arrgh! I have too much to do to hit the road early!!!!

Hey! Guess what? Its spring and time to make some decisions about this travel season. Originally we planned to head back to Alaska catching Oregon and Washington on our way. It was an ambitious trip catching Cheryl’s last 2 states in the US and my last Canadian Province (Northwest Territories). That would have left Cheryl with one province left (Newfoundland/Labrador) which we would have picked up next summer when the plan was to spend the travel season in the Canadian Maritimes. The Alaska trip was planned for 6 months so it was ambitious.

Well, all of that has changed. We have ignored everything around the house since we have been traveling so we have a long list of things to do/fix. We started to build a shed in the fall. It was one of those deals where we thought we could build it in a week or two at the most. Like everything else, that was way too optimistic. We worked for a month and then I fell off the roof and with Thanksgiving and the church fair immediately afterwards, we never did get back to the shed so that was our first project of the spring.

Of course even that has now changed. We decided to put a new floor down in the dining room so we visited Lumber Liquidators and picked out a floating click floor. We had a basic schedule for installing the floor and the first day went right according to schedule. We removed all of the baseboard and ripped out the rug and the pad, pulled up the tack strip and cleaned everything up. Then the first big rain storm came. The wind caused all kind of bizarre things and quite a bit of water came in around the door. Following problems several years ago, I pulled apart the outside of the door around the porch and rebuilt it sealing everything up. It seemed to resolve the problem but now that the carpet has been pulled up, water is still coming in somewhere around the door. I am going to pull the doorway apart again and figure the only way out is to take the door completely out and completely reinstall it using technology that was not available when the house was built 15 years ago (15 years…..really?). To back that up, I researched it through the “Ask this old house” website. Norm wrote a piece in response to a problem like mine and recommended that the homeowner completely take the door out and reinstall it replacing it if necessary.

I didn’t mean to go into that kind of detail but you get the picture. That should be a one or two day project but I am planning on a week. I have to deal with the porch as well.

We haven’t had a summer at home for a long time either so we have to figure this out. We had planned to do a spring 2 month trip down to Virginia but even that is in doubt. The 3 huge rainstorms we have had this spring have done some damage here that needs to be dealt with before we play. I lost some pieces of shingle along the edge of the room by the dormer. I had a leak in the front of the house that put rain along my living room ceiling (even though there was no water in the upstairs?). and I had some dampness around both of the doghouse dormers in the front. I also want to upgrade the electrical system in the camper so we can have ac electricity even when we drycamp.

As it stands, the only thing we have decided for sure is that we will decide after we get a handle on all of our projects. The nice thing about being retired is that we can decide anytime and we can go anytime. That about covers all of that. This last storm has now ended. I hope it is the last one. I can’t stand any more rain. We have had floods 3 times so far when we usually only have 1 flood every 3 to 5 years.

Well, that is my update. Back to work…..ok, I am watching the World Series of Poker – Europe. More when we decide what we are goin