I'll Make It Work!

Those are my husbands famous last words.  He is an expert at "making it work."  He is my original McGyver.

We decided at the last minute to make a quick run down to the lake because the TVA is dropping the lake levels and we had to get the pontoon boat out before it got landlocked until next spring.  Both the kids have 2 weeks of summer vacation left, so we piled them, Tony's girlfriend Alex, and both the dogs into the car and headed south.

When we got here Sunday afternoon and loaded the groceries into the fridge, I thought it seemed a little warm.  I cranked the dial up to the coldest setting and went about my business.  Later in the evening when I went for ice, there was none.  Plus the fridge was no longer humming.  Louie grabbed a hammer, pulled out the fridge and banged around back there for awhile until the compressor came back on.  We figured we were good to go!

But by Monday morning we had a melting mess in the freezer and warm everything in the fridge, so we knew we were sunk.  We headed to town and I grudgingly bought a new fridge.  We felt lucky that they were able to schedule a delivery for that very afternoon.  We went back home, unloaded all the food and started to pull the refrigerator out from the wall.  It would not budge.  We wiggled it back and forth for awhile and finally shoved it across the room, and realized that the reason it didn't move was because one of the feet had jammed into the linoleum floor and when we shoved it, it ripped a huge hole across the kitchen floor.  Well.... how's that for a how -do-you-do?

So we climbed back into the car and drove all the way back to town and bought all the stuff we needed to install a new tile kitchen floor.  Drove all the way back home.  We started laying tiles in the area where the new fridge was going to go so that area would be done.  By 2 pm we had about a third of the kitchen done and the delivery guys were there with the new refrigerator.  They took the old one out.  They brought in the new one.  They rolled it across the kitchen.  They tried to slide it into the space where the old refrigerator had been.  Of course it didn't fit where the old refrigerator had been.  The new one was about an inch too tall.  We measured the area before we left for the appliance store.  We figured we had an inch to spare.  Apparently we did not!!!

So there stood my brand new refrigerator, on my now ripped up, half installed new floor, with frozen food melting all over my counters.  The delivery men looked at Lou.  I looked at Lou.  Lou looked at the cabinets over the fridge.  He whipped out a tape measure.  He tapped the fridge and said "Hook up the water lines for me and I'll make it work."

The delivery guys hooked up the lines, Louie McGyver went out to the garage and got an electric saw.  The delivery guys ran to their truck and hauled ass.  Louie sawed off the bottom inch of the decorative, lower lip on the cabinet.  We shoved the fridge and it rolled into place like a dream.  We put all the food away. 

We got up the next morning, we all helped and we finished installing the rest of the floor.

So now I have a new fridge and a beautiful new kitchen floor.  We didn't spend as much time on the lake as we wanted this trip, but thank goodness the refrigerator didn't crap out while we were gone.  That would have been much worse.

Tony still got to ski..

Chablis briefly skiied on one ski...

We got to the rock quarry...

And went for a nice boat ride....

We also squeezed in some kayaking, had a campfire with hot dogs and we made s'mores.  So it all turned out for the best.

Here's the new fridge and floor.

I love my husband!