Our First Trip to Lowes This Year
We went to Lowes last night to purchase two car-loads of stuff. We haven't been to Lowes at all this entire calendar year due to being sick for four months and the pandemic. This first trip to Lowes did not go as well as we would have liked.
First, as we attempted to pull out of our driveway, my car's battery was dead... no lights, no sounds, nothing. I dug out the jumper cables and jumped it rather quickly but, apparently, this was a sign of things to come for the evening.
When we arrived at Lowes and entered the store, the first thing we noticed was there were no displays of outdoor furniture, awnings, patios, etc, like we usually see when we first enter the store. It was more like walking through a store in a third world country or like trying to get building supplies in New Orleans right after Katrina. It was pathetic. First, we needed a few plants. The selection looked nice and colorful from the parking lot but it really wasn't all that great. We quickly managed to choose the few plants we needed and headed back into the store. Then, we needed a bucket. Seems simple, right? You would think a place like Lowes would have a dozen of bucket choices... some in the outdoor yard section, some inside with the gardening, some in paint, some in cleaning. All we wanted was an ordinary 1-2 gal bucket with a handle. Nobody seemed to have any idea what I was talking about. I eventually found one bucket... one lone choice and it was a bright red bucket in the aisle with cleaning supplies. It is not exactly what I was hoping to purchase but it will work.
At this point, I realized that this visit was going to be an exercise in compromise. Then to lumber... The first aisle was the finish lumber. Things weren't looking good. Racks were empty. What was left was not in the spots where the item ID and price was indicating. I eventually found some remaining 1x4's that I needed and I pretty much cleaned them out. In hindsight, I should have taken everything they had because I know I'll need more at some point in the next month or two.
The dimensional lumber aisles had empty racks. We passed empty racks and empty racks all the way to the ceiling. If an occasional rack wasn't empty, there were only two or three chewed up pieces of lumber remaining. There was no treated lumber whatsoever... no pre-cut stair stringers... I will have to resort to cutting my own non-treated lumber to make what I had to purchase work. Worst yet, now I need to be prepared for all of this stuff to only last about eight years before it is rotted out since none of it is treated lumber. On the positive side, this saved me some money (today, not in the long run). On the negative side, with my health and energy level where it is at today, I'd rather build something correctly the first time and have it last for 20 years regardless of the cost. I need to make some aluminum frame window screens. I grabbed the brown frames I needed. Then I go to grab the corner pieces and the shelf was empty... No brown ones, no white ones, none at all! Then I look for screening and the racks were mostly empty too. Fortunately, I wanted aluminum screening and that is not all that popular today so I got screening. Unfortunately, I'll need to make my own frames which is a time and energy killer.
We paid and headed outside to fill the cars and strap-down stuff on the roof. We managed to fit everything into and onto the cars. We get on the highway and the wind picks up. Why is it that whenever I strap anything to the car roof, the wind picks up so much that the trees are about to be blown over?
Now the trees are swirling and bending over because the wind is so strong and, worse yet, it is a headwind. I look in my rearview mirror and notice Sheila is flashing her headlights at me. We pull over to the side of the road and she tells me that she could see light through the entire load on my roof as I was driving. I re-strap it more tightly and add another strap to the front of the load and another strap on the rear of the load. Then we pull back out onto the highway.
The wind gets more powerful! I can see the load on my roof being buffeted by the wind and the speed of the car heading into this wind. At this point, I'm only able to drive at 45mph on the highway because of the wind and there are no exits for another 15 miles. As we neared home, the wind died down and we were able to get up to a normal highway speed for the last few minutes on the highway.
We stacked all the lumber on the deck wrapped in plastic. It was beginning to rain as we were stacking lumber but we managed to get it completely wrapped in plastic sheet with no problems.
I'm not looking forward to our next lumber supply run.
First, as we attempted to pull out of our driveway, my car's battery was dead... no lights, no sounds, nothing. I dug out the jumper cables and jumped it rather quickly but, apparently, this was a sign of things to come for the evening.
When we arrived at Lowes and entered the store, the first thing we noticed was there were no displays of outdoor furniture, awnings, patios, etc, like we usually see when we first enter the store. It was more like walking through a store in a third world country or like trying to get building supplies in New Orleans right after Katrina. It was pathetic. First, we needed a few plants. The selection looked nice and colorful from the parking lot but it really wasn't all that great. We quickly managed to choose the few plants we needed and headed back into the store. Then, we needed a bucket. Seems simple, right? You would think a place like Lowes would have a dozen of bucket choices... some in the outdoor yard section, some inside with the gardening, some in paint, some in cleaning. All we wanted was an ordinary 1-2 gal bucket with a handle. Nobody seemed to have any idea what I was talking about. I eventually found one bucket... one lone choice and it was a bright red bucket in the aisle with cleaning supplies. It is not exactly what I was hoping to purchase but it will work.
At this point, I realized that this visit was going to be an exercise in compromise. Then to lumber... The first aisle was the finish lumber. Things weren't looking good. Racks were empty. What was left was not in the spots where the item ID and price was indicating. I eventually found some remaining 1x4's that I needed and I pretty much cleaned them out. In hindsight, I should have taken everything they had because I know I'll need more at some point in the next month or two.
The dimensional lumber aisles had empty racks. We passed empty racks and empty racks all the way to the ceiling. If an occasional rack wasn't empty, there were only two or three chewed up pieces of lumber remaining. There was no treated lumber whatsoever... no pre-cut stair stringers... I will have to resort to cutting my own non-treated lumber to make what I had to purchase work. Worst yet, now I need to be prepared for all of this stuff to only last about eight years before it is rotted out since none of it is treated lumber. On the positive side, this saved me some money (today, not in the long run). On the negative side, with my health and energy level where it is at today, I'd rather build something correctly the first time and have it last for 20 years regardless of the cost. I need to make some aluminum frame window screens. I grabbed the brown frames I needed. Then I go to grab the corner pieces and the shelf was empty... No brown ones, no white ones, none at all! Then I look for screening and the racks were mostly empty too. Fortunately, I wanted aluminum screening and that is not all that popular today so I got screening. Unfortunately, I'll need to make my own frames which is a time and energy killer.
We paid and headed outside to fill the cars and strap-down stuff on the roof. We managed to fit everything into and onto the cars. We get on the highway and the wind picks up. Why is it that whenever I strap anything to the car roof, the wind picks up so much that the trees are about to be blown over?
Now the trees are swirling and bending over because the wind is so strong and, worse yet, it is a headwind. I look in my rearview mirror and notice Sheila is flashing her headlights at me. We pull over to the side of the road and she tells me that she could see light through the entire load on my roof as I was driving. I re-strap it more tightly and add another strap to the front of the load and another strap on the rear of the load. Then we pull back out onto the highway.
The wind gets more powerful! I can see the load on my roof being buffeted by the wind and the speed of the car heading into this wind. At this point, I'm only able to drive at 45mph on the highway because of the wind and there are no exits for another 15 miles. As we neared home, the wind died down and we were able to get up to a normal highway speed for the last few minutes on the highway.
We stacked all the lumber on the deck wrapped in plastic. It was beginning to rain as we were stacking lumber but we managed to get it completely wrapped in plastic sheet with no problems.
I'm not looking forward to our next lumber supply run.
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