8.9.26
This has been quite the week! Hot, dry, windy and very busy. For the most part, the skies have been filled with smoke from all the fires that have been, and still are, raging across our eastern side of Oregon for the past few weeks. Thankfully there has not been any blazes close to our farm, but that cannot be said for several friends of mine who have been on edge, ready to evacuate at a moments notice. Yes, this has been quite the fire season so far and we are not out of the woods yet. Let us all hope cooler and dare I say it, wetter weather arrives soon!
I decided to make a dash trip to Central Oregon last Monday for groceries and cow grain as my bins in the milking parlour were becoming quite low. I am glad I went when I did as on my way home, the main highway between us and Central Oregon was closed due to the wildfire burning down to the road. I made it home just in time otherwise would have had quite the long detour to make!
But now back to Sunday. After I had finished all my morning chores, I made a huge decision about a project that has been on the back burner for a while. Our old, very heavy wooden garage door on the shop has been in dire need of replacing for ages and a couple of years ago, Darrell and I found a replacement for it. A fellow was installing a new set of doors on his garage and one of the ones he was taking down just happened to be the right width for our opening. A perfect fit other than our old door was 9’ high and this door is just 8’. No worries, a bit of framing to fill the gap and all would be well we thought. Well, when Darrell started getting poorly, the garage door replacement project never materialized.
A few weeks ago, I finally broke down and hired some fence builders to come and put up a cross fence out the back behind the house for me. The grass is so tall out there because of all our underground water, that it has been a worry for ages about fire risk. Between caring for my dearest and then my dicky heart issues, the past two years did not allow me to get out there to build the third of a mile of fence over some pretty rough terrain. Deciding I needed to get it built as the cows were running out of grass in our top fields, I hired a fellow, his friend and his son to come and get the job done. Well worth it indeed as they knocked out a super fence in a mere four days! The cows are now fat and happy and doing a great job of munching down that tall grass.
Well, back to my huge decision. Changing the garage door has been on my “Things I Need Help With” list for a long while now. With family busy in their own lives I knew I could either wait goodness knows how long for some help from them or get the job done while the weather was good. I decided to get cracking and do it myself. Now the scariest thing for me was contemplating those big tightly wound springs at the top of the door. I had a plan on how I would unwind them, problem was, was I brave enough to try it? Then, while I was getting all the new sections of door laid out, the fencing chaps came by. Asking what I was doing I explained about switching out the garage door. Well, one of them said he had done a lot of construction work and had replaced garage doors before. Great! I decided to hire them to do the job for me and to top it off, they said they could start the following day.
Arriving bright and early the next morning, they got right to work. As one fellow climbed up the ladder and began to loosen the tension on one of the two springs, I heard a loud noise, an exclamation and turned to see his hand was severely cut and bleeding. The short spike he was using to unwind the spring had got away from him. Checking him over and controlling the bleeding, I bandaged his hand and promptly sent him to the ER to get stitches. He was lucky as it could have been much worse! After calling me a week later to let me know the extent of his injury, he told me it was going to be about 2 months before they could come back to complete the job. At first, I thought I would wait but then decided to just tackle it myself.
I was going to buy a pair of the special long garage door turning rods the professionals use, but discovered the rods on the market today would not fit the opening in the tension cone of our old garage door springs. Hmmm… what to do now? I sure as heck was not going to use short spikes so why not just make myself some long ones! Taking two of the heavy extensions Darrell used on his big hole saw drills, I ground the hexagonal edges off and sized them to the holes on the tension cone thingy at the end of the springs. Now I had two sturdy rods about 16″ long. Sweating what seemed like gallons, I climbed the ladder and slowly, slowly started loosening the remaining spring. When it was done, my legs shaking like mad, I climbed down the ladder, sat down on the garage floor and waited until my heart stopped trying to jump out my chest! I had done it!
The following day the dismantling of the old wood panels began. This was a very easy job once I figured out how to do it by myself as it is usually a two person job. The hardest part was balancing the top couple of sections, which are 9’ long and very heavy, but slow and steady won the race. Gosh it was going to be so nice to have a door that did not weigh a ton to raise up especially in wintertime!
When the old panels were down and out the way and before the installation of the much lighter new ones could begin, I had to frame in the gap that was now there at the top of the opening since the new door was not as tall as the old door had been. Then the fun part of the garage door exchange project began and was a breeze! I actually got most of the new panels installed Wednesday morning before the semi-truck hauling my first load of hay for the winter arrived. Once I had the bales unloaded and stacked in the arena, I set the last garage door panel in place and was going to call it a day.
However, sitting looking at the door I decided why not get the job completed today and be done with it? All I had to do was tighten those tension springs. “Get it done, Rose!” I said to myself. So, taking a deep breath, I set up my ladder, got my handy dandy winding rods and started the task of tightening those dratted springs. One, two, three, four… I had about 32 turns to make. Slowly, slowly, sweat dripping down my nose, the final turn was done. Securing the set screws and removing the pair of vice-grips I had holding the main rod still; I climbed down the ladder and held my shaking hands out in front of me! Now for the test! Would the garage door go up and down okay? Drat! The door was wanting to creep up on its own! Back up the ladder I went and after inserting a winding rod, loosening the set screws, I slowly and carefully backed off the springs a couple of turns. When all was nice and tight again, I came down the ladder and tested the door. It worked! Oh, my goodness me! I sank down on the floor in relief and felt like crying. I had conquered my fears and got it done.
That night as I lay in bed, looking at the picture of my dearest on the bedside table beside me, I told him about my day. How thankful I was for all the years he encouraged me and supported me in everything I wanted to try. He was always there beside me, bolstering my spirit when my self-confidence was flagging. As I lay and thought about what I accomplished in changing out that garage door, I know I could never have done it without knowing my dearest was beside me, watching over me and keeping me safe. Thank you matey, thank you… for making me the woman I am today.
