New BBQ

Ben and I moved out of our parent's houses in July 2016.  Of course we wanted it to be sooner than that but life gets in the way and you have no control over it.  Mom and Dad gave me their BBQ to use so when we had people over we could grill.  Most likely we would be having a lot of the family gatherings over at our place anyways so it was fine with me.

I can't remember when exactly they bought the BBQ but it had to have been close to 2004 or 2005.  It's been well used since then.  Mom and I have replaced parts several times, it's gotten a good cleaning every year and it was well used and loved.  

Last year, I stripped it down to it's bare parts, gave it a good scrub with the metal sponge and shop vac and even bought some high heat black spray paint just to make the BBQ look a little better.  It definitely saw better days but I actually made it look pretty good.  We had several gatherings over the course of the spring into the summer.  Ben cleaned it out and we put it away for the season.

This year it was getting warmer and almost time to get the BBQ out again.  Ben went to go clean it out and just didn't think that we could resurrect it one more time.  We've had this BBQ for five years now and it was getting harder and harder to get it going again.  It was rusting, wearing thin in areas and really hard to find the replacement parts that go to it.

Ben and I had talked about getting a new BBQ for the past few years now so we just went ahead and did it.  Ben did some research on the ones that he wanted.  That included looking on Amazon, Lowe's and the Home Depot websites.  He decided on one from Home Depot.  That Saturday we went out to Hawks Prairie and looked for the one Ben wanted.  We asked one of the associate's if they had the make and model we wanted and he said that he would have to go look.  Meanwhile, we needed some grass seed so I found some that would work for a project of mine.  I met back up with Ben and he said that this Home Depot were out of the BBQ he wanted.  The guys said that the store on Fones Road had six of them.  That's where we went.

Once in the store, we wandered around the BBQ are and did not find the one we were looking for so we had to ask someone.  Ben was on it while I looked at the sledgehammers.  I called Dad to see if there was an extra sledgehammer at Grandpa's that I could borrow and he said there might be but most of them don't have handles on them.  Then he asked me to go see if they had any bathtub repair kits.  I went and looked while an associate got the forklift and got our new BBQ down from the shelves outside.   

Ben called to ask where I was and I told him that Dad had asked me to check up on something and that he was in the parking lot waiting for me to come help him.  I helped him put the BBQ into the Edge and then I said we had to go back in to see if they had the tub stuff.  Ben ran into an ex co-worker that used to work at Lowe's with him so we chatted for a while and she helped us find the tub stuff we were looking for. 

We took it home and left it in the garage for a day.  The following afternoon we assembled it in the dining room and of course the kitties needed to help.  I could not believe how much plastic, Styrofoam and cardboard came our of the box.  We took it outside, repaired the BBQ cover and made plans with Dad on what to do with the old one. 

We wanted to use the BBQ so we invited the Pablo's over and ate burgers, beans, potato and macaroni salad, chips and had cookies for dessert.  It was fun to host friends over to break in the new BBQ.  I know this is the first of many BBQ's, friends and family gatherings and many dinner experiments to come.  

Next Adventure:  Erika and Zach Move Again