The Clean Up

Doug and I spent Tuesday getting ready for the hurricane. We brought in all the outside furniture, moved all the plants to the side of the fence, filled the bathtub with water and had food and water ready in case we lost power. For the most part yesterday, we really just dealt with rain. It started after midnight and continued throughout the rest of the day.  We watched the news off and on and knew that the storm had moved a little bit south of us. I hoped that meant that we have to deal with the storm at all.

Unfortunately, just as the weather forecaster said that hurricane Milton had made landfall in Tampa, a gust of wind picked up here and knocked over our tiki bar. I couldn’t believe it. We had it under the patio and it had never moved in any other storm. Unfortunately, we could tell that the countertop shattered when it blew over. Doug and I ran outside in the rain, picked it up, took everything inside that was stored in it, and put the fireplace in front of it so that it was wedged against the wall. Even the 80-pound fireplace didn’t make a difference, as the tiki bar blew over one more time in the evening. We to move it to the fence and lay it on his side after that.

I was pretty bummed last night when I thought about the countertop to the tiki bar being broken. It didn’t help that we lost power for six hours in the middle of the night, making it hard to sleep in general. This morning, I got up and started researching what we could do to fix it. I knew that it was going to be a really big project, but we loved the tiki bar and used it quite often. Doug went outside to access the damage and said that besides the tiki bar the only other issues we had were a broken wind chime and a few slats that had blown off the fence. I didn’t need the wind chime anymore and he was able to fix the slats, so it was really just the tiki bar. I knew that I was silly being sad about it as a lot of other people had lost their homes in the storm.

Our power had been restored at 6:30 in the morning, but the Internet was still out when we were outside cleaning up. We could see the Cox Cable trucks working on it in our side yard.  Doug suggested that we take some time to run over to Lowe’s and see what they would have to fix the tiki bar. He carefully measured the area that needed replaced.  He thought that maybe we could have a piece of plywood cut and use that until we came up with a more permanent solution. I didn't have a lot of hope but agreed to ride along.

Doug and I walked into the store, thankful that it was open. It wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be, but there were a lot of people buying supplies to fix different items. Doug suggested that we walk to the flooring area first.  As soon as we reached the flooring aisle, I noticed that they had large piece of tiles that looked a lot like the size of our countertop. We ran over to it, looked up the measurements and realized that we had just found the perfect solution. They even had the exact same color as the one that had been destroyed. Neither one of us could believe it. It was only $22 and soon we were on our way home with a brand new countertop.

I couldn’t stop talking all day about how fortunate we were. I had envisioned this huge project that was really never going to look the same. Instead, no one would ever know that my favorite piece of outdoor furniture had been damaged. As an added bonus while Doug was out picking up, he found the pickle ball that had been stuck in the arborvitae bushes since last Christmas. Nick had hit it high up in the bushes on an errant return up and no matter where we looked, we could not find the pickle ball. After each and every storm, I would go out and look to see if it blew down. I had actually given up ever finding it after Hurricane Helene, but thankfully hurricane Milton gave it back to us. It wasn’t a big deal that it was lost, but it sure was fun finding it again. Hopefully, this is our last major storm of the season. I don’t think that Florida can handle another one this year.