A trip wasted

For some time now Mike and I have been wanting to put in French doors to replace our moisture-filled back patio doors. We were really just waiting on Uncle Sam to give us back the money that was rightfully ours in the first place. We've had the money for quite a few weeks now, but seeing as how this is definitely a big project, we had to wait for the right time and all the logistics to play out (a truck to borrow from his dad's car lot, help to unload it at the house, help from his brother to install it, etc). Finally this past Saturday evening, everything was ready, so we made our trip to Home Depot and purchased the beautiful glass doors.

I started snickering when the lot guy helped Mike load the doors into the 6 foot bed truck, and he proceded to lay them flat across the top of the bed--not INSIDE, but on top...with no rope...nothing. Then he said, "Well, that should do it. Ya'll drive slow now." Mike and I exchanged "what the heck is this guy thinking?!" looks and I tried hard not laugh out loud. This guy was serious. Could he not see that the doors were going to slide right off the top of the bed?! Mike was like, "I think we should tilt the doors and lay them inside the bed so they won't slide off." The guy looked at Mike like this was the first time he had thought of such a thing. We finally got the doors loaded correctly and made a safe drive home.

Dad came over and helped us unload them, casually mentioning how nice the doors looked, but how he thought they might be a bit bigger than what we have in our back patio doorway now. After looking at the area a second time after Dad left, we realized he was probably right...so we dug out the measuring tape. It was indeed too big for the area--substantially larger. Mike had measured from the outside. Home Depot had measured from the inside. So, there we were--stuck with beautiful French doors that wouldn't fit. We decided we would have his brother come over after church the next day and have him help load them back into the truck and we'd take them back before our evening service.

His brother got tied up and by 5:00 we were desparate to get the doors back to Home Depot before church started at 6:00. Mike suggested that he and I lift it into the truck. Now, I've been working out--going on 8 consecutive weeks now, but I KNOW that I cannot lift the 250+ pound doors. I'm doing good to do my weight sets with 5-10 lb. weights. I chuckled at the thought, but agreed to give it a try. After several attempts at maneuvering the doors under the garage door and into the truck bed, we finally got them in there--unharmed! We drove all the way to Home Depot on the side roads, got our refund, unloaded the doors, and made it to church by 6:02.

Home Depot doesn't even sell the doors small enough to fit our back patio area. We have to special order them, which is going to cost us $250 more. That stinks.

I guess things could have been worse--Mike and his brother could have had the current back patio doors pulled out, then realized they were going to have to special order them b/c they wouldn't fit. It can always be worse.

What's the lesson here? Make light of a crappy situation--what else could we do but laugh? Okay, so I was the only one laughing...Mike was just mad.