December Island Trip – Day 3

Another good day. I spent the first part of the morning delighting that Stella’s microwave is working. Yes, I used it to heat up yesterday’s tea, but it worked! It did not work in November after I blew a circuit and then melted down electrical wiring in the lower barn. It went round and round, but didn’t heat anything up. I don’t have to know why it’s working now. I’m just super happy that I can heat up day-old tea!

While enjoying my tea, I finished the second pot mitt, and then plotted the day. It went like this:

• I dropped dad’s chain saw off for a once over. It likely hasn’t been run in a good 15-years. With all the questionable alders in striking distance of the driveway now on their sides, it would be nice (for my DH) to have a working saw here. The saw is much too heavy for me to use… I can pick it up, but can’t imagine using it with extended arms.
• Ace was next: Bird netting in case my fishing net doesn’t keep the deer out of the new plants (so far so good!), Velcro dots, and a torpedo level.
• My mom’s author’s daughter called me in response to an email I sent her a couple of days ago. We caught up for 20 minutes (I sat in the truck). Mom and dad had some chairs that we’re all the rage when I was growing up. The chairs are still, if refurbished, ridiculously valuable. Dee has always wanted to know what my intention were for these chairs. I’d done enough research to know what I had, but they are low down on my priority list. Dee knows exactly what the restoration process is, what it costs, what the chairs are worth, and what the market is for them. I took pictures of the chairs for her and we’ll mosey from there. She is an 84-year old power house!
• After our chat, I struck out on foot to do a little Christmas shopping, pick up some thread, decide that Thai takeout wasn’t going to work for me and so grabbed a nibble at the market, and then headed to one of the coolest, rabbit warren-like thrift shops you’ll ever see.
• The thrift shop covers over an acre, is loosely organized, and is a treasure trove. I need to replace the door on the pump room (part of the lower barn). I’ll find that door at this place for next to nothing. I am considering giving them my dad’s hardware, which I will not make any appreciable money on, but will spend hours and hours selling. They have a whole structure full of thing that look exactly like what’s in the upper barn 😳. They didn’t have what I was looking for (an orchard ladder, rain barrels, and a cabinet or set of shelves to go in Stella’s big closet, but they had everything else!
• On my way back home I stopped at my north neighbor to drop a few gifts for Christmas.
• Next was the dirty work… getting the short sewer hose attached to Stella. The black tank slicer valve isn’t sealing all the way so there was some careful management of not so lovely water as I got the hose hooked us. Stella came with a device that you can attach to a hose and put down the loo in order to clean out your black tank. I spent a bunch of time exercising this device. It means you are dragging a hose into your coach (it’s in the low 40’s here today), with a bucket to place the devise into once it’s done doing its job. It didn’t fix the slicer valve issue (gonna have get a pro out here for that), but it’s a good thing to know how to use this contraption.
• Stella is a dual axel trailer and has stabilizers that go between the tires on each side when she’s parked. They are goofy looking things and the manual, of course, makes no mention of them. It didn’t take long to get the first one installed. Minutes. The second stabilizer is broken! They’re made of pot-metal, so it’s not surprising, but dang. We’ll order another one.
• Stella has tire covers. they snap onto the body of the trailer and the two corners that hang down at the ground have grommets that don’t have anywhere to attach to. And the manual doesn’t offer any suggestions. I’ll remove them before I leave. These covers are to protect the tires from UV damage, and should a wind storm kick up (a common thing here) the grommets could damage Stella’s lovely complexion.
• After returning a hose-end sprayer to the house, I walked the stream. There’s a run of 4” pipe that my dad must have placed at some point. I followed it upstream until it’s other end, removed a bunch of grass, and was delighted to see water flowing to the entrance of the pipe. This water course needs attending to. Not hard work, but necessary. From there I went on a hunt for the original well cover. It’s 4-5’ deep and has a cover on it. We’ve had some good rain this year, but nothing exceptional. The little well is overflowing. An example of our high water table.
• Being done with the serious grubby work for this trip, I brought mom’s vacuum up from the lower barn (I’m pretty sure this is my late-former husband’s vacuum!) and gave Stella a cleaning. In trailer terms she is big. In house terms, she is very, very small, and it did not take long to do a thorough job.
• The next few tasks were ‘upgrades’ for us. I removed the toilet paper holder from the inside of the under-sink bathroom cabinet. The cabinet that you have to open into your knees while sitting on the loo in order to get to the TP! The holder also invades the small cabinet space. We are quite happy to have the TP sit on the shelf in the same cabinet, right by the opening so our knees are not impacted. I also removed the old fashion toothbrush/cup holder from the bathroom wall. No modern toothbrush fits into one of those holders anymore. There are batches of beveled mirrors fronting cabinet doors in Stella. Very 80’s. I spent a few minutes turning a second cabinet front around in our bedroom. The backside is oak! The remaining mirrored cabinet fronts are all overhead, and can wait until there are two of us and four hands to safely make the switch.
• The torpedo level let me know that my AN and I pegged Stella’s placement and leveling. There’s a teeny, tiny bit of adjusting we can do, and that will wait until we’re back in two week.