ALWAYS AN ADVENTURE . . .

A bright and beautiful day at Gilbert

When I left off on Saturday, the new sofa was loaded onto the long bed of the old Silverado. On Monday (Jan. 14), Mike, Bess, and I set off for the farmhouse, leaving Nellie in the comfort of her heated doghouse. It would be a workday for us. I packed a lunch.

Ordinarily, we don’t visit the farmhouse this time of year except to check on things, and those brief visits are carefully planned according to the weather. It’s cold now, you know, and the grade and country roads are not well maintained – if at all. We had no problems with yesterday’s trip, but the upper grade was icy. So is the farm yard, especially near at the kitchen porch where vehicles have packed the snow.

New sofa in place

Two accommodating crew members were waiting for us when we arrived. With our direction, they replaced remaining furniture. They off-loaded the new sofa and seemed to enjoy setting it up. They also loaded the old sofa onto the Silverado.

Finally, right after lunch, we were ready to tackle the sunporch, which was packed full of stuff, including the tv set and the piano. (Yes – it remains to be seen if those even survived.) First, we moved the clay pigeon thrower outside, and Bess whined beside it for half an hour, begging Mike to shoot targets. They couldn’t budge the cabinet my dad built for music storage, so we removed the music, moved the cabinet into the den closet, and I put the music back. Finally, we arrived at the piano, and the two guys weren’t enough to safely move it. One of them called Big Mike the Contractor, and an hour and a half later he and another worker arrived. It took four men and three piano dollies to move that little piano over two thresholds to its corner in the living room. Of course, the goal was to protect the floor.

Bess takes a nap

When it was nearly 3:00, Mike and I decided we should leave, but the contractor had questions, and so we remained. In fact, we were the last to depart the farmyard. It was after 4:00, which meant we were traveling in the old pick-up after dark at a peak travel time. It felt stressful. We agreed we would avoid doing that again.

Unfortunately, the project to renovate the farmhouse became embroiled in insurance issues, which has delayed the finishing into winter. The contractor wants to finish up this week, and that’s fine. However, he’s concerned for the “contents,” our household and personal items which were packed into boxes – or even stuffed into other rooms. The company would unpack the boxes and put things away as a part of the contract, but I prefer to do it myself. The contractor would like me to do it now, but I prefer to wait until spring when it’s warmer and we have water. So – we’ll see what happens. KW