December 2021 Island Trip – Day 4

After winning the competition for sleeping in (past 11AM!) we got an incredible amount of work done on the lower building. The header is in and reinforced with brackets. Walls are firred out for sheetrock repair. Both cabinets have been moved out of the darkroom and into the main building. Some tools and supplies have even been put into those cabinets 🙃. In filling cabinet drawers, I was able to consolidate lots of like bits and pieces in ways previously unavailable simply because the storage wasn’t there. This is a boon in terms of saving time when trying to accomplish just about anything around here. We spend a lot of time trying to find stuff… We now know, for instance, that we have five matte knives! I have found various items we were sure we had but were unable to locate and so had to head to town to buy more of. Them days are done!

My dad’s clay kneading table is along a wall rather than in the middle of the space. Anything not moving was cleaned. A shelf, that’ll go in the darkroom space eventually, was remove from under the windows, the mummified rat it was hiding was evicted along with an amazing amount of other grossness, and then the shelf was returned to its location. A teeny Italian water heater is heading to the dump, as it belched rusty water. This unit made hot water for my father’s ceramic studio back in the day.

Other, non-barn, things included an attempt to light the burn pile. Even with the addition of some antique hydrocarbons, the pile never really took off. It’s Very wet. I’ll have another go at it this spring. I got a sweet bay tree planted in the garden. Some of my parents ashes will give it a good start. I replanted an ornamental grass that some deer decided to taste, and then spat out. Silly deer… You think I’m gonna plant things you think taste good?