It's always something, ain't it?

When we bought our house, the first thing everyone said to us was, "you'll be working on that thing for the next 30 years."   And we knew they were right.   We went into it knowing what having a new house entails.

Of course, that doesn't make it any easier when the House Gods throw a curve ball your way.   When we went through the fiasco of the propane tank I thought our home-heating woes were finally over.  We had a nice new oil company who were happy that we now had their propane tank on our property, they'd delivered us a nice big tank of oil, and their technician had come out and cleaned our furnace.   All set, right?

Well.........there was the tiny problem of the technician looking at our oil tank and saying, "I'm not happy" with the fact that our tank was sitting on blocks.   I just brushed that off.   Who cares, right?  That tank's been sitting there for years and it's never been a problem.

Well, apparently it was a problem for our oil company.  Their "policy" is not to have a tank on blocks.  It's a "safety issue".   When I called to have them come top off our oil before the price went up, they let me know that it had been noted that our tank was on blocks and they wouldn't deliver until their engineer came and "assessed" it.

I could see $$$$ dancing in their heads.   How much would it be?  $100??? $1000???  

Luckily for us, the engineer who came was very  nice.  "Are you handy?"  he asks my Hubby.  "Sure...I can be."   "So just throw some concret under there and make the blocks into a slab.  That'll do it."

Now, Hubby and I have never used concrete....but how hard could it be?   Turns out....not very.   The hardest part was figuring out how many cubic feet was under our furnace.  After that it was cake.

We trucked on down to our local Home Cheapo, bought five 60 pound bags of concrete, a trowel, and a big plastic tray to mix it in.   Total:  less than $25.

A couple of 2x4's from Hubby's stash in the basement, some rocks to hold the boards in place and we were ready to go

Some water and some mixing

Shovel it all in there

spread it all out

And voila!

Now we just wait for it to dry, call back the oil company, get their okay, and we're on our way.

NOTE:  Although I am not pictured, I did take a turn mixing cement.   I do draw the line, however, on lying on the cold, wet basement floor.  Thanks, Hubby!