I got to the land earlier today with the intention of doing a bit of chainsaw work on the seemingly never ending pile of logs I have, and to do a bit of general tidying around when I suddenly got the urge to stick a new tarp on my stone building....
This is a task I'd intended to do in summer, I in fact bought the tarp in spring, but just never got around to it, it wasn't at all urgent, but today I decided it would be handy to make sure the stone-building was actually completely dry inside, rather than just one corner of it.
It turned out to be a relatively easy task.....
I had to remove the old tarp first which meant taking off about 50 stones which were holding it in place, it had already blown down so it was only covering about a third of the roof..... It was in quite a state, although i can probably use it even now to cover a small pile of firewood somewhere....
Thankfully I didn't need a ladder as the building is built into a slope ao I can reach a long way down the top end from the ground and have decent access from the bottom end by standing on top of the water tank that's below it....
To get the new tarp into position I lifted it on still folded, and unfolded it on the roof, which made life a lot easer, then shumfied it into position, put a lot of heavy and medium sized rocks on it to keep it in place, and trimmed the edges to stop the wind getting underneath it.
I had quite. a bit left over which I didn't expect, I bought way too much, but i'm sure this will come in handy for something, and I'd like to get through 2022 without buying anymore plastic! ...
This was more about working through my list than doing what is necessary
There are some tasks that I just NEED to do before others, even if they aren't the most urgent or logical.
I could have got away with NOT putting the tarp on the roof, but the fact that I'd had it on my summer list and hadn't done it, and that it was quite a quick-easy task, AND the fact that the old dishevelled, partly blown off tarp was just annoying me (it looked well-tatty) meant I just had to do this.
And TBH I could probably get away with NOT using the stone building for another half a year and then put a proper roof on it, I mean that is the plan eventually!
It's partly because I've also decided i need to get some decking down in my kitchen area - I had thought to abandon this, but the structure which holds the roof is absolutely rock-solid, and there's nothing wrong with it at all, except the floor is just crap, but if i get some decking down, and just close up the sides (probably with more tarp just for the rainy season) then I've got a perfectly good, functional work area for years to come.
And because the stone building is next to the kitchen, that just had to be tidied too.
Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get this winter and next winter out of the tarp and can put off redoing the roof proper until 2023. I've no intention of using this building for anything other than a store, so all it needs is a cheap tin roof, I could probably get away without even replacing the beams for a few more years to come.
We shall see!