Spar varnish, firewood and curtains

The kayak is in the "shop" (the Garden House) for repairs, I am putting another coat of spar varnish on the hull.

Most people don't put spar varnish on a wooden kayak hull at all, it serves no useful purpose. The point of the spar varnish is to protect the epoxy from UV damage, and a hull rarely sees the sun for UV damage to occur. However, I am used to transporting my kayak on my roof rack upside down, and so the hull does indeed see quite a bit of sun. Hence the spar varnish.


The downside of spar varnish on a wooden kayak hull is that it is easily scratched by hauling the kayak over rocks (or sliding it up onto a truck roof rack), and then it starts to peel and look like a bad sunburn. The epoxy itself is quite resistant to scratching, the spar varnish isn't. Anyway, I am sanding and putting two more coats of spar varnish on to get rid of the bad sunburn. I am using the same spar varnish I used last year, but it formed a thick skin on top that I had to break with a screw driver and a knife. I think there will be some spar varnish left over when I've finished the kayak, so I might just put the remainder on the outhouse seat. There is no point trying to keep it another year.

I also rearranged the contents of the porch to make way for some firewood. It looks very neat and tidy now, but once I get some firewood in there it will be dark and messy again.

I will not be putting up a curtain in the outhouse I decided. Several people have mentioned the lack of privacy which doesn't really bother me, but the loss of even a fraction of the view afforded by the window would.

This outhouse is over a kilometer into the woods from the nearest public road, and sitting on private property. If someone is peeping in the window I am more concerned about what the heck they are doing back in those woods than I am about what they may or may not be able to see.

Jokingly I suggested to one of my neighbours that a shotgun in the outhouse might be a more useful idea than a curtain. She agreed. Not that I am considering it. But I would consider it long before the curtain.

I suspect though that this outhouse will end up with a curtain whether I want it or not, it does sit on someone else's property and they might prefer the curtain over the shotgun, I don't know.