Not Again!

I probably dislike home repairs more than the typical homeowner.  Chances are if I’m repairing something, I’ve probably worked on it before.  For example, last autumn, Jack was away at a co-op while I stayed behind and worked, took care of Evelyn, did the farm chores and persevered on the house.  Oh, and I was in my last trimester with Claire.  Anyway, I toiled nightly for hours sanding and mudding and re-sanding the stairwell so I could realize my dream of carpeted stairs.  Long story short, I got it sanded, painted and carpeted and it was beautiful.  Within a matter of days, Jack was carrying Evelyn’s door downstairs to sand and rammed right into my spotless wall.  I gritted my teeth and tried to act like it was no biggie, when really, I was raging inside:

As calmly as I could manage, I repaired and repainted the humongous ding in the drywall and it was perfect again . . . until Jack carried the window air conditioner upstairs.  I still need to repair that dent.

There are lots of other little fixes that patiently wait their turn.  Two shingles are missing when the 50 mile per hour gusts were too much for the guarenteed-to-45-mile-an-hour shingles.  I’m not going up there though.  The roof is Jack’s domain.  One of the horses–and I’m guessing one of the mares since Stoney’s not usually a big kicker–took their frustration out on the lean-to and just about punched their hoof through the wall.  A door fell off the shed, the arena is, once again, coated in weeds, the front door is acting up . . . the list is endless.

One repair that is pending is kind of funny.  After the kitchen cabinets were in, Jack built me a beautiful floor out of the barn’s hay loft boards.  He discovered a wonderful product that’s basically bar top coating–it’s like dumping 50 layers of varnish over the floor, leaving a beautifully glossy sheen that’s as hard as rock.  After coating the majority of it, we were fixing little details and Jack was sweeping back and forth with the propane torch when a hobo spider lost his confidence and tried to make a run for it.  He dropped from the cabinet onto the still-tacky floor and quickly got his eight legs helplessly stuck.  It wasn’t until the floor hardened and we were inspecting it did we find the unfortunate arachnid.