What’s the Haps?

It is difficult to imagine that there is virtually ANY FEATURE on this planet that my home does NOT offer us but the truth is that 25 years ago there was something missing. Can you see what isn’t there?

We may have leapt tall buildings in a single bound in our FOOD BANK efforts this week but WHAT A HAUL WERE WE PROVIDED! This is what we began with:

Another blessed visit with our friend and guest, Michelle Jones, saw us smack dab in the middle of winter and saying goodbye to our 2022 Forevermore holiday special.

January is not only acting like winter with cold spells, precipitation spurts of rain and snow, the wind has been bone-gripping so we have directed our attention to indoors tasks that have been overlooked.

As we test-drive the converted garden garage loft, a patio fence and gate just seemed essential to pull the whole package together.

30 years ago, the Master Suite balcony came to me having been covered with tar paper and then various coats of elastomeric.

Until recently, we have luckily flown under the radar for quite a number of years in terms of roof repairs.

Back in October we realized to our horror, that our one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime Vicki Day book creation was damaged – horror of horrors!

Maybe the forecast of incoming inclement weather lit a fire under us, but at the best we made good use of the weather window we were offered to pour the concrete, do the final stucco patching, and repaint.

Day Two of this project saw Joshua with a sledgehammer to remove the remaining concrete and the rotted lumber.

I am guessing that perhaps 35-40 years ago in response to someone noticing that all four corners of my home were drooping, Phelps Dodge (then owner) jacked my entire home up and ran steel girders under her – an astonishing and resource-intensive feat from every perspective.

This last abrupt monsoon accompanied by gale-force (no joke) winds wrought havoc in the Master Suite and the garden garage loft. We were seriously in need of an ark! Here is what we found.

Dale Carnegie had not one living thing on our Ann, manager of the food bank.

Talk about a double-edged sword . . . we had some of the most spectacular monsoons this season and they were accompanied by typically gale-force winds.

We really try to keep our relationship with ya’ll interesting and intriguing and you know how devoted we are to the stewardship of this grand old gal, The Surgeon’s House.

To the best of our knowledge and research in compiling This Is Your Life - -The Surgeon’s House, from 1929-1945, my home was occupied by chief surgeon Arthur Charles Carlson.

Man, oh man was the serendipity flowing at our Wednesday food bank adventure.

Most of you know that I call TSH and the grounds my ‘Coconut Island in the Sky’ and it surely exudes an air of magic and other worldliness.

Another remarkable and outrageously fun and creative FIRST for us at The Surgeon’s House was a murder mystery conducted by the group of guests that were staying!

We really put on our Big Girl panties this week with master plumber Bob finishing running the water and gas lines and making all hook-ups ready for us.

We have been pretty diligent albeit plodding in our repair of the garden garage but finishing the painting and minor stucco repairs led to far more visible progress a couple of days down the road.

Our weekly trek to the Food Bank yielded slim pickin’s other than a plethora of mini cucumbers. Doesn’t it just speak pickles to everyone?

While it doesn’t look like much progress, we re-worked the damaged upper edge of the roof after removing the paradise trees that had caused the damage, finished re-stuccoing that outside wall, and then made the minor roof repairs required and laid new roofing material.

Little by little we continue repairing the garden garage as a project that has grown like Topsy.

In the ever-continuing saga of our repair of the garden garage we decided that we needed a new sewer hook-up but were ‘reluctant’ (delicately put) to pay the $5,500 for a new sewer hook-up when all we needed to do was locate our current hook-up.