Lowe's lumber haul!

On Tuesday, we headed to town to do a couple of things that we could only do in the bigger town, which is also our county seat.

One thing was to take the smaller 12 volt solar water pump back and trade it for another one, at Harbor Freight. Not sure what happened but even though we tested it first at our current location, and it worked, it didn't work for pulling water up out of the well and actually started smoking! They swapped it out with not really any questions asked, but I did tell them what happened to it. Got another one exactly the same, so we'll probably use it just to help push water into the cabin across level ground.

I went on Ebay and ordered a larger, submersible 12 volt pump that we can run off solar/batteries. Still need at least 2 of the blue, food safe 55 gallon drums for water storage. All things come in time, so we may be using plastic storage totes for water storage to begin with. A very sweet friend sent me some money through paypal which helped me get the bigger well pump. Thank you! You know who you are!

Went to Lowe's to see about the price of various lumber that we need to build walls inside the cabin and extend the sleeping loft. We talked about seeing if they had any "remnant" lumber, so my son went to ask one of the associates. Well, that guy is actually a friend of ours and we didn't realize he works there! He took us around the side of the building, outside, where there were 3 bundles of lumber. Two of the bundles included MDF panels, plywood, 2x's of various widths and lengths, 1x's of various widths and lengths (some were a bit curled at one end), scrap pieces of paneling, short pieces of trim molding, a full sheet of very heavy lattice, and more that I can't recall at the moment. There was a price attached to each bundle as well as a plastic envelope showing the original value if they were full price. We offered $40 for each bundle and he accepted it! If we had paid the asking price, it would have been around $130, and the original value was a little over $300. So, we got an astounding deal to get them both for $80 + tax.

The third bundle looked like all wood fence boards for $100 and I might have been able to get that, too for probably $50 or $60, but cash is king and I'm not! lol So, I had to pass that one by. I sure could have used all that other lumber, though! Maybe next month there'll be more good deals on bundles! Besides, what we did get completely filled the truck bed and we had to put some of the longer boards through the sliding back window and into the cab!

That truck bed was completely filled! There's lots more under there that you can't see.

The worst thing to happen, though, was that when I put one of the boards into the truck bed, it bounced a bit and hit my wrist right on that bone that's under my thumb. Ouch!! 14 hours later and it's still hurting, so I wonder if the bone might be cracked or something. I'm having to be very careful how I move my hand so it doesn't hurt.