Day 70 - When Lodge Corner was cleared (or when Foxie shook and vac'd in The Barn)

A busy day on site today again as we had TV filming going on for South Today and the politics segment this morning so our volunteers on site had a bit of a chat about what they were doing and why they think the project is important alongside doing their tasks.

We then had one group of volunteers moving the curtains carefully from The Gold Room to avoid any damp and a second marking up door frames and gloss work for painting touch ups in The Lodge and testing taps as they went round the building.  They then followed those tasks up with more cleaning of The Lodge oven (phase 2 of 3 - see Foxie looking pleased), for group one, and, in the case of the second group, sanding down the areas to be repainted and repainting of the glosswork where needed to remove any dings and nicks.  Group one then moved onto further tasks in The Barn, clearing the wet lobby at the back (#3rd time lucky...or it might be #4th time now, but who's counting!) ready for tiles to be laid and a further clean of the kitchen.  They then cleaned the Day Room and small bunk room off of the Main Hall and liberally applied the shake n' vac to improve the state of the carpet...which is now looking, and smelling, beautifully clean thanks to their work.

We had a third group who spent the day in the upstairs kitchen in The Lodge, carefully washing all the kitchen equipment before stowing it away following yesterday's inventory and deep cleaning the last of the cupboards up there - save for the new oven arriving, the upstairs kitchen is looking ready for action and nice and clean again - it just needs the floor resealed to protect it once that arrives from the wishlist courtesy of one of Foxie's Fairy Godparents soon!

Our final group on site today were outside all day despite the occasional weather and they've worked miracles on the area which we've now called Lodge Corner - we don't have may before photos which do the fantastic work Volunteer Sue and Gill today justice as they don't really show the scale of the task - but if you think of the muddiest, sludgey-ish, leafiest piles of mulch causing the torrential rain yesterday to run all kinds of places it shouldn't around the front of the building and path resulting in blocked drains and very large puddles...that would give you a good starting point.  As the rain eased off this morning and a couple of gulleys had been reinstated yesterday the giant puddles had mostly disappeared, leaving only the leaves and promise and threat of a puddle-y return behind them.  Our Volunteers shoveled, cleared leaves, cut back the muddy edges and shifted away the mud and silt (so enthustiastically at one point that we understand the sign behind them had a minor inadvertent mudbath...) and the end result is a crisp and clean looking area in front of The Lodge which is looking so good it derserves a name of it's own so it has been newly christened as "Lodge Corner" (coming to a signpost near you soon...).  We couldn't do it justice with a before and after due to the lack of appropriate photographs, so we took a little video to show you instead.

Tomorrow's focus in on The Barn, Love Foxie x