My friend Mike Pankion came over and we loaded a small trailer and his SUV with the contents and the first load of the cabinets from my shop. I had built these cabinets with french cleats for hanging. Makes them easy to remove and relocate. We managed to to get 11 of the 17 cabinets on the trailer. After we got all the boxes with the cabinet contents unloaded Mike had to leave. Now I’m left with a trailer full of very heavy particle board cabinets that need to get down the steep steps to the basement. What to do?

I ignore the problem and proceed to clean the new shop space and assess my options and issues with this new house. One pleasant discovery, the shop space already has wiring for 220 volts. It is not tied into power at the other end but that will be an easy job. It will piggyback off the dryer circuit. I thought I would have to run 220 from the main panel for my machines so this will save me considerable time and money. I may upgrade the circuit panel in the future but for now this will do.

The next issue was the dripping faucet. The previous owners took the washing machine and left the water connection dripping on the basement floor because the faucet would not turn completely off. Duh? I had turned the water main off earlier to stem the flow. Now I had to fix it if I ever wanted to wash my hands or flush a toilet. This was an old corroded faucet and I anticipated the worst. Frozen threads and broken stem and probably having to replace the whole thing.

Fortunately the stem came out with little difficulty and the old and ruined faucet washer came off easily but the head of the washer retaining screw was completely corroded away and I guessed the nub would not be removable. So I applied a method that I learned at my father’s knee. Some WD-40 and gently tapping on the nub of the screw to break the corrosion and let the oil soak in. Carefully grip the nub of the screw with pliers and out it came. Praise the Lord! New washer and screw is installed from my stash, stem reinstalled and faucet is as good as new with no leak.

It’s time to deal with the load of cabinets. My friend Archimedes comes to the rescue. I have used his principals of the lever (Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the world.) and inclined plane many many times over the years to make impossible jobs possible and do things solo that normally it would take two or more helpers to do. So I took some plywood I had and laid it down the steps. Carry cabinets to top of plywood and easily slide them down the plywood to the bottom where it is easy and safe to pick them up and carry to the new shop area. I’m tired at the end but did not risk falling on the steep steps carrying heavy awkward cabinets. Now all that I need to do is install french cleats to walls and hang the cabinets. Oh, I have six more cabinets to move too as well as a lot more equipment and benches. All in due time.

I’d have pictures of these adventures too but for some reason they won’t upload. Don’t have time to figure that out now. Maybe later.

Now Tuesday morning it is raining and predicted to rain all week. Bah! Humbug! I need to be moving stuff and keeping it dry is going to be a big pain in the you know what. I’m off to figure that out. Can’t let a little rain get in the way of progress.