When ever you have a building project you are go to second guess yourself every now and again. You know, little things like, “should I have put that wall there” or “how is this layout going to work now”. On our farm there have been times that we second guessed ourselves, but I believe for the most part we wouldn’t change much and I know we are completely happy with what we have … and are in the process of finishing.
With all of that said though … I do have one little regret. One little thing that I wish I could go back in time and change, even though in order to change the one little thing it would have taken a few more steps. What is that little thing you ask?
A Construction Dumpster!!!
When we began our building project and the post frame guys came out to put up the house, we didn’t even have a rock drive. Part of the reason for no drive was just because we didn’t get on top of it, but also we were didn’t really want to trash it right away with big cement trucks and other huge delivery vehicles. Since we had no drive or parking area we had no place for a truck to come and drop off a construction dumpster. In hindsight we probably should have put in a drive.
What started out as a small pile of mostly wood and a little steel from the builders grew over time until it actually became two separate garbage piles on either side of the house … all because we didn’t have a dumpster. And as if the piles weren’t bad enough there is one little thing to add to the mess. We live on a hill, and it has been pretty windy this fall! So, now we have two huge trash piles of wood, steel, drywall, flooring, general trash, insulation, and so much more … that have begun to blow around the farm and get caught in the tall grass (of which we have plenty).
But, I’m beginning to take care of the problem with my “Operation Take Out the Trash”. On Tuesday (before we went to the hospital to have a baby) I filled the livestock hauling wagon with as much garbage as possible and separated all the wood and other burnable things. Now we plan on bring in one or two little dumpsters to fill-up with the light stuff (insulation, plastic, etc.) and I will probably fill up the wagon again after a trip to the landfill.
Basically, I want to get the outside cleaned up so before everything is covered with snow and ice. Then I can concentrate on the big projects inside…
Have you thought of posting on Craigslist or freecycle? There are many people who will gladly take some of that construction debris since there are often quite useable things in there. We have several things that were made or repaired using scrap wood from construction sites (Yes, we asked first). Just a thought. It always seems so wasteful to me that so much of that stuff ends up in the landfills.
Oh for sure … none of the usable wood is leaving the farm. Even the small chunks will be burnt inside and the treated ones outside. Most of what we need to pitch in the dumpsters is plastic, insulation, packaging, and small hunks of sheet rock.