Day 85 - When the Bristolian Foxies arrived (or when Foxie did IKEA)

Lots of excitement on site today at Foxlease Park.

We started with the arrival of electricians and fire panel installations in various places and the former worked steadily through the day; the latter finishing the smaller task, rather more swiftly.  Our volunteers today continued an array of tasks, including lots in The Barn - touch up painting with nearly identical paint - we've gone a bit Jackson Pollock in places with shades of primrose but it looks alot brighter - second coat tomorrow.  We had a different contingent of floor cleaners scrubbing the Main Hall Floor in The Barn today and it looks more like the true blue it should be by the day, although it is slow going in there.  We're hoping the worst of the paint may nearly be gone and so we'll be on to more standard dirt removal methods tomorrow and in advance of the weekend.  We also had further curtain activitiy in the Main Hall in The Barn to ensure that hems are level and looking sharp - unfortunately the Singing Washing Machine set us back a little bit as the material didn't quite hold up as we'd hoped in the cool wash and so they needed some adjustment.

Outside of The Barn we had a host of exciting arrivals, including newly covered window seat cushions made for the Foxlease House bar area (known to many of you as Hampshire), which travelled all the way from Birmingham, and 50 Bristolian Foxie toys transported to us by Volunteer Catherine who kindly purchased and donated them to us, ready for them to be re-dressed in Foxie neckers and sold in the onsite and online Foxie's Shop (listed online now for those who asked).  They look like they are happy to be in their new temporary home (and safe from the clutched of Catherine's dog who was keen to meet them) and Catherine then kindly gave us the day of her time cleaning the floor in The Barn before her long journey home again. 

We also had great work happening to reinvigorate the border between the outside toilet block and The Barn and our volunteers working in that area worked hard to remove the overgrowth and brambles, including cleaning back the edging to discover the tarmac that hasn't been seen for some time - eight wheelbarrow loads and one large back of brambles cleared - amazing work.  Our volunteers who have been working to clear to the rear of Foxlease House over the last few weeks also returned and were determined to make their clearance efforts meet in the middle, which they achieved by the end of the day and that is starting to look fab again, ready for our events on the rear lawn later in the year.

Foxie rounded off the day with a trip to Totton Glass to collect the panels for the front doors of The Barn needing repair, which should hopefully be fitted tomorrow, and also then a trip to IKEA to collect some essentials which just weren't cost effective via Amazon, like cutlery trays, mirror tiles for some of the bathrooms, new plastic plates for one of the buildings and the first set of frying pans. 

More electrical works, and system flushing tomorrow, Love Foxie x