Theresa’s blog: The surprise delivery

With our roof replacement almost behind us, we’re planning our next project: An outdoor yard structure is on the boards for September.

We ordered Western Red Cedar for the project, and were told it would take two to three weeks for it to arrive, as it’s coming down from Canada. Our project doesn’t start for another month.

Perfect, right?

Well, no. And probably not the ‘no’ you’re thinking, either.

But, let’s step back a moment.

In MyFixitUpLife, everything is planned down to the minute. There’s just so much to juggle every day, with the kids, living and working in our renovation, client work, live radio show, magazine articles…. that well, there isn’t much wiggle room in the schedule for a BIG surprise.

So when a few days pass after placing the lumber order, and the phone rings early in the morning, we didn’t expect to hear this: The lumber delivery will be here in less than 30 minutes.

We weren’t ready. We dropped everything to stage a place to receive and store the material, so it stays dry and ready for the pending project.

But the kicker for us and deliveries is this: Our driveway is on a fairly narrow street where it’s not so easy to receive a big delivery. And every time a new truck driver arrives, the truck driver offers a grab-bag of surprises, too.

Some truck drivers refuse to drive down the street and it gets rather complicated and tiring to receive the delivery. Just in the past year, we’ve had a driver grapple with his truck’s lift gate that suddenly broke while trying to deliver material, and a truck driver phone in advance to ask us if he could park and sleep here.

This time the only surprise was the timing. We were sent the perfect driver: Helpful, easy-going, and calm. And he called to let us know he was 30 minutes away. I wish he delivered everything to MyFixitUpLife.

The Western Red Cedar is dry up on benches and under a tarp in our backyard, waiting to become a very cool outdoor structure.

Mark and I can’t wait to get started…