Oh my goodness! Even by my, uh.. impressive track record, I'm not sure I've ever been this quiet online for this long. Yikes though, between sifting through mountains of paperwork, keeping my garden ticking over, a giant cleanup operation and finally Christmas, I've barley had the energy for coherent thought for a good chunk of the last year. :D Lots of collapsing in front of the TV to watch superhero shows though. (Black Lightning and Titans: highly recommended.)
So, that cleanup: well, it started off simply enough with this little shed. I really wanted to get all the clutter out so I'd have a bit more storage space for tools and stuff. Then, in a highly uncharacteristic display of me taking things a bit too far, that quickly escalated into removing every bit of scrap metal, moldy wood and broken and/or useless junk from my dad's old farm.
About 64 cubic yards of garbage! This is about 20. Some pretty tough work, but it's great to finally be able to move around without constantly stepping over trash. I mean, I going to miss the thrill of possibly contracting tetanus at every step, but still, it's good.
Here's what was left when the metal had been collected from the first batch of stuff I'd gathered up: just a sea of filthy trash! I think that's a bit of a washing machine on top; there were a couple of busted office chairs in there; and three or four segments from chopped-up, rotten telephone pole - and if you thought that'd make those segments lighter to carry, you would not be correct. :D
Moving over to the side, we've got a heap of musty, moldy, hole-ridden wood, including all the cabinets from the tool shed we saw earlier. Before I got started tidying that shed up, I had all these visions of restoring those cabinets, and painting them all cool colors. But no, the second I took a closer look at them, it was abundantly clear that they were unsalvageable. Worse than that actually. Once I had taken them all out, it was incredible how much more breathable the air got in there. Those things were no good.
When I finally had everything gathered up, and while I was waiting dumpsters to be delivered or collected, I was able to get back to the original job at hand: sorting out the tool shed. I started off by painting the gross walls with some leftover bits of paint. I had a little blue and a little yellow, so I thought it might be cool to paint half one color and half the other. And it was! With the cabinets having had to be removed from the right wall here, I put in some new shelving to replace them. The existing shelving in the middle was still solid though: actually very sturdy - perfect for heavier stuff. It was filthy, and rusty as hell though, so I dissembled it all, cleaned it up and repainted it with metal paint. I was going to paint it all either yellow or blue first. Blue seemed like it'd be a bit dark for an area with not-so-great lighting (Oh, I never mentioned: this shed has no windows! None!), and all-yellow shelving seemed like it's be a bit much, so I decided to Minion it up to match the walls. :D I think it turned out pretty well though. Was I also working on a couple of side projects at the same time? Maybee...
Shelving set 2: completed.
Ta-dah! And here's the finished shed. Well, at least for now. I still need to organize things, and bring a bunch more stuff out here, but it really shaped up. When I rebuilt the shelving in the center, I left a lot more room between shelves than my dad had, so I ended up with quite a few leftover shelves. Hey, you can never have enough storage, so I picked up some new upright bits (surprisingly hard to find!) and put together more shelving on the left here with them. Got to say: the new uprights aren't nearly as sturdy as the old ones. Hopefully the whole thing doesn't just collapse in on itself. :D
And here's the other side, which I hadn't had the foresight to take a picture of until the very end. Seriously, I should have documented this all way better. Heck, I should have gotten a GoPro for the whole process. I wish you guys could have seen some of the holes I had to pull stuff out of. I think that would have been really fun, but to be honest, I didn't even think to take photos until very late in the process. I guess I was just juggling so much stuff at the time that it didn't even occur to me.
Oh yeah, the work bench! Well, with everything else being blue and yellow, it only made sense.
Salvaged during the cleanup: a couple of old cooking pots, which I guess would have dated back to my grandparents, maybe even great grandparents. I'm sure they'd appreciate the inverted Halloween makeover I gave them. (Spoilers: they totally wouldn't). I'm not really sure what I'll even do with these; I think I'm happy just leaving them here looking awesome.
Flair, much like storage, you can never have too much of. In the process of clearing the old junk off the shelves here I found six of these: one short, but I thought I'd be cool to pride up the place a bit. When I found that seventh one, did I hold it over my head and make the Zelda item acquired fanfare? You better believe it.
And now, I'll probably post this somewhere else later, but as a treat for anyone who's made it this far, let's take a quick look at the July 11th 1981 Farmer's Journal - which tumbled out from behind one of the old cabinets in here. It's seen better days.
Compulsory warble schemes finished? What!? Nooooo!!!
"Lunches and teas can be brought out to the fields, some of which are quite a distance away" - well, thank goodness for that. About as progressive as you're going to get in rural Ireland in 1981, I'd imagine. Not great.
Why is Movie Movers in quotes? What's it quoting? That isn't even a phrase. That's never been a phrase.
I'm going to go with: same face, terrible drawings. Also, why have an embarrassing tie-breaker when you're just going to pull winners out of a hat. You just want people to grovel to your brand? Maybe they were looking for a new copy writer. With the number of times 'superb' gets repeated here, maybe they should have been.
"There'll never be a better time to buy a Ford!" You hear that? Never. If you're buying a Ford now, stop: you are getting scammed!
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