A Rush Job

During our morning devotions and meeting we were talking about the staff housing unit we were working on. The shower I finished will take three days to cure and there probably was a few days of cleaning that needed to be done.  Deb was asking about priorities as there may be more cleaning than there is time available.  “When is he moving in?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” was the answer.

Tomorrow?!

This means all that cleaning has to be done in three hours.

Deb did her best.  On adrenaline, she cleaned windows, swept and mopped the floors, touched up a few paint spots, put the linens back on the beds and the curtains back on the rods and cleaned two bathrooms.  The fridge got ten minutes, the oven got five.  And all the paint and stuff we had been using to fix the place up all had to be moved out.  By 11:30, the place was Ranch clean and she was exhausted.  Dutch clean would probably have taken a few days.  But with staff turnover being high and lots of housing units needing cleaning, Ranch clean it is.

I did manage to snap a picture of the shower this morning.  That’s some mighty fine lipstick that makes that pig look this good.

I started a new project.  In the mechanics shop there is a desk that will eventually be receiving computer diagnostic equipment for later model cars.  The ranch has operated for a long time on older vehicles, which don’t require such sophisticated equipment, but newer cars are starting to show up and they want to start training the boys on the newer cars.

Since many people have access to the building, I was asked to build something that would fold down over the desk and lock in place to protect this  equipment.  I was also given two sheets of plywood.  One of them was probably a Con for one of the boys as it had dozens of nail holes.  Someone got to pull the nails out as a consequence for some undesirable action.  This board appears to have had a prior life on a roof, with lots of shingles nailed to it.

It won’t be real pretty, but it will be functional.

So that was most of my day, first puzzling how to fit all the material needed into two sheets of plywood, one of them with a busted corner.  Next was wrestling these onto the table saw to cut them out, then beginning assembly.  I have most of the cover done, I just have to engineer a latch mechanism to hold it upright when it is folded upward.

Decent progress for the day and this marks two weeks completed on this project.  Only one week to go.  Time flies.

After dinner we had some supplies to get and also had a craving for ice cream so we took the car into Branson.  The ranch graciously allowed us to use one of their cars so we wouldn’t have to use the RV every time we needed to go out.  Piloting an RV on these roads, especially at night, is challenging in an RV and we were grateful for a smaller set of wheels.  We picked up some groceries and got our ice cream fix at Culver’s.

Was it worth it to drive an hour and a half round trip for ice cream?

You bet.