We interrupt this build for some unscheduled emergency maintenance

Ah, home ownership. The joys never end.

We were heading out in the car last weekend, all packed up and literally just leaving the garage when I heard a strange friction kind of noise on the roof. Not quite scraping, but definitely not something we typically heard. Took an extra second to pull back in and watch the garage door, and it turns out it wasn't going all the way up. Put it all the way down again, and then it wouldn't come up at all. Oh boy.

Pulled the handle off and the door at least still went all the way up manually, so the door itself and the tracks were fine. We got out of the garage at least and when we got back we parked in the driveway so I could get a closer look at the opener. I suspected a belt problem and yup, there one was.

There should be belt there, not just steel cabling. Ooops. 

So I got to spend a week of April snow and freezing rain parking outside and having an extra few steps getting the kids to school while I decided between just switching out a part and just buying a whole new opener. I was awfully tempted to just buy a whole new system, but ultimately after some sleuthing I just bought a replacement belt. At least I hoped it was a replacement belt.

I spent that week watching and re-watching a video on replacing the belt so when it finally got delivered I was ready to go. Even with more papers to write I was happy to both have a break and hopefully start parking inside again. It's kind of ridiculous how little I appreciated regular covered parking until it was taken away.

Old belt. 

New belt

Old hardware to take off and re-use. 

All I ordered was a belt, so the first step was taking off the old one and re-installing the clips on the new one. Didn't sound too hard, but it turns out the gear on the door side is literally right up against the wall, so it took some additional finessing. Of course something else wasn't installed properly here. Shouldn't have been surprised.

Huh. Yeah, that doesn't seem right. 

Anyway, eventually I got things off and got the new belt on. I probably need to tighten it on more but at this point I just wanted to be sure it worked. This was a joyous sight.

And now things are back to normal, for less than the cost of replacing an entire unit, and I can say it's another thing I've taken care of myself. At least I had time to get it done, even if it did end up taking away from my weekend table building time.

Now who's hungry?

Hey, that's a nice surprise.

Turns out we had a surprise in the backyard this summer, when the tree we thought had crab apples on it kept going to produce some full size apples. But by mid-September they had clearly grown into full-blown apples, and it’s pretty obvious we need to look up some tips on caring for an apple tree before next spring.

Eh, I've seen better looking apples but what the hell.

Droops aside, there were some semi normal-looking apples on there, even if they aren’t the prettiest. So we took one off this weekend and it actually tasted pretty good. A little tart, but it had more flavor than I was expecting. So what the hell, let’s pull three or four off and make a baked apple pancake. What’s the worst that could happen?

Now we're talking.

The worst that could happen is probably pretty dire in actuality, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Really all that happens is I always get a sticker crust when I was trying for a crunchier one, b/c try as I might I just cannot replicate the experience of a Clarke’s baked apple. Oh well. Let’s just get some ice cream to go with it, and maybe make sure we know how to take better care of the tree moving forward. 

I need to cook more often.

I hate to see summer turn to fall but my god I can't wait to go apple picking. Apple cake, apple pie, apple slices, apple donuts, apple fudge, apple cider, apple everything. Bring it on.