After the funeral, it was now time for the real work. As I had mentioned in my previous stories, my father had built his "retirement" home on the farmstead on land that we have had in the family for 120 years. He had built the home in the late 80's, and although it is a very well built home, it was showing it's age. Since I had to keep myself busy so soon after his death, I took on the task of modernizing this house so that someday I will be able to live there myself.
Dad's antics started immediately. He was very proud that he had done almost all the work on the house himself, and I started to suspect that he was not too keen on any changes. The day after the funeral, I decided that I would start with the small projects. The house had leaky taps and shut off valves, and doors that would not stay closed anymore. The first incident started with the taps. The master bathroom (Dad's bathroom) had a bucket under the shut off taps to catch water. A five-minute fix with new taps should have stopped the leaking... And they did... During the day.
For a week afterwards, I kept the bucket under the new taps to ensure that I had not installed them wrong. From the morning to when I went to bed in the late evening, the bucket stayed bone dry. When I got up in the morning 7 hours later, the bucket was completely full! I should have been able to hear that kind of dripping, but nothing. As I said, this went on for a week with a completely dry bucket and then a full one.
The next project was to fix the laundry room door. For a decade, the latch in the door had been stuck inside meaning that it would not stay shut. Whenever the window was open, the door would slam shut and bang. A little WD40 fixed the situation, and the door latched completely tight, until later that night.
At about 10PM as my other half and I were taking a break in the living room, a huge "bang" was heard (exactly the sound of the door hitting the frame from the breeze). One minute later, the same bang was heard. We looked at each other, and I went to the laundry room to investigate, as that is where the sound had come from. Just as I suspected, the door was shut tight as it had been before and this was only the beginning for the evening.
No later that 5 minutes after that, our Pomeranian dog started to act funny (My parents had had the same breed, but sadly they had to give it away when Dad got sick). She started to whine, and then jump off the couch and ran to Dad's room. I called her back, and she sat back on the couch. A few minutes later, she started whining again, and jumped off the couch and went to Dad's room again. I called her back, and scolded her for "freaking us out".
After I got her back on the couch and settled down, I heard a huge "bang" coming from the room. I told my other half that it was just the heating duct, but he said ^@$&%#! When we went to investigate, we found the handrail for the bathtub lying in the middle of the room. There was no way to explain how it had moved 3 feet over, let alone making that bang. The next day I tried to replicate the sound, and found out that it had to fall about 4 feet onto the carpeted floor for you to hear it in the living room.
I still have many stories to tell about the renovations and I hope to share them with you soon.
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