Workday! Saturday, June 17, 2006

Today's "I'd like to know" section:

-If anyone has found a good method/tool for cutting one sidewall out of a tire so it makes a large shallow planting bed, let me know. There's got to be a way to do this that doesn't involve $70,000 machines.

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On Saturday morning some friends from church came over and worked like beavers until very late in the day. I had a long list of tasks I had thought up: clear brush, weed, carry out garbage, etc and we accomplished ALL of them as well as some others we dreamed up together.

Among the things we did:

-Took all the bags of filthy clothes from the house to the dumpster.

-Moved all the "left behind" furniture from the house to the barn/dumpster.

-Moved three big "sidelight" door panels (that had been left behind) from the house to the barn.

-Removed the bagged debris from the upstairs of the barn so it's ready to have all it's rat droppings and broken glass vacuumed up. (Yuch!)

-Moved the stack of firewood from the driveway to the chicken coop

-Trimmed the hedge alongside the barn

-Cleaned up around the "burn pile" at the back of the fenced yard. We burned a lot of brush and junk up. (Hope to rent a backhoe later this week to get the residue into the dumpster.)

{I am in love with the local hardware store. They are friendly, knowledgeable and rent all sorts of neat equipment very reasonably. I'm not going to the Big Box store if I can help it. These guys are GREAT!}

-Moved all the tires we could find into piles. Those with steel rims to be trucked somewhere and derimmed, those without rims to be used next year for growing sweet potatoes! (I can never find the kind of sweet potatoes that I really like. Now I have a chance to grow them!)

-Cleaned out the chicken coop of it's "mouse hotel" couch and other assorted debris. We left the push mower cum car tire, lawn chair and parasol as a conversation piece. Only a picture will adequately do justice to this contraption. I have no idea what it is or is for... :)

-A family took on the mission of cleaning all the weeds out from around the pool deck. They worked VERY hard in the hot sun and had it done in no time!

-Last thing of the day we removed the first section of paneling from the living room and saw what was behind it. Nothing but furring strips and concrete block. Zero insulation. Confirms what I'd expected and firms my resolve to make sure this house is made very energy efficient. We might lose some floor space but it'll be worth it, IMHO.

Notes on the pool:

The pool liner is probably going to have to be replaced, now that it's drained. It may serve another season or two, with lots of manhours of labor to dig out the five years of accumulated leaves and whatever else didn't manage to crawl out of the pool...

But then we'll be right back to replacing it, so I'm going to see about just buying a new one from the git go and be done with it. If I have the backhoe there this week I can probably bundle the whole thing up and lift the liner out with the backhoe arm. We'll see. There's probably several hundred pounds of putrifying dead leaves left in the pool. Yuch. Might as well try to work smart, not hard.

Good news- the filter and pump appear to be intact and are the exact same sort as some friends have, so they can teach me how to operate it. The decking needs a good scrub and power wash with clorox, but other than that appears to be totally sturdy and intact. It sits in the direct noonday sun, so some carpeting on the deck will help to keep feet from blistering on it. Whew that thing gets hot!

Someday I want to build a solar heater for it and run the filter water through it. It certainly has a lot of energy falling on it, might as well harness it!

That's all I can think to report for Saturday. It was a wonderful day with good friends who really helped buoy my spirits about the task in front of me.

I'm sure there will be other days of work ahead but the bulk of the "clean up" seems like it's now behind us. Hurrah!

I've got an album of photos I've started to post online at this link:

http://community.webshots.com/user/Stickbug54


Doug

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