We were sitting at home one weekday morning fairly early in the self isolation period and the power went out. I looked at Pam and she looked at me and we had the same thought. All of our cooking devices are electric except for the fireplace. Now I am sure that we could manage to cook in the fireplace in a pinch but it got us talking and thinking about alternatives.
A couple of days later I was surfing the internet and found a nice gas grill for a very good price. We talked it over and ordered it and a cover for it. This wasn’t our first grill and our old grill had died an early death due to exposure to the elements. It came with free shipping. So, Friday morning, the UPS truck pulled up and delivered it.
I asked the delivery driver to put it in front of the garage on the driveway. I have been building a lot of gardening apparatus for Pam and have learned that putting things together with small parts is better done on concrete than grass. I finished working from home and even mowed the yard before I got down to the business of putting the grill together.
The first thing I noticed was that the box was a lot heavier than I expected. I finally decided to cut the corners of the box and leave the cardboard as a padded surface to work on. The next thing I discovered was that there were a lot more parts than I expected. I found the directions and discovered that I needed a Philips screw driver and an adjustable wrench. After securing the tools, I started sorting the parts.
At this point I have to say that the thing was very sturdy but simply constructed. I followed the instructions meticulously and only had to back up and redo my work on a couple of occasions, once when I put a piece on upside down, and once when I didn’t understand that a piece was supposed to be bolted in place between two other pieces.
The box said it should take forty minutes to put together. After an hour and a half of assembly, I was only half finished and it was getting dark. I gathered the unassembled pieces together and rolled the entire thing into the garage to finish up the next day.
The next day, I was so sore and it was so hot outside, I decided to put finishing assembly off until Sunday. Sunday afternoon I rolled everything out of the garage and after another two hours and a skinned knuckle, I finally got the thing together. I didn’t strip any bolts. I didn’t have any major parts left over. The manufacturer had kindly provided one spare of each kind of nut and bolt. I had exactly one of each.
I had this wonderful sense of accomplishment. And the new found security of knowing that if we had a long power outage, we would be able to cook on our new grill.