March Maintenance

Just a quick visit to Hytte for a few hours today. We haven’t been for visits much at all over the winter, life got busy and it's been cold. We have been needing to find time to check up on the place and make sure all was well. After each wind storm or heavy rain period I worry a little about branches coming down or flooding at the cottage. The weather was gorgeous this weekend, so we packed up the dog, left the kids asleep at home and headed out to catch an early ferry. There is an old(er) little pickup truck that lives at Hytte now. It was gifted to the us this fall by my parents, who found themselves in a unique position of having one more pickup truck than they needed. When they asked, we happily accepted their request to keep it for them. It’s a nice little truck, nice to use for dump runs and kinda fun tooling around town, though born in 1998 it’s not old enough to be retro cool or anything. I like that it began life working at my dad's old construction company, then moved over to live at my sister's house for years before moving to to my parents' place and now on to us. Sometime back in January we noticed to our amazement that the little truck had been entirely colonized with mildew inside her cab. Every part of its interior was blackish and fuzzy, from the upholstery to the dashboard, the floor mats to the steering wheel. The infestation was awful beyond belief, and since it was the middle of a cold and wet winter in the PNW, I quickly voted to ignore it, write it off and wait until spring to deal with all the chemicals and cleaners that we needed to fix the mess.

Meanwhile my better half hatched a plan that involved nothing more than vinegar and a spray bottle. I rolled my eyes (more than once I have to admit), wished him luck as I walked inside, happy to let him tackle the nastiness. It sat for a month and a half until we had time to come back and today, I’m thrilled to say that he was SO right. I;ll say it again because he will read this- he was right! The mildew is completely gone, no sign of it at all, the truck is back to its old self with simple vinegar, water and determination. She was kinda dirty on the outside, and her bed is littered with fallen tree needles and cones but inside the cab was clean and mildew free. We brushed her off, started her up and took her into town to pick up some supplies and grab breakfast.

Back at Hytte we did some tree trimming, planted the widow box with new annuals for the season and started the spring/summer project list.

At the top of the list is to visit more often.

We also decided to bring the little truck home with us for the week and give her a nice wash and detail.