days) to put the hard top back on (thanks BJ, best brother ever).

I get in the Jeep, turn the key and look at my gauges. What’s this? I’m almost out of gasoline? How’s that possible? I was positive that the last time I drove the Jeep I filled up the tank. I remember being rather annoyed because the next day I drove the Subie and had to fill it up as well.

I backed the Jeep out and started down the hill thinking that maybe the gauge would swing up. But no, it just sat there, almost on Empty. It was then I realized that it was rather odd that my gas light had not come on. So close to Empty and yet nothing – no light, no ding ding ding.

Back on flat ground I looked at the gauge yet again. Nope still on Empty. Crud. I started thinking that maybe the float in the tank had gone bad. Or the wiring.

I was hoping to at least get to work before the gas was completely gone and then figured I’d run out at lunch and fill up. Which is when I took one last look at my fuel gauge.

Yes, E is for Empty. But F is for Full.

When we left off Chad and I had managed to clear about 1/3 of our second floor landing of the nasty carpet and sub-floor. We were pretty happy with the condition of the original wood floor. But we had run out of steam. After all, there were a lot of nails in that sub-floor.

After taking a day off to hand out candy and partly recover from the horrible allergy attack that was caused by our first foray into this project, we were determined to have  the landing free and clear of debris by the day’s end.

The first part had gone pretty fast so we were stupidly optimistic that the second would go equally as well. After all, we thought that dealing with four door thresholds had to have been the worst of it. And since we only had two more thresholds to go we figured we were free and clear.

After ripping up the carpet and padding Chad set forth to score the sub-floor at the entrance to the ferret room. We figured doing that would make life a lot easier since theoretically once I applied enough pressure with the crowbar, it would snap off.

Right.

As you may have guessed, things did not go quite so swimmingly. The previous piece of sub-floor had been one single sheet. So while it had a good bit of nails to hold it down, it wasn’t overly cumbersome to pry the board free with a crow bar.

The remaining 2/3 of the landing had sub-floor that was clearly assembled like a jigsaw puzzle. There were seams everywhere. I don’t know if they were too cheap to just go buy another full sheet or what, but it slowed our progress. Every seam had nails both at the seam and then about two inches back. And quite close together I should add. So close that in some instances I couldn’t get the crow bar between the nails.

Just about the time I thought my back was done, when my eyes were so itchy I could barely see and my sneezing was preventing me from breathing I realized that the nails from the last seam had not come out with the wood, but were still firmly anchored in our floor.

I’m sure we missed some nails. And I’m sure we will find them in the near future – the very near future. Everything considered though, it was relatively quick and relatively painless (Yes I’ve taken some ibuprofen, thanks for asking).

Above you can see the finished floor of our bedroom (top portion of the photo) against the recently uncovered floor. The nasty black stripe is where the glue from the bedroom tile had extended to the landing.

Otherwise, the floor is in much better shape than the bedroom floor was.  I’m still having allergy hangover, so I  figure it’ll be a few weeks (at the earliest) before we decide to rent the big ol’ floor sander and have at it. In the meantime, we put down a small throw rug.

After marching ourselves around Mingo Creek Park Chad and I decided to stop by The Spring House to get some delicious food and the best chocolate milk anywhere around.  DELICIOUS.

Also there was some serious Squee going on.

It was all going pretty well…until I saw PIGLET! I despise Piglet. If I had a band it would be called Piglet Must Die. Yes I have issues.

But then Chad pointed out the other Squee nearby….

And things were A OK. Check out some of the very cool pumpkin art.

[Show as slideshow]