April 19th - Can't RV This Spring and Summer so Readying the Lake Lot for Camping

We have been working on getting the lake lot spruced up for camping since it appears this may be the only place we can go this summer with the RV. We have not camped on the lot in at least five years. We can go there and work and camp this spring and summer and social distancing is not a problem.

Yesterday was a beautiful day so we decided to go out and work on the shed and steps. My first project was to raise the shed four inches because due to settling runoff flow the back corner was sitting in the dirt. I forgot to take a before picture. I used my 3.5 ton floor jack for this project. It is heavy. I could not lift it into the HHR myself so Kelly had to help load it and unload it. I did a little digging in the middle of the shed on the low side and pushed the jack under the wall and jacked it up. It worked great. I added a four inch thick stone under each skid on that side and moved to the other side. I added a similar stone on each skid there and everything remained level. Mission accomplished.

The shed is 8 feet by 10 feet. Rusty, a neighbor, and I built the shed about ten years ago from a kit I purchased from Lowes. I painted it at that time but have done nothing to it since. For years we didn't have water on the lot so I couldn't clean it if I wanted to. Until last year there was a large pine tree near the rear corner of the shed on the property line. When the tornado came through last year that big pine tree was uprooted and blew down over the top of the shed. Luckily it twisted in the wind and fell mostly in front of the shed such that the shed was barely damaged.

Over the years the shed accumulated a lot of moss and mildew because of that tree and others on the lot. After all these years the shed looked terrible. Our goal yesterday was to scrub it down with bleach and ready it for a new paint job. It took Kelly and I over two hours to clean it and here is a picture when we finished.

Now that it sits higher we can see daylight under the right side. Also on the right side in the picture behind the ladder you can see the root stump from the downed tree and hole it came out of.

Next we moved to cleaning the steps. Here is a picture as Kelly started to scrub them down.

When we started you could not tell that they were painted gray. They sit under trees and were totally covered with several years of green mold. We both worked on them until we ran out of bleach and had to quit. I'll post a picture when we are done cleaning them.

We went home and I purchased paint for the shed. (I can't believe how expensive paint has become.) We planned on going back out today and while I painted the shed Kelly would finish scrubbing the steps and the picnic table, which looks as bad as the steps. Plans changed this morning when I woke up to rain. The forecast I saw yesterday was only cloudy. When things dry out next week we will go back out and finish these projects.

Covid-19 projects.