April 2024 Island Trip – Day 6

Our general contractor (GC) has buttoned up all the sheetrock in the lower barn, AND put the sheetrock corners on the opening between the main space and the former darkroom. I can see, in my mind’s eye, the space painted and looking as fine as it can given the big barn door doesn’t seal, and wee birds, spiders, and pillbugs will always be able to get in.

In the middle of the sheetrock ceiling remediation, our GC took a face full of rat poop and excused himself to shower and change. Poor guy. He reassured me that this was not the first, nor would it be the last time this happened. I did the clean up while he was gone. The least I could do. All this was an old infestation… Everything was very, ah, dry. And we haven’t seen fresh evidence of Ratus ratus in the building like I did when I first started working on the place.

Our GC placed bottle jacks under Stella’s axels. This was a recommendation of our AN. The tires have both aged out and the ones on the east side are not in great shape. This way if two tires on the same side of the coach give it up, the bottle jack will support the trailer. Otherwise we could end up with a lot of damage. A nice side effect is that Stella, while never wonky, is even more stable than she was!

I took an old kitchen scrub brush to Stella’s trim today. Pollen and algae gets into the 90º angles, making her lovely aluminum exterior look grubby. It’s good to do this in the rain so the mineral ladened well water rinse will be rinsed by the ‘soft’ rain water. While doing this, it became apparent that she needs more of a facial than I was willing to provide today. The west, shaded, side has a patina of algae. Next trip will be soon enough. I did deploy the smaller awnings to make sure no paper wasps needed evicting. All is good in that department.

After taking a rat-poop-dust cleansing shower, and brief cat nap, complete with cat, I got another quilt block done, and have chosen one to work on tomorrow.