I've been neglectful; it has been six weeks and two days since my last entry. And yet, I am picking up where I left off: the shed. Time to tackle the inside.
But before we get to that, the month of August has had its annoying moments. Like the Friday morning when sewage came up through the bathtub (and it didn't rain prior to this problem). So the OTMBO called the Number One (so to speak) septic tank company in town, bright and early, and was told "we're busy today, can't get to you until Monday, and if you have an emergency, I don't know what you are going to do". Silly me, I thought sewage flowing up the pipe WAS an emergency. Solution? Call the number two company (again, no pun intended), who was here by noon, and unglogged the septic tank outflow pipe from the house by 1:30. And was more than happy to have the business.
Tree frogs everywhere. Kind of entertaining watching one of these things (smaller than a dime) trying to eat a moth.
The fig tree that was so full of leaves and fruit in July lost all of the leaves in August.
According to the experts on the internet, this can be caused by two possibilities: too much water, or too little water. I vote for too much, since it rained a lot in August. By the first week of September, new buds were starting to appear. So it isn't quite dead yet. Time to prune it back.
The butternut trees (previous identified as pecan trees) have webworms. Several webs are about 40 feet up. Just out of my jurisdiction.
I had a basketball hoop on a pole next to the driveway. A friend was buying the whole thing for $20, but the extraction is not complete. The top eight feet of the pole screwed onto the bottom part (sticking up two feet above the ground). Below ground, a huge slab of concrete, adjacent to the rest of the pole, with its own slab of concrete. The rest will come out, as soon as we can arrange a tow truck or a heavy winch.
Now, the shed. It has been waiting. When we first walked throuigh the property, there was a poster from the University of Florida football team, a promotional poster for the upcoming season. And it was pretty old, with a photo of the coach. In the darkness, it was hard to tell: was that Urban Meyer? Even Steve Spurrier?
Nope. Ron Zook. Gator fans can put up with whiny coaches, as long as they win. And coaches that win against Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia aren't really winners iof they lose to Mississippi State, and lose games at home in the 4th quarter. That poster will fit well in the trash.
Here's the problem with the inside of the shed, that no Gators poster can fix. The walls are panelling, and it was falling apart. The bottom of many pieces became wet, and simply flaked apart into shreds. The rest of the panelling seemed to be "in name only". Once it began to come down, the panelling folded with the slighted pressure. When I started with this, I thought that I might need a small dumpster. But the walls really compacted down. This trashcan held about 200 square feet of panelling (25 feet of wall, 8 feet tall).
For now, I'm replacing two of the walls. Once those are done, I can stage the contents of the shed to clear the other two walls (front and the side with the electrical panel). No pictures of what the panelling looked like, it appears that even the camera on the phone considered them to be too ugly to keep in memory. Behind the panelling was lots of fiberglass insulation.
The insulation fit into six trash bags. Sure beats a dumpster rental.
Before replacing the insulation and the wall, I need to consider something to keep water from coming in. The ouside walls are wood with vinyl siding, but it also appears that the wood does not go all the way to the slab. Some water stains where water should not be.
Hope to have this done by the end of the month. By Ocdtober 31, it may be the storage barn/ workshop it was meant to be.
