Last weekend my wonderful wife helped me clean and organize the barn. It's only 3 years old, but I've been bad and it was pretty junked up already. Working on getting everything labeled where it goes and hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way.
This weekend Cathy and Eli were out of town so I decided to tackle the shed while they were gone. I talked a friend into coming and helping in exchange for a protein skimmer that I hadn't used in about 5 years so obviously I didn't need it anymore and he did.
Here's the shed with most of the stuff cleaned out and sitting in somewhat organized piles in front of the shed.
The shed is 12'x16' with a 12'x16' greenhouse attached to it that I use exclusively for my aquarium hobby. (The fish tanks stacked out in front might have been a clue on that). A few years ago I raised ocellaris clown fish (Nemo for you Disney fans) and over the 10 years that I've been in the reef aquarium hobby I've accumulated quite a bit of stuff.
Here's some of what was still inside the shed when the above pictures were taken. The big tank on the right is what I use for mixing saltwater to do water changes (I used to use it anyway, I haven't made a real water change in about 4 or 5 years). I go through about 10 buckets of salt every year or two just adding salt to make up for times when I have big spills in the shed and things like that. When you have a couple hundred gallons of saltwater spill, it basically ends up the same as making a water change. My biggest spill ever was about 600 gallons but I think I've got things setup to prevent anything more than a couple hundred gallons now.
Here's the greenhouse part of the shed after we got it cleaned up.I put that white vinyl on the walls and thought I remembered that it was supposed to be UV resistant, but after 5 years in the West Texas sun it is brittle and cracking. Not sure whether I need to remove or replace it or what. The big tank is 1,100 gallons of actual water volume. It is a 1,250 gallon irrigation tank that I removed the top on. It is buried about 2' into the ground so it is much deeper than it appears in the picture. (It is 3 1/2' deep) I have 150 and 100 gallon stock tanks in there also.
These are the racks that the fish tanks go on. I thought about growing corals and other things in there but never got around to it.
A storm was blowing in so I put everything back in the shed before I got a chance to get it completely organized but I put it in groups. I got my camera out and started taking pictures of stuff and have already listed a bunch of it for sale on our local aquarium hobby bulletin board. 
It was amazing when I listed it all out for sale how much money I've had sitting in boxes out in my shed. Most of it was stuff that I bought because it was a good deal, not because I needed it. Hopefully I will be able to sell most of it for what I paid for it, but even if I don't, it will be well worth it to have the shed cleaned and organized. I am keeping enough stuff so that if I ever start raising clown fish again I pretty much have everything I need. I'm just getting rid of the stuff that I bought just in case I started another tank or two or three! ;-)I've got several other projects going on too. On Friday the electric cooperative sent some guys out to hook me up to the meter and I now have power to my main circuit breaker panel in the barn! It only took 3 years for me to get that done!
We're putting in a 20' wide X 52' long concrete driveway behind our garage, mainly as an area where Eli will be able to be able to ride his pedal cars and stuff like that as he really doesn't have anywhere to do that. (Gravel doesn't work very well). In the future it will be a place where he can play basketball and stuff like that too.
Since we are getting a cement truck out, I'm going to extend the flagstone sidewalk to the barn and put in a step on the front porch. I'm hiring the driveway part but I'll be doing the sidewalks myself.
All that should happen on Monday evening so hopefully I'll have another post soon.
That's about it for now.
Nathan
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