Year Two Day Fifty - The Out House

Dear all, 

We are hard at work up at the cottage - Darren has been focusing on the dock and I have been flying around like a mini cyclone in the background. I woke up with one major objective - I started cleaning like a crazy lady almost immediately on rising and apart from the mini-swim breaks, I fed the fire with branch after branch to try and reduce our pile of wood and debris. 

It is very inspiring watching Darren work - he is extremely precise and methodical and was adamant that the dock boards should be as near perfect as possible. I perform much better in an assistant role during a task such as this: my carpentry skills are very junior particularly with work involving the skill saw. 

Darren had to line up all the [carefully] cut boards on the bench and then fix the supporting board on top of them using a square, measuring tape, pencil (very important) and a drill. By attaching from the bottom, it would allow the boards of the ramp to be exposed without any screw-holes. Very practical and very attractive.

The ramp is quite long so required 4 blocks of boards ( 6 slats of wood per board) ** I am not sure if this is the correct terminology, but you get my drift. It was intense 'detail' orientated and laboured work on a very hot day and Darren was an absolute Trooper. 

In the meantime, I was cleaning up a STORM! Darren had started up the fire very early before sunrise ( we both has trouble sleeping due to various animal activity occurring in the cabin... it seems we are not the only residence of the property *squeak squeak *quack quack *grrrrrr (!!!). 
As you can see, our fire pit is looking fabulous and we are making a large dent in the brush.. Once the fire was fully fueled, I grabbed my trusty bottle of Pine Sol http://www.pinesol.com/, a bottle of Bleach ( and I HATE hate HATE bleach) and a bottle of full strength bathroom Lysol http://www.lysol.com/ and made my way out into the bush...

And this is what I was looking for... an innocent looking door (some might say)....

Inside, lies four little latrine seats covers ( back from the 50's when the cottage was a camp for young lads) and (to put it mildly), it needed a THOROGH clean... I decided not to post the 'before' pictures ( some might find them disturbing) but here are the 'after pictures' - Four Cleans Later!

The stalls are looking much better and now, at least, it smells of 'peach' in there [rather than 'bad']. I also managed to completely disinfect the main cabin - I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. My main line of defense was the Pine Sol, three scrubbing brushes, a mop, 7 sponges and a large roll of paper towels. I managed to clean the main room, the sun room and started on the bedroom with the bunk beds....

Here is the newly cleaned Kitchen Area! We have a long way to go, but my goodness, we are getting closer!!!

And in other news:

1. More lake residents: a large family of ducks pop by to say hello. 

2. The wedding guests begin to arrive next door (** you may be able to glimpse the deck out there in the bay) along with a large tent and various barges full of celebratory goodies! It truly is the perfect spot for a wedding.