I will tell ya, Murphy lives with us ! Sometimes it's just one step forward and two steps back.

Our simple plan to set up four 55 gal drums to collect rain water has turned into a major deal, sigh!

First we must install gutters on this old country home- $700.00. Ok, so we bite the bullet and decide to have it done. We have needed gutters for a while as water tends to go under our house when it rains and that is not good.

Our 2 story home has what I call a "barn roof" meaning that the sides of the roof come all way down the side of the 2nd floor and end at the ceiling of the first floor. The house has is "barn shaped".

The gutter man can not install the gutters until we cut back the overhang of the metal roof. It falls 4-5 " past the fascia and should be no more than 2 inches hanging over. On top of that the main electrical cable coming into the house is attached with a stress relief thingy onto our fascia before it goes into the electrical panel. The bracket for that needs to be moved down onto the side of the house freeing up the fascia for the mounting of the gutters.

Nope, we can't do anything as simple as that! Now it would be to low and not up to code. Sigh! Eventuaally, we will be installing a new electrical panel when hubby finishes building his new work shed and he wants to run all electrical underground. So that will have to wait.

We have decided to just put the gutter on the side of the house that will have the rain collection set up located. It will at least cut down half of the water that runs under the house and we'll have our rain collection set up which will save us wear and tear on the water pump and save some on the electric bill.

Great, we are back on track! Thursday hubby trimmed back the excess roofing from back side house and plans to pressure wash the whole roof this weekend.

He wakes up Friday morning with a very red achy eye. A microscoptic piece of tin had gotten into his eye in spite of having goggles on. By Friday night he can barely stand the irritation any longer and all attempts to wash his eye out has failed to remove the foreighn particle.

Off to the ER we go at 11:30 pm last night. We were there until 6 am this morning! The doctor was able to remove the tiny piece of tin but there is rust in his eye also and he must burr it our with a "burring" tool, something like a tiny drill. However a piece to that tool is nowhere to be fouind in the hospital so now the procedure will be dragged out until Monday. Sigh.

Needless to say today has been a washout. We slept in til about noon and both of us are just tired so for now we will rest up, heal and resume this small project next week.

Perserverance is key !