Before I start on how things went with the clean up, I have another update. I just got off the phone with Canada Cartage – the company shipping our new washing machine.

They didn’t receive it at this end, so they will call us with a new delivery date when they have it.

I might still call the guy at Home Depot tomorrow morning, to see if he can pull a few strings. We’ve opted not to go into town to use the laundromat, and have instead been washing the necessities in the bathtub.

Oddly, my clothes have never been cleaner or softer. Ever. And all I’m going is leaving them to soak in hot water and detergent, then swishing them around a bit before rinsing them.

Weird!

I am happy to say that we have got the old kitchen done, and everything that needed to go back, has been brought in.

I’ll start with the old kitchen.

There wasn’t much left to take out of there. Most of it was behind the wood burning cook stove.

Which, interestingly enough, also hid another outlet.

No wonder insurance companies are such sticklers about wood burning stoves and furnaces!

That basin may well be older than I am.

I left it there.

Once everything was out, including the floor mats (which were carefully picked up so that I could pour out the crud over a large garbage can!) and random nails and whatnot were swept up, I took stock of the floor.

This corner is the worst.

And there’s nothing we can do about it, right now.

I am guessing the previous freezer my parents used to have here cause this damage when it finally died.

The best I could do at this point was take the little shop vac to the area.

I vacuumed the window of what may well have been decades of dead bugs, too. I even vacuumed parts of the stove a bit.

A container of nails and… dirt? had fallen in here. I got most of them, but we have found so many random containers of rusty nails, I just swept up and threw away the rest.

I just had to remind myself of what was in this cupboard.

We will deal with this another time!

The weather outside was getting really, really windy, so the girls and I pushed to get everything inside. We will likely change things around later, but for now, it’s all in!

We considered moving the freezer back into the other corner and putting the couch where the freezer is. In the end, I just pulled it closer to the door, to make more space for the shelves we put back where they were before. They are extremely sturdy shelves, and are great to stand on when we need to access the breakers.

I decided to put the rocking chair in the old kitchen, too. More because of how I wanted to arrange the sun room.

A small shelf that was in the sun room is now tucked behind the stove. At some point, we can put a small lamp in there, so a person can sit on the couch and read, and have somewhere to put down a drink or something. There was even still room for a small garbage can.

The prie-dieu that I still have plans to refinish, fits perfectly in the nook on the other side of the stove. As do the folding camp chairs, some window screens, and even my dad’s old wheelchair tucks partway in.

So that’s done for now! I’ll be finding somewhere else for the giant enameled container that is handy. My mother used that for everything from washing and soaking cucumbers to make pickles, to making bread dough. We’ve made use of it ourselves, already. Finding a container that large – with a lid, too – is not so easy, anymore, so we’re not about to put it away in storage. (We put even more stuff into the storage house today, too. 😦 )

When it came to the sun room, the focus was on anything tool and gardening related.

This is where that plastic couch used to be.

The yellow shelf in the corner used to be in the old kitchen. Previously, we had a dresser under the shelf across the window as my “tool box”. The wood at the bottom of the drawers ended up warping so badly, it took quite some finagling to get it open. So, out the dresser went and we grabbed that shelf from the old kitchen to replace it.

It was full of jars, and a plastic bucket of nails and screws that was so old, the plastic disintegrated when I tried to pick it up.

We’d put the shelf under the window, on bricks, in case water got in (it did), but this time, we decided against putting any shelf against that window. Partly because the shelf has a metal top that will be a great work surface. Partly because the inner pane of the double pane window is badly cracked. At some point, we’re going to have to take the pieces out, so no one gets hurt.

The bins used for cat kibble and bird seed now have their own spots, out of the way. Before, they were just on the couch. No way the skunks can get those lids open in there! 🙂

Not that that will be an issue anymore, but I’ll cover that later.

The small garbage can is there told hold our wiener roasting sticks, and other fire pit supplies.

Here is the other side.

The swing bench is close to where it was before, and the cube shelf went back to it’s previous spot. We now have a tall box to hold the long and weird stuff, in the corner, and the table saw is easily accessible.

I’ll probably shift some things around later, but this will do for now.

Then there is the door…

I can lift the replacement door to close it, but when I do, this is what the hinge is like at the bottom. It has only 1 screw, and it’s not all the way in, which is a good thing. I wouldn’t be able to close the door, otherwise.

At the top…

The top corner of the door is actually flush with the door frame.

I remember fighting with the old door to get it closed, and having to lift it. While I did check the bottom of the door frame, for some reason I never thought to look at the hinges. At least, not that I can remember.

Basically, that means that this has always been a problem. Right from when the old door was first hung.

Much of the sun room is salvaged materials, including all the windows and both doors. So I guess they just made do and lived with it. No one thought to fix the problem.

No wonder the previous door started to fall apart.

I’m going to have to jerry rig it myself.

*sigh*

Once that is done, then I’ll double check how much I need to trim the 2 pieces of door frame that we took off. For now, though, the door stays closed because it’s stuck at the bottom corner, where I have to lift it over the door jam. With the outside door closed, the inside door will now stay closed (it blows open easily, otherwise).

We can now keep the sun room closed. The cats can shelter in the old dog house my brother provided us, and no more skunks coming in!

Which means no more animal damage, urine or feces to deal with.

We can actually start using the sun room… as a sun room again! 😀

The Re-Farmer