March 2025 – Why we do Everything Ourselves

March 2025 there’s been an ongoing saga here that I haven’t shared with you guys yet because I AM SO ANGRY THAT I’VE BEEN AVOIDING IT. But here we are so, to catch you guys up: One of our windows on the front of the house had a little crack that turned into a big crack over the last few years. So its been on our list to get fixed forever along with our aging front door. Over the years it (and the screen door) just didn’t seal or fit properly anymore no matter how many times I messed with them. When Lodi called a place to fix the window he off handedly found out that they could do a custom front door as well.

Everything about our front door was non typical – it was four inches narrower and nearly a foot shorter than a standard exterior door. You could not buy that door off the rack anywhere.

And I didn’t want to buy a standard size door only to have to modify it hugely. So, we hired them to order and install a custom front door in the exact size of our original door.

That’s what I thought we did anyway…

In my mind the installation of the new front door would be a few hour job at most. Literally pull the old door out and stick the new door into the same size hole.

Requiring absolutely NO MODIFYING to the house.

I came home to find the outside light taken out, siding gone, and the light switches hanging out of the way because they DIDN’T custom order a door to size.

THEY DID EXACTLY WHAT I DIDN’T WANT.

They purchased an off the rack standard 36 inch door and cut the bottom off of it. Its 4 inches wider than we ordered so they just cut that off the side of the house to make it fit. (Why they had to take out the light and pull out the switches.)

And the door looked nothing like what we had approved, swung in instead of out and was just primed instead of factory finished (in black) because that’s what you get when you just grab any old door off the rack.

And none of them are licensed electricians as far as I know so them just pulling the outside light out and leaving our switches just hanging there is pretty amazing…

We hired them in November.

They showed up on four separate occasions over about two months, were always several hours late (if not just showing up the next day instead) and they would only ever show up if we both called and emailed and text them multiple times.

Three months ago they disappeared and this is how they left it.

You guys know we rarely if ever hire anything out.

We literally did this as a treat (a little gift) to ourselves to have one project completed for us.

So now we’re left with trying to decide what to do.

We can paint the door (and never get the factory finish we ordered), we can fix all of the trim, siding, insulation, outside light and the electrical.

We can continue to live with a door that can’t swing into the house all of the way because of the slant of our 100 year old floors and that also means we can’t ever put a rug in front of it either… Which was a huge thing that annoyed the hell out of us which is why we ORDERED A CUSTOM DOOR THAT SWUNG OUT!

We can essentially just SUCK IT UP.

March 2025 because of everything that’s been going on in my life I have been ignoring this problem for months.

Just looking at it makes me froth at the mouth like a rabid animal. And my family is still recovering from the devastation of my uncle’s passing.

Getting through the funeral was one of the worst (if not the worst) day of many of our lives and the toll of that is just never gonna go away.

You go on because there isn’t any choice and that’s just how it is.

But we’re all just really sad and mad.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of the bare minimum and have no apologies for it.

A lot of reading. A lot of playing Fortnite with my bro, nephews, nieces, dad and now one of my cousins too. She plays nearly as much as I do now.

It surprised me at first (in a really good way) that she was jumping on to join us so often but I think it had a lot to do with losing our uncle. A loss reminds us all that we never see enough of each other.

March 2025 we are all getting on as best we can.

I’m thinking about starting another series here on the blog. I’m going to keep up the throwbacks the first Sunday of every month and, of course, the blog posts about what we’ve got going on (like this one) on the last Sunday of every month.

But my “ten years” series will be coming to a close soon.

A house is never done but I won’t deny I don’t have the project list that I once did so I am looking at some other ideas.

I have a meal list page out there just to remind me of meals we love when I’m clueless on what to make for dinner. (Funny how you do forget them…)

Most of those meals I’ve been making (or helping make) most of my life so there are no recipes. A lot of them came from my Grandma’s, handed down through their daughters and on to their granddaughters and nieces, evolving as they went.

The “macaroni hotdish” my Grandma used to make is actually called Ghoulosh. When I make it now it doesn’t look (or taste) much like hers used to, but I’ll always think of it as her macaroni hotdish.

I’ve never been a food blogger. My post about making homemade chicken stock is about as close as I’ve ever been.

And converting those meals to ACTUAL recipes with actual measurements would be a ton of work. But, considering where they come from, I think a few recipes here on the blog might fit right in…

What do you guys think?

March 2025, I’m getting on with it as best I can and still need to make some kind of decision about our front door but I don’t think I can stand to leave the one that’s there…

Every day I come home, see it, and get mad and that’s really not good for me.

Nobody deserves to come home to that every day.

(Lodi told me he doesn’t care what it costs and if I want to literally throw that door in the yard and go full on red neck with a shot gun at it then he will fully support me… but what a waste.)

*head hits desk*

(No we are not going to pursue small claims court or anything like that, they’ve already wasted enough of our time. The only thing they could do at this point is give us a full refund.)