One focus of our Retirement-Chapter 2 includes doing home improvement and repair projects for others while on the road. We officially announced this to family and friends via a postcard in this year’s Christmas cards; however, son Jon and daughter Sarah each had a heads up since we visited both families during the holidays.

Jon’s initial list came to us with 46 projects on it, and after we started he added several more. Ever the engineering professional, he put the projects in an Excel spreadsheet, including columns with ratings for priority (1-4) and level of difficulty (hard-moderate-easy). Here are some of the items we were able to complete before departing for Florida.

We did these other items on their list but took no photographic evidence. 1) The door from the master bedroom to the enclosed patio wouldn’t open because it scraped against the newly installed floor tile on the unleveled-patio floor. We raised the frame and door to clear the tile floor. It was fun watching Jon repeatedly open and close the door to ensure it now swung freely. 2) We mapped the house electrical panel and were surprised by the extent of strange circuitry. 3) MFI made repairs to several unsecured kitchen outlets, including rewiring a non-operating GFCI outlet, and 4) TPM partially disassembled and re-glued a TV cabinet door that had been irregularly assembled at the factory.

We barely dented their sizable list but did make visible progress. We’ll be back in Texas from end January through end April 2020 and hope to reduce their list further.