The Flip

This weekend the Hubby and I decided to take matters into our own hands and removed the snowblower attachment from our John Deere and put the mower deck on. We had never done this before. We have always hired our local John Deere dealer to come make the flip and charge us $150.00 for this service.

This year we just don't have that $150.00. Both of us had accepted that fact that we might be mowing our yard with the small push mower this year. I had done that job for many years and while I was not looking forward to that three hour job, I knew that it was not a huge deal.

On Saturday I said to the Hubby "I am going to give it a try, if we cannot figure it out then we will try to scrape up the $150." He agreed and we were committed to the job.

This entire process scared the bejeebers out of us because we had been in ear shot of the man who did the flip in the past. He would cuss and swear the entire time and it took him about an hour to do the process. The Hubby and I promised that we would not fight and argue.

I pulled the tractor to the front and grabbed a blanket and looked underneath. Now I was even more scared. I had not a clue. I laid there for about 10 minutes looking at everything and finally it all started to fall into place. What I didn't understand the Hubby seemed to figure out (now this is a miracle all on its own, because the Hubby is mechanically challenged.)

The snowblower came off so easily both the Hubby and I looked at each other and thought the worst. It cannot be this easy. See, we are both very positive thinkers. The easier the job we know the longer it will take. If I think a job is going to take me five minutes, it will take me an hour.

Now was time for the mower. This was a little more of a challenge. I kept going from tractor to computer trying to follow the instructions (which are worthless). In the end it took us about an hour, the hardest thing was lining things up because you had to make sure that the leavers and switches were in the correct position. I had one rod that I knew where it had to attach but it was not reaching that spot. This was the most time consuming thing. The Hubby finally realized that we had to lower the entire deck via the tractor.

The bottom line is that the next time it should not take us more than 15 minutes to do the entire process that takes a John Deere "professional" an hour. Gee do you think they take people to the cleaners on that little service.