Two Wheeled Tales: NH Repairs, Part II

I managed to get out of work a little early and hit the road on Friday. Any hopes of beating the traffic rush were soon dashed as my speed was slowed more and more until I was doing the stop and go thing, trying to switch lanes and gain an advantage, only to see the lane I’d just been in, start moving. Bleah.

I stopped off for food supplies and then knocked off the last stretch of the ride up. I got the perishables put away, strapped on (!!) my plastering stilts and got to work on pulling the old wood off of the garage.

Man, there was an awful lot of rot up in there. There were sections where the wood was literally held in place by the paint because as soon as I started to pull it apart, it disintegrated to powder in my hands. Apparently when this was built, whoever did the construction never sealed on top of the trim, allowing the water to just soak right on in whenever it rained. And soft wet wood is always a welcome habitat for insects, so there’d been any number of tiny tenants over the years.

McCarthy and Michael arrived before too long and they helped remove the rest of the trim and expose the header. And that is when we found our first surprise; the header had no jacks on either end. Well, one end ran through the frame and to the corner of the building, but the other end just went to the end of the opening. And then we found surprise number 2; that end of the header was held in place by two nails. Yep; one entire side of the garage door header had no jack and only two nails holding it in place. It’s a wonder the doorway hadn’t collapsed or even started sinking, for that matter.

Anyway, it was getting dark so we put the tools inside, closed things up and headed in for the evening.

The next morning, it was a bunch of measurements, some cutting and fastening using leftover stock from last weekend, then off to Home Depot for a materials run. The GPS took us a different route so I was excited that maybe a new HD had been built recently. Maybe we weren’t facing a (minimum) 3 hour trip (there, buy, come back) to get materials. But no, the one it brought us to was just as far as the other one, just in another direction. Damn.

When we finally got back to the house, Steph and Alli had arrived and were hanging out on the deck enjoying the scenery.

We got the materials unloaded; the equipment set up, and got to work. Things moved along pretty well and by the end of the day, we had both the rough-in, and the finish trim, buttoned up. Tools were put inside, debris was cleaned up, and things looked good.

It’d been a long day so dinner was under way long after the sun had set. Michael (Sr) had brought up an entire ribeye and then cut it into giant steaks, which he then threw on the grille. Potatoes and some veggies were also cooked up, but I just focused on the steak. Man-oh-man, talk about delicious. My mouth is watering a bit right now, just remembering it.

Michael had one small snafu while grilling, though. The steaks had caught fire so he ran out to squelch the flames and wound up getting a little too close. Fortunately for him; he hadn’t done his annual head and beard shaving yet, so while the house did smell like burned hair, at least it had afforded him some protection from the flames.

There wasn’t much left in the evening but we passed the time with some libations and laughter. It was a great way to wind down the day.

Sunday morning came too soon, and my head was feeling the impacts of drinking a bottle of wine along with the beers. Oh well, sometimes we need reminders of what hurts, right?

We got the tools loaded up into McCarthy’s truck and I bade my farewells. I had some things at home to take care of so I hit the road a bit before they did.

I need to make one more trip up there to get last minute essentials taken care of, but that will entail another multi-hour trip to Walmart, most likely. I’ll try and pick up as much stuff as I can ahead of time and then see if I missed anything.

McCarthy said he wants to head up with me again but I don’t know that the poor guy can put his schedule off any more than he already has for me. I’ll let him know when I’m going up, so we’ll see.

Pics!

That's some serious rot in there...