Day 79 - When Foxie reached high places (and laid low ones too!)

Less volunteers on site today but the ones we had did so much for us - we have a bit of a dual focus across The Lodge and The Barn as both are due to open at the same time in a couple of weeks, with the first overnight shortly after and we have lots still to do!

We had a number of volunteers picking up where our last volunteers left off with painting in The Barn - the scaffold tower was assembled and Foxie and the volunteers reached the dizzy heights of the top of the walls in the back rooms and hallway and they are looking lovely and fresh and ready for guests now.  Our other painters in The Barn continued at the much lower skirting board level, freshening up the white in there and the lower parts of the room look great now too.

We had Volunteers Peter, Ian and Paul working hard to lay some scalpings for us in front of The Barn to level out the pathway there and to make it less muddy following the recent wet weather, and Ian and Paul continued on with Ian's project this week of replacing the broken tiles around The Lodge and the exterior of The Lodge looks fantastic now (people walking round The Lodge this afternoon were on pain of death to avoid stepping on them until they set to make sure they stay level - which resulted in at least one impromptu half-hopscotch to avoid them!)

We had contractor Ryan from Compass Projects who came on very short notice to help us repair some of the flooring in the showers in The Lodge with some very strong glue and it's looking sharp in there and ready for a final clean.  We also had our Legionella Risk Assessments going on across the residential buildings on site, again on a tight timeline, courtesy of David from Normans, who is helping us with the heating and plumbing systems across the site.

We had volunteers checking that all the kitchen goodies from Foxie's Wishlist made it in to The Lodge kitchen ready for our guest arrivals and it's so very nearly there in there.  We've got some small door fittings to fix, the cooker repair downstairs tomorrow, a further limescale removal to do and some final cleaning, one door sticker and then we're done and ready for action!  Not long to go and The Barn is catching up fast!

We've also managed to finalise plans for our Easter Open Air Theatre Event and an upcoming Foxie's Fundraising Coffee Morning on site in March and details of both will be available to sign up to via the website very soon - we can't wait to welcome the world back to site.  The deer have been preparing for action too, with one stopping by the main site reception this morning (see video) and a whole group hosting their own campfire chat this afternoon (see photo) - we suspect they may be plotting their escape for when all the children arrive back on site!

The focus is all on The Barn tomorrow, Love Foxie x