I moved in with Señora in 2012. Shortly thereafter we noticed a breeze coming in from the base of one of the sidelights of the original 1980s front door. The wood at the base of that sidelight had rotted for whatever reason.
Discussing it with Señora I remarked that there are some options here. “I could try to repair it, but I warn you that my carpentry skills are about on a third grade level.”
Or I went on, “we could hire someone to fix it.”
In my excessive ignorance, I added, “We could get a new front door.”
The truth is doors are something that I had never really paid attention to unless they were extraordinarily different or extraordinarily bad. I had also never priced a new primary portal to an abode. I was more than a little shocked. While we were debating the style, researching prices, we began to look at new doors around the neighborhood, something I had not done before. Now it is hard for me not to notice the types of front doors that houses have.
We live in suburbia, and each house here has a mailbox out in front next to the street. I barely paid attention to ours, let alone any of the neighbor’s mailboxes. Once every year or so, I would notice that ours was leaning one way or the other. I would get out my bubble level and shim it back to the vertical. About a year ago Señora began agitating for a new post for the mailbox. She is attached to actual mailbox as Sarah painted it beautifully years ago, and it is a nice visual reminder of her daughter each day when she retrieves the mail. My attitude on the post was that it was functional, what are you talking about. Truth was it was more than a little rotten and did look like crap; I just did not want to do the work to replace it. When I did finally get around to doing so, the post practically fell apart in my hands as I was removing it.
Now as I walk The Wee Dog aka Princess Lily around the neighborhood I am looking a mailboxes. It is amazing how many are out of true, leaning this direction or that. More than a few mailboxes are very scruffy looking, and this is a neighborhood of not inexpensive homes. As they say the devil is in the details.
About 2 weeks ago we had to replace the 20 year old air conditioner of our abode. Not something anyone really wants to do, but sometimes you have no option. The tech that came out to check it told us it was low on Freon, Freon R-22, which is now going for between $200 and $300 a pound. R-22 was phased out years ago due environmental concerns. They are not manufacturing it anymore, however there are many older A/C systems still in existence using R-22. The tech was not sure how many pounds were needed, three or four maybe, and it would just be a band-aid. We had put in some R-22 a couple years ago, so obviously it was leaking Freon. My attitude was that the money would be better spent towards a new system. And we are hoping with the newer technology our summer electric bill will become more reasonable.
A few days after the installation of the new Carrier unit, Señora joined Princess Lily and me for a walk around the ‘hood. As part of that expedition, we took a path that ran between houses to the public area next to the stream that meanders through the subdivision. As we passed the side of one of the homes, Señora remarked, looking at the compressor unit for the house, “That is a really old air conditioner.”
Ah… the things we notice and the reasons why.
And so it goes.
Great post. We replaced our mailbox earlier this year, hiring it out to a company that specializes in them and installs them as well. I’m quite fond of the new one.