After finally moving into our unfinished house on Friday, followed by another busy Saturday dealing with gas pipes and moving belongings, one might reasonably expect Sunday to be a day of rest.
Well, not quite.
There is still so much to do outside that spending an entire day doing nothing seems almost impossible. Every time I look around the property, I find another corner that needs cleaning, another pile of rubbish that needs removing or another old structure that should probably have disappeared years ago.
Today, I decided to attack one of those structures: an old, thoroughly deteriorated wooden shed at the back of our property.
As usual, the plan sounded considerably simpler before I started.
But Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest!
Since arriving in Moldova, I have repeatedly heard that Sundays are not supposed to be working days.
At least, that is the position of Vita's parents, who are very devout Orthodox Christians. In their understanding of religious tradition, Sunday should be reserved for worship, rest and family rather than ordinary manual labour.
I respect their beliefs. They have their traditions, and those traditions are important to them.
But I am not a religious person.
For me, Sunday is another day of the week, particularly when there is a house to finish renovating and a garden that has been neglected for far too long.
I also find a certain satisfaction in physical work. Much of my professional life has been spent dealing with computers, software, infrastructure and problems that are not necessarily visible to anybody outside the technical world.
Dismantling an old shed is rather different. At the end of the day, something that was standing in the morning is no longer there. The result is tangible, even if the work itself is considerably more exhausting.
So, religious traditions notwithstanding, I decided that Sunday would be a productive day.
I collected some tools, put on my gloves and went outside.
Proper personal protective equipment?
Well... almost none.
Looking back, that was not particularly intelligent. Demolition work, especially involving an old and deteriorating structure, is not something to approach casually. But I was thinking more about getting the job done than about the potential hazards.
As I would discover later, that was a mistake worth correcting before continuing.
An unexpected interruption: walnuts!
Before I had made much progress with the shed, something on the ground caught my attention.
Walnuts.
Not just one or two. There were walnuts lying around beneath an enormous walnut tree at the back of our property.
And suddenly my demolition project had to wait.
New priority: collect the walnuts!
One of the things I have been discovering about living in Moldova is how much food can come directly from the garden. Fruit trees, vegetable plots, vines and other productive plants are common features of residential properties, particularly older ones.
Our property is no exception. We have a large walnut tree, and the quantity of nuts it can produce is genuinely impressive.
It is one thing to buy a small bag of walnuts at the supermarket. It is quite another to stand beneath a tree and discover that the same kind of food is simply falling onto the ground, waiting to be collected.
I had to gather as many as I could.
And we are not talking about a few walnuts for an occasional snack. A mature walnut tree can produce a substantial harvest. There is potentially kilograms of food available from a single tree.
For free!
Well, almost free. There is still the work of collecting, cleaning, drying and storing them.
I find the process rather fascinating. The walnut inside its hard shell is essentially the same product we buy from a shop. Commercial producers naturally have additional steps for removing the outer husk, cleaning, drying, sorting and packaging the nuts, but the fundamental product comes straight from the tree.
For home use, the important part is collecting the walnuts before they deteriorate, removing any remaining outer husks and allowing them to dry properly in a well-ventilated place. Nuts that have become mouldy or spoiled should be discarded.
There is something deeply satisfying about having a productive tree on your own property. It requires relatively little attention compared with an annual vegetable crop, yet it can provide a significant amount of food year after year.
I have no intention of letting that opportunity go to waste.
Eventually, after interrupting my original plans to collect walnuts, I returned to the shed.
After all, it was supposed to be demolition day, not walnut-harvesting day.
The old shed and its unexpected contents
The structure I had decided to dismantle was not exactly an architectural masterpiece.
It was an old wooden shed assembled from an assortment of timber, boards, supporting posts and roofing materials. Years of exposure and deterioration had left it looking rather miserable.
Parts of the wood were visibly damaged, the cladding was deteriorating, and the entire structure contributed very little to the appearance of the property.
In its current condition, I could see no reason to preserve it.
My intention was straightforward: dismantle the structure, remove the rubbish and clear the space. Anything made of suitable untreated timber could potentially be used as firewood, while the rest would need to be disposed of appropriately.
That was the plan.
But once I started removing the wooden boards, I noticed something unexpected.
The shed contained a considerable quantity of what appeared to be cedar planks.
The smell was unmistakably cedar-like. Even after all those years, the timber retained a distinctive aromatic scent that made me stop and reconsider what I was doing.
Of course, smell alone is not enough to establish the precise wood species. Several aromatic softwoods can have similar characteristics, and I would need to examine the timber more carefully before identifying it with confidence.
Nevertheless, it certainly seemed worth saving.
And there went another part of my original plan.
I had intended to get rid of the shed and reduce the amount of material cluttering the property. Now I was discovering timber that might be useful for another project.
Burn it?
Absolutely not, at least not before determining exactly what it is and whether it can be reused.
Aromatic cedar-type timber can be useful for furniture, storage fittings, interior cladding or other woodworking projects, depending on its species and condition. Old boards would also need to be checked for deterioration, previous coatings and any chemical treatment.
It would be rather foolish to destroy potentially useful material merely because it happened to be part of an ugly old shed.
There was, however, one small inconvenience.
By deciding to keep the planks, I had just created another pile of materials that would need sorting and storing somewhere on the property.
In other words, I was dismantling an old shed to get rid of rubbish, only to discover that I wanted to keep some of the rubbish.
Excellent progress. :)
Three sides down. Then I noticed the metal frame.
Despite the interruptions, I managed to remove three sides of the shed.
By this point, the structure was considerably more open, and I was beginning to see the garden behind it properly.
That was encouraging.
However, dismantling an old building has a tendency to reveal things that were not obvious from the outside.
And this time, the surprise was rather more serious than a collection of useful timber.
Above me, supporting part of the remaining roof structure, was a substantial metal frame.
A large, heavy metal frame.
Heavy enough that, if it came down unexpectedly, it could cause extremely serious injuries. Quite possibly fatal ones.
And there I was, standing beside a partially dismantled shed with my gloves, a few tools and very little in the way of proper protective equipment.
Suddenly, continuing the demolition did not seem like such a clever idea.
As I removed more of the wooden structure, I could no longer take the stability of the remaining roof and metal supports for granted.
I had no reliable way of knowing exactly how the frame was supported, how much load it was carrying or what might happen if I removed another piece of timber.
There was also the old corrugated roofing to consider. Its composition and condition would need to be established before further disturbance, particularly because certain older roofing materials can require specialist handling.
So I stopped.
Not because I had lost interest in finishing the job, but because I realised that continuing without proper preparation would be an unnecessary risk.
I have spent enough years working with technical systems to know that making assumptions about something you do not properly understand is a reliable way to create problems.
The same principle applies to physical structures.
There is no particular glory in finishing an old shed demolition if the price is having several hundred kilograms of metal and roofing material land on your head.
The job can wait.
At least I can finally see the garden
Even though I did not finish dismantling the shed, the day's work produced a very satisfying result.
For the first time, with most of the wooden sides removed, I could see much more clearly into the garden behind it.
The photograph shows the state of the structure after my work: weathered wooden posts, remnants of old cladding, corrugated roofing, exposed structural elements and a considerable amount of debris on the ground.
Beyond it, the garden is beginning to emerge.
There are planted areas, raised wooden borders, climbing vegetation, trees and plenty of greenery. It is not an empty piece of land. There is already an established garden, although it clearly needs considerable attention.
Some parts are overgrown. Others are cluttered with materials that have accumulated over the years. There are old boards, uneven areas and all sorts of things that will need to be removed or reorganised.
But the potential is obvious.
And I find that much more motivating than simply looking at an old, deteriorating shed.
Now I can begin to imagine how the space might look once the remaining structure has been safely removed, the rubbish has disappeared and the garden has been properly cleaned.
I am not yet making elaborate plans for landscaping. There is no point in deciding where every plant, path or piece of garden furniture should go when I still have demolition work to finish.
First, clear the space.
Then assess what is already there and what is worth preserving.
Only after that does it make sense to decide how to organise the area.
One thing is certain: the walnut tree is staying.
That tree has already earned its place in my plans.
A productive Sunday, even if the job is unfinished
By the end of the day, I had not achieved everything I originally intended.
The shed was still partially standing. The heavy metal frame remained in place. There was more rubbish to organise, and I had accumulated a collection of timber that I now wanted to keep instead of disposing of.
On the other hand, I had removed three sides of an old shed, recovered potentially useful wood, collected walnuts from our tree and opened up the view towards the garden.
Not a bad result for a Sunday.
Perhaps the most important achievement was recognising when it was time to stop.
I tend to be persistent when I begin a project. Once I have decided to do something, I generally want to finish it. That can be useful when dealing with complicated problems, but it can also become a liability when the circumstances change.
Today was a good example.
My original objective was to dismantle a shed. Once I discovered the heavy frame and the uncertainty surrounding its supports, the sensible objective became something else: leave the remaining structure undisturbed until the risks can be properly addressed.
I am happy to accept that.
There will be plenty of other days to continue cleaning the property.
And, considering the amount of work we still have ahead of us, I certainly do not need to manufacture additional problems by injuring myself.
Finally, some proper rest
After all that physical work, the walnut-collecting interruption, the timber discovery and the rather uncomfortable realisation that a heavy metal frame was waiting above my head, I had had enough for one day.
Time to put the tools away.
I went inside, had a very good hot shower and finally lay down in bed.
And did absolutely nothing.
Just watched the time go by.
There is a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from lying down after a day of physical work. Not because everything is finished, but because you can look back and see that something has genuinely changed.
The garden is more visible. The shed is partially dismantled. The walnuts have been collected. The timber has been saved for another purpose.
Tomorrow, there will still be work to do.
But not tonight.
Perhaps Vita's parents have a point about Sundays being a day of rest.
I just prefer to earn my rest first. :)
The events, personal experiences, humour, decisions and conclusions remain my own. Details of the property were supplemented by observations from my photograph. Unconfirmed information, including the precise species of the recovered timber and the composition of the old roofing materials, has been identified as uncertain rather than presented as established fact.
Comments
Post a Comment