Dig This

Saturday: weather abysmal, too cold to climb or Mt Bike. Kevin comes over as promised to work on my garage. I opted to be his helper rather than sit inside and bemoan the lousy weather. Now Kevin was a worry. (good thing he's cute) He showed up complete with a junker old work truck and a plethora of tools, some of which I'd never seen before. Which inspired confidence... at first. But then everytime he would do something and it worked he would act really surprised and happily pleased with himself. This had me unsettled while he was working, like it was all a grand experiment. I do have to admit that his impact nail gun that took gun shells to propel the nail into the wood & concrete was damn cool. And we had to wear safety glasses and ear plugs to use it. Well, I used safety glasses because I think half the fun of doing home renos is looking the part.

However, at the end of the day he got the job done. Except for.. but.. (and there's always a but isn't there?) The real problem is the moisture that is seeping into the garage and creating the rot in the first place. That is due to the slope of the ground outside of the garage. Which Kevin and others have explained needs to be dug out so dirt isn't resting against the garage and it's not sloping. The conundrum... I can take a shovel and spend a day digging out the dirt and trying to level it myself OR I could get someone in with a backhoe and spend oh, 15 minutes digging out the dirt and leveling. Once again Lise will get out her cheque book but it becomes the holy grail of finding another "operator" who's willing to do a small job for a pittance. And once again I will rely on the network of friends such as Kevin and Allistair who say "well I know a guy..."

But at some point I grow tired of being tied to others' schedules. At the very least the garage is in decent shape for Colin to begin construction of the gym when he returns from the Coast. I suspect he won't expect it to be ready as he left me with an instruction list of what needed to be done and a somewhat satisfied look that he'd earned himself a couple months reprieve from hard labour. Colin should know me better, tenacity has another name, and it's Lise.