I sat silently with a cup of coffee in my hand. Just staring at the situation I had to deal with. The morning was sunny and cold but I felt comfortable in my layers of old sweaters. Frost clung fiercely to the plastic tarp as the building warmth of the sun ushered it away. I lifted the cup to my mouth directing my attention for just a moment to the steam floating from the coffee and warming my face. A short moment of serenity as the robins sang out their anthem to the spring and to this day. For today is the day I am to tackle the mountainous mess that I have affectionately referred to as the "garage tent".
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| On it's last legs! |
For close to a year and a half I have stuffed this tent with items that I have salvaged. Items I believed I could use in my projects. I have attempted to neatly organize and store it. But blowing storms, hasty placement of objects and a family of long tailed critters living within the layers have forced me to this task. To empty the tent. To purge! To make the big dump!
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| What to do with all this stuff? |
I finally have the garage pretty weather tight that I can use it as, basically... a garage. The south side that was open to the blowing elements has been sealed up with a layer of siding paper. I have in the door and the window on that side as well. The only holes left on the garage face away from the direction of any incoming weather.
The tarps on the roof are in good shape so I am confident that anything I put in here will stay dry until I put on a permanent roof. But I need a wood storage rack in the garage and I don't necessarily want to build another one when I have a perfectly good one. In the tent... buried under a boat load of wood.
So what do you do in a situation like this? You stare at it for a while as you sip your cup of coffee and psyche yourself up for the task. Because I know this is no quick task. I know that the moment I start this will be at least an eight to ten hour task. But it must be done! Because like any kind of purge, any kind of cleansing, the psychological relief can be up lifting. Comparing to that of a laxative induced release after days of clogged suffering. With that inspiration in mind, I put down my coffee cup, put on my work gloves and walk straight into the cascade of clutter. Perhaps never to be seen again.
Now that the garage is down on the it's foundation and the framing has begun, I have a clearer idea as to what I really need. For months it was a grab bag mentality when it came to the opportunities for salvaged material. Although I had a vision and tried to curtail my salvaging to meet it, there were still many unknowns that pushed me to take things for the "what if". Many of those items I now see are simply adding to the overwhelming collection in the tent. I pulled material out and spread it all over my backyard. More or less covering every square inch and even surprising myself how efficiently and densely packed the tent was. This alone took me nearly thee hours. I then had to step back for a moment and grab another cup of coffee to survey the scene. The material was laid out like injured soldiers in a triage field awaiting surgery. It was now my job to walked through the wounded and decide who would make it and who would not.
I knew I wanted to keep the cedar boards. I had many uses for those. I got the rack set up in the garage and dedicated a portion of it to the cedar.
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| New Rack in the garage. Looks about the same. |
I then picked through the framing material and evaluated what was useful and what was not. As you can see from my last entry, my standards aren't to high. However, I did have many pieces I had to convince myself were really of no use. I do have a very difficult time taking things to the dump, but eventually it does have to happen.
Luckily in Seattle I do have some choices as to what to do with my unwanted items. I am thorough in my separation of the material heading out. Almost to an obsessive point. I stack all the metal objects in one pile, even a couple of old caulking guns. Even though there is a metal recycling pile at the dump, I like to give my metal to the scrap metal guys that hang out at the entrance of the dump. The wood I separated into a the "useful" and "not". The useful stuff went to Second Use Salvage. The "not" was separated to "clean" (with no paint or stain) and "dirty". The clean can be thrown into the yard waste. Dirty... well it's dirty and has to become landfill. I was happy that in the 4 truck loads that I hauled away only one became landfill.
The happy ending... NO MORE TENT. I'm sure there was celebrating within the walls of my neighbors house. The eye sore testimony to my white trashdom was finally gone. No more rattling and rustling coming from my backyard during the winter storms. The unfortunately thing is that there was no saving it. Besides the year and a half this stood on my yard, it spent two years on a construction site. It did well in it's job to serve and protect. But the tarp bore many duct taped wounds and no longer shed water. The poles were severely bent. The metal salvage guys were blessed this day. Sadly the landfill is a little more full. But my yard is open, the garage is packed and I can once again see the mountains from my backyard.
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| Look at that view! OK. The old tree needs to come down. But I do have a hard time letting go of those things. |
