House projects

Well, our HVAC project didn't exactly go smoothly.  When we ran the air conditioner it would blow really hard and then stop and then blow really hard and then stop, but occasionally, it would work correctly.  Miller's was great about troubleshooting but they had never seen this before.  They replaced basically the entire unit, moved stuff around, put in a ground and still no luck.  Finally they did some electrical testing and it was getting feedback from a couple wires that were touching (or something like that-I didn't really understand).  So after several months, we finally have a working system (the last visit and fix left me with a lot of questions based on how it was working and they were not able to answer my questions, so I guess we will have to wait until next year to find out if the problem is truly fixed).
There's actually a lot of things we need to do around here and the driveway is one....dad fixes it almost every time they come but it is still a cracked mess.  I would like to move the driveway to the street side and make it longer so we could have the option of parking 2 cars in the garage.  It will become more important when the kids start driving and if Ryan's company does a car allowance instead of a car (he wants to get a Tesla).  We had absolutely no idea how much something like this would cost and we only had one contractor who came and followed up with a quote.  We've heard they are so busy and can pick and choose there work, so it we definitely don't have the upper hand.  The quote was around 50K which didn't seem worth it for either of us but as I looked at the quote, I realized if we found someone to do the work themselves and not contract out everything and changed a few things, it would drop down to about 35K which is worth it to me since replacing the driveway alone is around 17K.  So, we will see if we can find anyone, but I'm not thinking this will happen anytime soon.
In the process of dreaming about that, I did realize there's a very small project that will make my life so much better!  I don't have a pantry and haven't since we've been married.  It is very hard to have enough food for these hungry children with no place to store it (right now our utility sink is being used as a pantry!).  We have a room on the other side of the kitchen that is overflow for a lot of different things, but if we cut access to it and closed off the existing door, it would be an awesome place for a pantry.  The one problem was the electrical panel is where the door would be :(.  We got a couple quotes to move it and it wasn't as much as we thought, so that was finished last weekend and hopefully, by thanksgiving, I'll have a pantry!!!