Continued from the last post: The stables finally got cleaned out thanks to a few laborers and a few dumpsters. While stalls one and two were pretty congested when we started to clean them out, nothing really prepared us for the nastiness that was to come.
The third stall was by far the most disgusting one. Apparently the previous owners liked to hoard plastic planters like the kind you get when you buy something from a nursery. The entire stall was chock full of them and when one opened the stable door the pots came tumbling right out (first pic). I managed to get about a quarter of the stall cleaned out by myself last month, but with two helpers the rest of the work went very quickly.
One section of the stall has a bunch of old hay bales in it; we’ve left those in place for now. Perhaps the saddest thing we found during this project was the mummified corpse of a cat (second and third pics). It apparently got squished by the mountain of planters.
We eventually got it all cleaned out and dumped into the dumpster. Here are the before and after shots. (Oh, and the plastic bags we left are just full of dirt–that’s right, the previous owners put dirt in plastic bags and then stored said dirt on the dirt floor of a stall. I have no clue what their intentions were.)
Thankfully the last two stalls on that side were a breeze to clean, as they had just some general rubbish in them. Some bird poop, wild mushrooms and a soda can were in the fourth stall (first pic).
The far back stall has a giant hole in the back wall. From the outside it really looks like a monster came along and tried to eat the building (second pic). There was just some old lumber on the floor and yet another crushed soda can (third and fourth pics).
Just like the back left stall, the back right stall was pretty empty too. We could have kept the green fiberglass bits since they were part of the stable’s roof, but into the dumpster they went to be recycled or resold.
Then it was on to the last stall. While not as awful as some of the others, everything in it was completely covered in barn swallow poop. Unlike the other stalls, it was also full of actually useful things.
Stacked on an old pallet was a large quantity of slate–leftovers from the front entry and wine room–and a few tiles that match those in the great room. We loaded it all onto the garden cart and wheeled the lot over to the courtyard. There, with help from the pressure washer, we got everything cleaned. Once the pieces dried, they were all stacked neatly on a shelf in the garage where they will be safe from further guano deposits.
In addition to the tile we found this useful gadget: a wheeled sprayer. It too got a good cleaning and a tune-up, and now it works reasonably well.
Here are the before and after shots of the last stall:
Next post: the tack room and office.