More of the same. Retirement is under rated. Still sleeping in, followed by coffee and reading the internet until noon. A quick lunch, then applying myself to whatever project suits my mood for the afternoon. With Summer gone and Fall underway, I am concentrating on outdoor projects. Most of my efforts have been spent cleaning up the adjacent property. I started a small burn pile and kept slowly feeding it material for 2 days. While we have built and enjoyed gigantic brush pile burns when we lived in Kansas, we had to go with a small burn strategy here. Simply could not allow the fire to get out of control for several reasons. The fuel was mostly dead tree limbs, junk wood furniture, old fence boards and other scrap lumber. Cheap thrills to see everything gone and reduced to an ash pile a couple inches high. Over several days, I loaded junk quality chain link fence sections, a metal shed that had been crushed after a large tree fell on it, some appliances, and lots of scrap metal. Ending up being 2300 pounds of metal junk that put 200 bucks in my pocket from the local scrap yard.
I ended the month, by demolishing the camper trailer that Bryant placed against our shared property line 8 years ago. That eyesore is only a feet from the highway, and we had to look at it whenever we were making a trip to/from Bloomington. The task went significantly easier than expected. Armed with a reciprocating saw, crowbar and sledge hammer, I began by cutting the roof from side to side, about 2 feet apart, and in between the 2 by 2 pine ceiling/roof joists. After making those cuts, made a long cut along the top of each side, front to back so each 2 foot section of roof fell to the camper floor. Moved the roof pieces to the roll off dumpster and started working on the walls. The project thus far, has consumed eleven hours of labor over the course of 3 days. The only thing left is the OSB floor you can see in the picture. Once that is loaded into the dumpster, I will take the steel frame to the scrap yard.
The plan is to make a new entrance to the property where the camper sits now. Currently, we drive a couple hundred feet past the camper and huge tree stump, negotiating a very tight hairpin turn off the highway and onto our driveway. This month’s picture with the demolished camper also shows the original entrance to our property before we purchased it – see the wood wagon wheel, which was believed to be the north property line. We demanded a formal survey before making an offer on the place 10 years ago. Everybody (ESPECIALLY the seller) was shocked to learn where the north property line is actually located. This will make getting in and out of our place much easier. If we are leaving to go east toward Nashville, we will continue using the other (current) driveway.
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