A major item on the to do list got done last week. The cottage was built in 1969/70 here on Georgian Bay. A few years later a one car garage kit was put up as a boathouse/storage building. Since the late 1980s, the water level receded and the 14 foot aluminum boat has sat in the boat house along with its cradle and boat track rails waiting for the Bay to come back. It hasn’t. During the 1990s, my father and mother passed away after some illnesses and the boathouse continued to accumulate materials of various kinds.
Also around the property, bits and pieces of decks and stairs and even some original yellow plywood window flaps had been tucked away in various corners. Dock sections and shore line defense (wire baskets known as gabeons). The guiding principle was “keep it for it might be useful down the road”.
Well, practically none of it has turned out to be useful. So after much discussion and some procrastination, a bin was ordered. What size do you order? Hard to say. But a 20 yarder was dropped off bright and early one Wednesday morning. It was scheduled for a week’s stay.
Now, I have a history of blowing out my back. It goes back to my 18th year when a boulder needed shifting on the property here and no bulldozer was available, so I volunteered and damaged my lower transverse ligaments. Since then periodically, my back goes “out”. Having developed a good sized gut over the years has not helped. So I decided to take it slow and easy.
The first day I worked for about 45 minutes loading stuff carefully along one side of the bin. I wanted to leave room for some sizable wooden dock sections. To move these I had asked for some help. Two fellows were going to come by on the Friday. I did another 45 minute session of loading and called it a day.
That night it snowed and kept on snowing to the tune of 6 inches. I spent time on Thursday pulling pieces of this and that out of the corners of the boathouse. Friday I just stared at the snow trying to will it to melt. The fellows did not come on Friday. On Saturday more work pulling things out and getting them stacked up to load. Sunday the snow finally melted away. Monday morning I did a little more work loading and then sat down to wait and see if the two fellows were going to come as planned at 9:30 am. If they showed up, then the dock would go in. If they did not, the space I had preserved in the bin for the dock would go to other items and the dock would have to go next year.
They showed, well, one guy showed, not good news. It meant that I would have to help move five dock sections planked tops over a 2 inch x12inch frame structure 5 feet x8 feet long. Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, and slightly less heavy (one section was a little smaller than the rest).
My back began to ache as we sized them up. However, after a little fussing and thinking, we ended up tipping them up on their ends and flipping them over and over on their ends to the bin, a distance of about 80 feet. My back survived. Three old sets of wooden deck steps got sledge hammered into pieces and the morning’s work was done. Thanks to Jamie the dock sections made it into the bin. I did about 25% of the hefting on those, he did the rest.
Tuesday some more odds and ends: old glass windows, two old lead pane windows from the old 1939 built North Toronto house (why they got brought up I will never know), old lawn mower, old curtain tracks, bits of metal, my mother’s old wheelchair (should have donated that back in 1996 the year of her death), old fibre board, pieces of 1970 panelling quarter inch plywood, old shingles (been sitting for 20 years outside), and old this and old that and I was done. Totally beat.
Called Wednesday morning and they picked it up around noon.
1.65 metric tonnes = 3638.25 pounds
that is a lot of stuff – 30 years worth
Bluetyger - William J. Gibson's Notebook 