Day 78 - When Foxie's Team was everywhere at once (or corporate day #2)

There isn't really such a thing as a quiet day at Foxlease Park, at least not in this busy intitial period, and today was absolutely no exception! (although the deer photographed, clearly wasn't finding it remotely hectic from its position outside The Barn this morning).

We started strong with our volunteers arriving, closely followed by our second corporate group from Aviva who kindly gave us their time to help us out with some painting and to have a little tour around some of the best bits of the site before they left us.  We were just getting our first volunteers situated and in action, in almost every corner of the site, when another group arrived in the form of some of our local Men's Shed volunteers.  They were closely followed by the scrap metal man who removed the first of the defunct cookers for us as it sadly couldn't be used elsewhere, so that there is space to fit the new ones, and the nice delivery man from Elliotts with a sand and cement delivery and he was delighted to see the barrier working fine this time (unlike during this last visit to us).  We also had a large number of calls and some partnership meetings and it felt like a very busy one for all involved!

As to progress made, lots of good things to log. Our wonderful volunteers visiting from Wales leave us tomorrow, having done significant painting, cleaning and preparation in The Barn for us and today they finished off the small dorm room and day room at the back of The Barn and tackled the lobby too - fantastic progress, with only a little to go and we'll share pictures soon.  In the Main Hall of The Barn we had a second group of painters who worked their way around the room glossing the skirting boards (necessary due to the marks left by the old heating system) and also finishing off the walls in there (again, photos soon).  We also had Volunteer Gordon completing step one of laying the replacement tiles in the rear lobby and replacing the missing threshhold - he also finished reinstalling the kitchen hatch for us and then moved on to planing down some windows in the Main House to make sure they closed.

Up at The Lodge (and it is an up as everyone who has ever tried to pull a cart or transport any thing up there by hand will attest to) we had Volunteer Ian digging out the broken paving slabs around the building ready to lay the new ones - he was also in charge of directing the Elliotts man where to unload to make life easier for that next step tomorrow.  At The Coach House we had our Aviva Team prepping and painting the upstairs hallway and it looks nice and fresh up there now - more action in there soon.

We had a group working hard in the garden areas at the back of Foxlease House to continue previous clearance and tidying work there - Foxie made a friend in a little ladybird who stopped by to visit them and they made fantastic visible progress in making the rear aspect look lovely again.  Their position also helped identify a continuously flushing toilet upstairs in Foxlease House which has obviously been flushing for a while but could only be heard by the water moving down the pipe - the water sound was reported into Site Office, we investigated and took remedial action to stop the continual flush.  Our water bill thanks them for their outside detective work  in the face of what sounded like someone having a very long mid-morning shower!

Our curtain experts were back, removing more curtains in Foxlease House ready for washing and prepping the curtains for The Barn so that they are ready to be hung next week when the paint in the Main Hall has dried. They went on their own curtain/housekeeping-related scavenger hunt (we love an impromptu scavenger hunt at Foxlease Park) and were succcessful in acquiring the various things they were looking for - a double duvet for some marketing photos and more curtains!

Our paperwork hunt continued in the office too as we've got some very specific things it would be useful to know and the paper box of treasures included the lovely excerpt photographed of where the name "Foxlease" derives from.

It felt like an awful lot more happened then we've listed but it might just be that lots of it happened all at once!

Painting, paving and perhaps more scavenger hunts tomorrow, Love Foxie x