Marriage to an Engineer....

One week back from North Carolina and our hot water heater decided to kick the bucket. Now most people would call a plumber and just get a new one installed. That doesn't happen in our house -- never has! Now this is the fourth or fifth hot water heater we have had so I know the drill. Get the old one out and get the new one in. The biggest problem is that the "old" one is always filled with rust and whatever scale killed it to begin with and probably weighs 200 or 300 lbs. The other times we had some male friends around that didn't mind helping dear husband get the old one up from and the new one down to the basement. Now he only has me. Well, how many people do you know that own an electric winch which will haul 400 lbs?

Look above my husband's head and you will see the piece of board he put across the top of our door where he mounted the electric winch. Now when we built the house we actually moved the entrance to the basement so that it was exactly opposite the entrance from the garage instead of in the middle of the house as was called for in the plans. What I didn't realize at the time, was that this was to facilitate dragging hot water heaters up and down cellar stairs! I must say that the electric winch (and I got to be the botton pusher which is the fun part) made the whole experience much, much less nerve wracking as well as a lot easier on these seniors' backs.

Now, this probably doesn't look too impressive but it has been years since the dining room table and the floor in the dining room have actually showed!! It has been a place for laptop computers, printers, files, paying bills, etc. This is week one of my major decluttering effort. Hopefully I won't throw out anything too important!