Late last evening, I managed to park LOML's Nissan Altima in the garage, and while a pain, it was an eye-opener.
LOML had discovered 2 weeks ago that her driver-side window was misbehaving, not closing easily when opened. I advised her to get it fixed pronto, or else she might be "stuck with an open window on a saturday evening when shops were closed for the weekend and rains threatened". I swear, those were the exact words I used, and boy did they come true!
She claims she did not get time; I remember offering to do it for her, but she does not "like to drive an SUV" (my car is an RAV4, barely passing the 'SUV' tag) ! Anyway, yesterday she finds out the window gave up completely. Knowing it could not be fixed before Monday, I tried patching it up with a sheet of plastic, but she started complaining that it was gonna rain heavy and my patch-up would not work and her car would be deluged and why couldn't I make place in the garage for just one car for just a day and I had always claimed my shop was 'mobile' and if I didn't she'd ask friends for temporary garage space and how lucky some of them were that their husbands loved fishing instead of woodworking and she should have instead married that idiot who might be onto a third wife by now but what a speck-less clean garage he keeps (ok, she didn't say that last but I imagined her thinking it )!
Before it became too late (it had started to drizzle), I decided to try and clear the garage. the biggest thing in the middle is my Unisaw, and foreseeing this day (we live in hurricane land) I have it on a mobile-base from Woodcraft. I made the kids take their bikes and stuff to the front porch, removed the extension tables and rolled away smaller tools and boxes. In my hurry I could not remember how the 52" fence rail went, so decided to leave it on and roll the TS to a side parallel to the wall. After all that, the saw would not budge whatever I did; left me searching for locks on the wheels or wedges under them, but none found. LOML was the one to observe that the rubber pads that kept wheels off the ground were stuck to the ground even after releasing. I guess years of use did that. Used a trusty flat screwdriver to rectify that, and that large saw moved so easily!
Well, longer story short, managed to get the car in before the drizzle became a downpour, and what a mighty downpour it was! Our yard was flooded pretty fast : I think my patch-up with plastic sheets might really not have worked.
My lessons learned : (a) this was a good exercise to find out how mobile my shop is - somewhat okay, but I now know what I should do better. (b) I should remove and reattach the fence rail often enough to remember how to do it fast (c) I should really remove the fence itself before I move the saw! I scratched the car's left rear-view mirror, but she didn't see and a slap of paint should fix it ! (d) I saved myself a whole lot of future grief from LOML by going thru this. A bit of backache is always worth that!
LOML had discovered 2 weeks ago that her driver-side window was misbehaving, not closing easily when opened. I advised her to get it fixed pronto, or else she might be "stuck with an open window on a saturday evening when shops were closed for the weekend and rains threatened". I swear, those were the exact words I used, and boy did they come true!
She claims she did not get time; I remember offering to do it for her, but she does not "like to drive an SUV" (my car is an RAV4, barely passing the 'SUV' tag) ! Anyway, yesterday she finds out the window gave up completely. Knowing it could not be fixed before Monday, I tried patching it up with a sheet of plastic, but she started complaining that it was gonna rain heavy and my patch-up would not work and her car would be deluged and why couldn't I make place in the garage for just one car for just a day and I had always claimed my shop was 'mobile' and if I didn't she'd ask friends for temporary garage space and how lucky some of them were that their husbands loved fishing instead of woodworking and she should have instead married that idiot who might be onto a third wife by now but what a speck-less clean garage he keeps (ok, she didn't say that last but I imagined her thinking it )!
Before it became too late (it had started to drizzle), I decided to try and clear the garage. the biggest thing in the middle is my Unisaw, and foreseeing this day (we live in hurricane land) I have it on a mobile-base from Woodcraft. I made the kids take their bikes and stuff to the front porch, removed the extension tables and rolled away smaller tools and boxes. In my hurry I could not remember how the 52" fence rail went, so decided to leave it on and roll the TS to a side parallel to the wall. After all that, the saw would not budge whatever I did; left me searching for locks on the wheels or wedges under them, but none found. LOML was the one to observe that the rubber pads that kept wheels off the ground were stuck to the ground even after releasing. I guess years of use did that. Used a trusty flat screwdriver to rectify that, and that large saw moved so easily!
Well, longer story short, managed to get the car in before the drizzle became a downpour, and what a mighty downpour it was! Our yard was flooded pretty fast : I think my patch-up with plastic sheets might really not have worked.
My lessons learned : (a) this was a good exercise to find out how mobile my shop is - somewhat okay, but I now know what I should do better. (b) I should remove and reattach the fence rail often enough to remember how to do it fast (c) I should really remove the fence itself before I move the saw! I scratched the car's left rear-view mirror, but she didn't see and a slap of paint should fix it ! (d) I saved myself a whole lot of future grief from LOML by going thru this. A bit of backache is always worth that!
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