I’ve missed having an easy way to dry clothes these last many years on the road. Dryers ruin clothes and, if at a laundromat, are very expensive. Hanging clothes about the rig makes my home feel like a sauna and also for tight quarters. Having the chance to string out a clothesline or put out a drying rack outside has always been a luxury.
Last year, my first at Haven, I ran a line between a post and Miranda, to get a few dozen feet of line, but it wasn’t enough and it was saggy. This summer, a proper clothes line was a priority project. As it turns out, a proper clothesline doesn’t have to be a permanent one. I have no intention of living with my current setup for the rest of my life, but for now, it is going to do very nicely!!!
What I did was simply install eye hooks along the sides of each grainery and then I pulled 200′ of clothesline through the eye hooks and across to the next building, back and forth, until I ran out of line. I tied the ends off with inexpensive clothesline fasteners. Total cost: $5 for the line (purchased at the thrift store last year), $2 for the fasteners (of which I have several left), $5 for the eye hooks, for a total of $12.
Laura is convinced that the weight of the clothes will pull out the eye hooks, but so far so good with a heavy load that had lots of jeans. I doubt I’ll ever use all the lines at once except to spread heavy blankets across them, so I’m optimistic that this set up will last me until I’m ready to reclad the buildings. That that point, I’ll do the digging, cement, and post thing.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to pick up a table that will allow me to set up a laundry station outside. What a luxury that will be! I washed this load at my neighbour’s since I was getting backed up and didn’t feel like spending my evenings kneeling in the shower.
One of the many projects on my list for the weekend was cleaning out the larger grainery so that I can use it for storage. It was a good weekend for doing it as the weather was clement and C&C were out of town so I could borrow tools without inconveniencing them.
I did not bother doing the smaller grainery that will be a shed because it’s much too open. I won’t touch it until Charles has time to help me block the existing entrance, put in a new door, and we get a roof on it. The larger grainery has some access points, but is reasonably weather tight.
Before I started cleaning, I had to be able to walk around the grainery safely, which was hard to do as there were lots of wires holding heavy pieces of metal hanging from the walls and ceiling (which is where I confess that I have a nice bruise on my forehead from walking into one…). The wires were to keep the walls straight and true against the pressure of all the grain being stored.
Charles had thought to offer me bolt cutters, so I was able to deal with wires, a job that wasn’t too difficult on the ground where I had leverage, but was a little more perilous up a ladder. His bolt cutters are sharp!
Once the grainery was safe, the fun began.
Cleaning was tedious and had many steps. The first was dousing the entire structure in a bleach solution. This is because there was mouse poop everywhere and mouse poop carries the deadly hantavirus. I was advised by Charles, our local pest control officer, to wear a mask and gloves and to get rid of as much of the poop while it was wet as possible, seeing as the virus gets released into the when the waste is disturbed. The wetness holds it down.
Once the bleach was applied, using a handheld sprayer (picture below), I swept as much as I could and then I used my shop vac. I kicked myself at every stage for having forgotten to borrow C&C’s much larger one, but my one-gallon model was good for doing the top of the walls since I could lift it.
During this stage, I found two dead mice and at least two live ones. Needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to put down mouse poison as it would be stupid to do all this work only to have mice move back in!
Next step was pressure washing, twice. Both times, I wound up with more huge piles of mouse poop on the floor, blasted from every nook and cranny! I knew that I was never going to get the place 100% clean, so after the second pressure washing, I did another pass with bleach on the ceiling, rafters, and walls.
Then, I shop vacced the floor, gave it a final pressure wash, and let it dry. Once dry, I swept and shop vacced again, then did a final pass with the bleach.
That done, I moved in some pallets on which to rest stuff, moved all the crap out of my yard into the building, draped a tarp over what I didn’t want to get wet as there was rain in the forecast for Saturday night, and added a lock to the door for show.
Whew!
When I went in the grainery this morning, it was nice and dry despite the overnight rain, and while I can’t say it smelled nice, it was definitely fresher in there!
Caroline’s the one who thought to fill this sprayer with a bleach-water solution to clean her graineries. It works very well. You pressurize by pumping the handle up and down and the wand has an on/off switch.
I bought a couple of these face masks, making sure that they were suitable for the purpose I had in mind. It was crazy hot wearing it!
I have a storage building! 🙂
It’s nice to have all my tools in one place, but I won’t bother with hooks or such until I get the shed set up.
My pink wheelbarrow full of stuff that I don’t want to get wet.
A small, but powerful powerwasher under a ladder, both borrowed. Thank goodness for neighbours! A ladder is next on my list of priorities now that I have a wheelbarrow.
I put pallets down between the stuff and the floor. Not sure why, but it seemed the right thing to do. 🙂
My fridge was dying so I got the awning open. Hope I can get it back in if gale force winds come in, otherwise I will fly to Kansas (best case scenario) or have the entire passenger side wall ripped out (worst case scenario)…
I couldn’t figure out a cozy corner for my friend L’s Marshmallow and then clued in that if I removed the pallets, smoothed out the gravel in front of Miranda, and trimmed some sucker growth, I could have a really nice landing spot for smaller RVs (I have room on grass for bigger ones!). It would also be pretty much the spot where L parked last year, which he found very satisfactory.
So between work spurts today, I hauled and raked gravel to make a level surface along the back of the passenger side of the RV and then hauled the super heavy pallets with almost no space between the boards to make a deck.
The ruts and horrible pallets made walking back here very hazardous!
Long line of pallets to the truck. Not really necessary now that I have the gravel.
Many loads of gravel later…
I’m going to keep an eye out for scrap plywood to lay over top. I’m also looking for deck chairs that won’t blow away in the wind!
A table would be nice, too. 🙂
Left over pallets, which I will use between the floor and things I plan to store in the sheds. Imagine this area all smoothed out and with a guest RV parked on it!
I think I earned the biscuits and stew I have prepared for dinner. 🙂
It’s been a day and a half, but Haven has buildings! Again, they are fir-framed storage sheds once used to store grain. They are normally constructed on skids to make them easy to move.
The guy who moves graineries, J, has done hundreds of these. In a best case scenario, which is about 95% of the time, he just winches the graineries up, slides a dolly onto the rear of the side skids, attaches a hitch to the middle skid, hooks the hitch up to his truck, and away he goes. Average time from arrival on site to departure: 20 minutes.
My graineries were in the 5% that do not go smoothly.
The smaller one, which will be a shed, was not attached to its skids. J and Charles were shocked since they had come out recently to scout out the buildings and this completely escaped them.
Followed hours of trying to get the building attached securely to the skids, including a run back to Charles’ place for parts. We had arrived on site around 9:30 and didn’t get on the road with the first grainery till almost 1:30. I had complete faith in J by this point. He’s a bit of a loud mouth, but there was no cockiness here, just expertise.
It was slow going through a pasture and up a rutty private road to a gravel road, and then it was smooth going all the way to Haven.
When we got on site in the morning, I expected the buildings to be smaller than I remembered. They were bigger! I had this vision of Haven being completely crowded so I was relieved when the smaller building rolled into Haven and I saw that both would fit comfortably and still leave room for a clothesline, garden, guest RV parking spot, and Moya parking spot.
I had originally planned to stick both buildings together, but tree stumps and overhead lines nixed that plan. The shed wound up at the southwest corner of the property, near the street. Right now, its opening is right on the street, but Charles will make me a door on the side and the existing hole will be covered.
Having the first building in place, I could see where the other one would go and I hope it would be far enough south to clear my office window. My clothesline plans changed when I realised that instead of putting in posts, I could just string the clothesline between the two buildings!
It took a bit of time to get the first grainery settled and reasonably parallel to the curb. We had something to drink and set off to get the other one.
The larger grainery was on skids, but the middle skid, the one the hitch is supposed to attach to, was too wide! J got under there with a chainsaw and shaved the extra width off! After that, it was fairly quick going to get it loaded. I could tell that J and Charles fading fast.
It was much slower going bringing the larger grainery back to Haven as it is much heavier. It was a bit of work to back it in because the ground is so soft. I was really disappointed when J dropped it the first time as it was right between the RV and the neighbour’s shed, meaning a very closed in view from the office window. But after repositioning his truck, he was able to get it back just far enough for me to be happy with the positioning.
I don’t deserve any credit for all the hard work today. I documented the whole event and occasionally fetched parts, but mostly stayed out of the way. Charles and J are my heroes! I can’t believe how hard they worked today.
J originally quoted me $500, but because of the extra time, he asked for another $200. He hadn’t expected me to have the $500 today, so he said the extra can wait until I see him on the wagon train in a couple of months. $700 to get these two buildings on site is a bargain! Remember, the buildings themselves cost me nothing!
Charles and I started to work out a plan of attack for the buildings, but that will be the subject of a future post. They’re on site now and the rest can wait for a bit. The only thing I am going to try really hard for is to scrape the money to put a tin roof on them this year. We shall see.
There is short video after the pictures.
SaskPower moved onto my property this half of a tree that belongs to the neighbours in the book. J winched it out of the way.
My future shed and house! I can just hear what y’all are thinking. This is just easily changeable cosmetic stuff. What’s important is that these structures have solid and straight frames that will outlive me.
Back of the larger one.
The smaller one was filled with super heavy barrels, which J just winched out of the way.
Close up of the little one.
Moya on the prairie.
Winching it up to get the bad news that it’s not attached to the skids.
More abandoned buildings in the distance.
There were lots of birds on this pond and they put on quite the symphony.
Once I clean it up, I will have a bathtub. ???:) Or something. I couldn’t leave it behind.
You can see that the wood got wet, but it’s not rotten. I will be hosing both buildings down with a bleach solution.
Close up of how the buildings were winched upwards to get under them.
Wagon wheels behind the bigger one.
This is a big, two-story grainery. I’m glad J isn’t equipped to move these or I would have been tempted!
Classic car graveyard.
This barn is being reclaimed by the climate.
Hitching it up again now that the skids are attached.
A metal bar is run under the middle skid and attached to it with a bolt and then the bar is attached to the truck hitch.
Because the skids weren’t attached during construction, the guys has to resort to chaining them in place. Lots of extra work!
Back of the small grainery showing some of the chain.
Locked and loaded and legal!
On the move!
Stopped on the road watching the roof of my shed come up over the hill.
Winching up the house.
Getting the dollies under it.
Driving down into the hamlet.
Here comes my house! 🙂
Because of the soft ground and overheard wires, we had to drop the house a few feet further north than I would have liked, but the position is quite satisfactory as it does not block my office window.
Inside the house. It has less evidence of water damage and the floors are really nice fir boards.
Haven with buildings.
Inside the shed.
View from the office. I can still see through the neighbour’s yard.
This video is worth watching for the last couple of seconds. Listen to what I say and see if you can catch it.
I said, “Is it supposed to be baloting like that?” I meant wobbling or teetering, but I apparently lose my English and resort to French when I’m excited and tired and hungry. 🙂
The only thing missing to make the return to Haven perfect was running water. I was in Willow Bunch today and went to the town office to ask when I could expect the hydrant to be turned on for me, but the office was closed.
Well, late afternoon, there was a knock at my door from a town maintenance guy who wanted to inform me that he’d been procrastinating on getting the hydrant open, but seeing me moved back and settled was the kick in the pants he needed to get the job done! Everyone here is so kind!!!
I’m hooked up and filling the holding tank now, seeing as I need the water pump to get enough pressure for a shower. Once the tank is full, I’ll be able to see if the water heater fires up. Let’s cross all our appendages that I will be able to take a shower at home tonight!
My water system appears undamaged (no leaks) from the harsh winter I just put it through, so I’m cautiously optimistic. But we all know how temperamental my water heater can be…
