More maintenance

I have mentioned in previous blogs about the work Stephen and I have been doing around the property. There seems a never-ending stream of jobs, but as we sat down yesterday afternoon, we commented, that once we finish this latest one, we should be caught up. Of course, the lawn will still need mowing, garden weeded and hedge trimmed but the bigger ones will be out of the way. That includes painting the house and garage and their rooves and building the fence and decking, which we have completed over the past four or five years. These are jobs that should see us right for ten or so years and at least it won’t be us re-doing them. I can’t see myself up a ladder at 77. I still have a bit more painting around the garage, which includes one more window, the woodshed and posts that provide the foundation, but all minor chores.

The big job we are tackling this weekend is fixing the leaky garage add-on. Jason is coming from Australia and wanted something to do, so we suggested that. Yesterday Stephen and I cleaned out half of it, finishing the remainder this morning. We have used the area as storage, but as it has been leaking, many of the boxes were falling apart. We have already accumulated a monster pile for the dump. Why is it so hard to throw things out? I will need to sort through the remainder of the boxes, but really, it is stuff that was put there when I moved nine years ago or have added over the years. There was a box of my mother’s stuff, labelled ‘too good to throw out’, for example, a box of kids’ gumboots, Stephen’s plates, old knives. Surely if we don’t use these things, they should go, but I am seeing myself re-taping some of these back up. It will certainly be nice to have this area waterproofed, though it is not animal proofed. I do use an area at the back of my treatment room for storing more important items.

We also bought the materials we thought we would need for the job, yesterday. There is quite a bit of rotting timber to replace and some of the roofing as well. There doesn’t appear to have been any flashing put in place, most likely the reason for the need to replace so much of it. Hopefully we have bought what is required because, being Easter, shops won’t be open until Tuesday and I know Jason wants to spend some of his week’s holiday with his father. Levi did mention that if he catches up on his work, he might come too – ‘’a working bee’’, he exclaimed. Those words shouldn’t be put into one’s head. The lawnmower and hedge clippers might just find themselves roaring into life!