I wish it were easy to explain how excited and how delighted I am with the latest business at our house. We have two new exterior doors. A bit of background is required to understand why this is so positive. Over the years I have moved about once every two to five years. Each time I have moved into a new house I have renovated. Each house has had nasty, old, leaky, insecure doors. Because changing doors is very expensive, it was always put off to the future. And so I have never had a home with decent doors. My little yellow house on the prairie was no exception. The doors the house had are the original old wood ones with a big, leaky, single pane window. In the wind, the doors would creak and moan. Drafts were flow from underneath. In a blizzard snow would accumulate under the door sill. My storm doors would always ice up due to warm moist indoor air leaking into the space and moisture coming out as the air cooled and then the condensation would freeze. We have been living here five years now and finally, finally, we got around to getting new doors.
By some wondrous blessed miracle, we suddenly had three lovely days of T-shirt weather and our carpenter was available for one of those days. We agreed to take off the old storm doors and strip everything else we could so he would have time to replace the two doors in one day. We would then be responsible for putting the storm doors back on and doing the interior trim. That suited me just fine because that part we could do. He was charging by the hour so it would save us money, and he only had the one day to work while the weather was suitable. And he did it!
The day before he arrived we were frantically busy removing the screen doors and clearing the area so he could work. The day he arrived, I was run ragged on several fronts. First we acted as his assistant, fetching stuff, holding things, helping him carry the doors and so on. He set us to work doing small jobs like scraping all the paint off the old door hinges and removing the screws. I also cleaned a lot as he worked. After he sawed stuff, he would have me vacuum up the dust and stack the garbage. Between those jobs I had to chase the pets. The cats were really distressed by the disruption, especially his noisy tools. And my poor dog, who doesn’t like change, almost had a nervous breakdown over this stranger breaking apart her home. I locked all three of the pets in the basement with their beds and treats and I tried to ignore the whining and crying. My husband finally took her for a long walk and she finally calmed. Plus I still had my usual duties making dinner such. (Out in the country you can’t just order a pizza on a busy day.)
By 4:00pm the carpenter was finished and I had two lovely doors installed! I was so pleased. The next morning I got up to the promise of another lovely day with sunshine streaming through the new east window making prism rainbows all over my kitchen. BONUS! I knew the door was lovely but I didn’t expect the dawn sunlight to make lovely rainbows for me.
It was a good thing I was so delighted because the weather forecast said the weird and totally unseasonable November T-shirt weather was coming to an abrupt end with incoming freezing rain turning to a blizzard. This meant I had no time to lose. The screen doors had to go up that very day even though I was tired and aching from the day before. I set to work and got the screen doors back up with my darling husband helping me. We made a trip to a nearby lumber store to get the trim and calking and insulation I needed to finish up and then I worked until I was worn out again. The outside was ready. We were winter tight. Let the cold come.
The next day the sky was heavy with grey clouds and intermittent cold rain. Hubby dearest and I hauled all the garbage in the yard off to the dump. My goodness, it felt so nice to heave those leaky, frosty, old doors into the landfill! Those doors had served well enough for the sixty odd years they had been in place but it was past time for their retirement. We drove home and admired our new home which now not only is now far less drafty and much warmer than before, but is filled with rainbows when the dawn shines in.
Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu, melekh ha’olam, shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigi’anu lazman hazeh. (Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.)
Tumbleweeds Tumbling 