The last thing was taking off and painting the door. As it was laid out in the back yard across the sawhorses I popped my head out and offered them a hairdryer, joking.

Turns out they had one and it is fair to say it was a tad bigger.

Painting company boss man showed up in the late afternoon and we did a walk-through; he caught things I didn’t, I caught a few he didn’t, and the workers took care of all of it.

And then, at long last, they reinstalled that door. (Afton, the plant is the one you sent me when my dad died and it still blooms all the time and greets everybody cheerfully.)

What he’s doing in the second picture is he’s got this flat rubber-ish thing that he slid under it, with his friend’s help, and then there’s a bulb attached that he pumped up to pufferfish that thing into just the right height and angle so that nobody had to try to hold it absolutely perfectly still for longer than humanly possible while the other guy ran the power tools on the hinges.

Y’know? That door had been ever so slightly off probably since it was originally installed. And now it’s perfect.

On the outside.

And with that and a cleanup, this crew was done with my project.

I don’t even have an estimate yet for painting the inside but we’ve been talking about it with the contractor.

Once you start fixing up or remodeling, the challenge becomes how do you manage to stop.