A mystery solved & a gate installed: the husband update

A few days ago, my husband read my post about the missing day bed bolts and was slightly incensed.  “I read the whole thing waiting for the pay off!  But you never mentioned that I found the bolts!  There was no pay off!  And you make me sound like a slouch!”

In my defense, I argued, the post was specifically about events that transpired on Saturday.  And no bolts were found on Saturday.  “Besides,” I told him, “I only wrote exactly what you said.  Everything was true.  Your words were directly quoted.”

“But your readers will think I’m a slouch,” he muttered again, walking away while grumbling something about disclosure statements.

So to satisfy the husband, this is how the lost bolts mystery was solved (with no help from any meddling kids):

After two hours searching for the bag of bolts on Saturday, my husband did indeed (understandably) give up.  With the rise of the sun on Sunday, hope was renewed, and he and my son spent another couple of hours ransacking the house looking for the bolt bag.

Meanwhile, I had to make a four hour round trip back to the home/house to pick up our foster kids from their family visitation.  While at home, I spent thirty minutes combing through the garage, on the chance that somehow the bolts never left the house in the first place.  No luck.

On Monday morning I looked out the window and saw my husband crawling around in the back of our car.  When he came back in the house, he triumphantly pulled a sandwich bag of bolts out of his pocket.

Finally!

“I knew I put them in a cup holder in the back of the car when I brought the bed here,” he said.  “But I had already checked the car and didn’t see them.  This time I went back out and they were right there underneath a golf ball.  I hadn’t seen them because of the golf ball on top.”

So there you have it, people.  My husband is successful.  He is a persistent, determined, bag-finding non-slouch.  Just in case you wondered.

And in outdoor news, this very accomplished man spent Sunday evening installing a new gate at the top of the stairs on the deck. 

So if the box won round 1 of the “can honey do?” challenge, I guess I won round 2, the round that mattered.

No more random pile of "stuff" blockading the stairway!  We now have a gate to keep the dogs in.

The only problem: the dog/childproof gate also happens to be adultproof.  This thing is not easy to open!

Like seemingly everything, it wasn’t a matter of simple installation and task complete.  My husband was concerned about having such a complicated opening mechanism on a gate that renters will be using.  If it was just our family who’d be using it, we could learn it and be fine, but we don’t want to give a major challenge to every houseguest.

So my husband still wants to alter it, but with the caveat that no savvy babies will be able to figure it out.

Fortunately, he’s pretty good at this kind of thing.

He’s no slouch, for sure.  In case you were wondering.