All play and no work in the islands? Not quite.

Spraying fresh paint on a favorite Adirondack chair constituted one of the checkmarks on my summer to-do list so far.

ISLAND SUMMERS HAVE THEIR JOYS, for sure. Bare-chested lunches on my warm deck. Watching Galley Cat roll luxuriously in the sunshine. Watering my new aspen as its leaves quake in a breeze. But sweet doesn’t come without sweat. It’s the season of cabin maintenance and outdoor projects.

One of the magnets on the Nuthatch’s venerable Kenmore fridge holds up my Summer 2026 to-do list that fills most of an 8-1/2 by 11 page. I won’t likely check off every item, but I’ll do my best to knock the hell out of it before fall rains set in.

The past couple days I’ve worked to exhaustion, accomplishing two big projects.

Yesterday, I finally pulled off the sprawling tarp that had protected my 20-foot cuddy-cabin cruiser, WeLike, from dirt, dust and weather as it sat on its trailer near the island clubhouse since last October. Usually the boat’s in the water by March, but I had a busy spring helping my friend get his novel published — reviewing multiple edits, responding to queries, generally acting as the umpire between author and publisher. My retirement days have been packed as of late.

A chrome nameplate identifies the La Conner-based builder of *WeLike.*

The tarp covered most of the boat, but a six-foot section of each side deck was exposed. And those patches were filthy and crusted with months’ worth of fallen fir needles. I spent hours with brushes, scrub pads and soapy water to bring the old girl back to respectability before hitching trailer to tractor and launching WeLike into Read’s Bay, our little nook of the Salish Sea. Tied to the dock, she looks shipshape and Bristol fashion.

The previous day I accomplished a, um, stinky project that had topped my procrastination list for several years. You might not be surprised to hear it had to do with my sewer system.

Nuthatch cabin was built at the end of the 1990s. The septic system shortly pre-dated a code change that now requires inspection ports in the drainfield.

An unavoidable part of rural life, especially on a remote island like mine, is being chief custodian of your own sewage system. “It’s a shitty job but somebody has to do it,” you might say. But I’m classier than that, you know?

As said custodian, several years back I ventured to the county seat in Friday Harbor to take a class designed to teach homeowners how to maintain their own septic systems. “This is the most expensive appliance you will ever own!” the dour instructor informed us. Screw it up and the replacement cost might be $40,000, he said with an expression to rival The Wizard of Oz‘s Miss Gulch as she recited Toto’s misdeeds.

Positioning a final inspection port on my septic drainfield required bushwhacking through waist-high salal and swordferns.

In the class, I also learned about the required inspection ports. Without them I would not be able to sell my property when the time comes. I think I saw a self-satisfied twinkle in the instructor’s eye when he imparted this fact.

The ports are just what they sound like. First I had to locate the drainfield and dig down a foot to find the thick plastic domed shell that creates a tunnel for the effluent that has been digested by microbes in the septic tank before flowing onward — if everything is working as it should.

An inspection port four-inches in diameter is required within a few feet of each end of the drainfield. For me, that meant using a four-inch hole saw to create an opening in the dome for permanent insertion of a length of PVC pipe topped by a removable cap. The objective: to enable the eager homeowner to peer down and see what’s there. Oh, yum.

To shorten a long story: Installing the port nearest the septic tank was relatively easy, once I used a garden trowel to dig down and follow the pipe exiting my tank. The big challenge was at the far end: locating it amid a tangle of salal and swordferns that had grown up over the drainfield in the past 27 years.

A new bamboo fountain burbles on my front deck. Birds drink from it in the dry days of summer.

Construction drawings for my place, bestowed upon me by my earnest friend with San Juan County, showed a single 50-foot drain line reaching across the open space in front of my home. The only way I could locate the far end was to use two-by-fours placed end to end to create a straight line, stopping to dig every six or seven feet to ensure I was on the right course.

Thursday, I located part of the domed structure one foot below the salal and approximately 47 feet from the start of the field. Eureka! I drilled my inspection hole, installed the port and called it done.

Good news: Peering into the new port, all I saw below was dry, bare soil. That means every bit of stinky brown water is soaking into the ground as intended. I won’t have to remortgage my place to buy a new “appliance.”

Other little projects of recent weeks: restitching WeLike’s canvas top and rewiring two defunct bilge pumps; painting a favorite Adirondack chair whose original stain had given up to winter rains and summer sun; and replacing the worn-out bamboo fountain on my deck, which is a favorite hot-weather watering hole for island songbirds.

Rebuilding my back porch before summer’s end is the 800-pound gorilla on my to-do list. I’ve started bringing home more cedar deck planks from the Lopez Island lumber yard, and I’ve set aside the week after next to get a start on it.

The best part of all this? It feels really good to check something off the list. Now I’m gonna go put my feet up. The Adirondack chair beckons…

It’s July! All hands on deck!

Hemlock (the darker wood) started my deck project, with golden cedar now the lumber of choice on this completed first phase of my deck renovation. But it’s not all done yet…

A QUICK JULY HELLO from Center Island, where summer means outdoor projects.

Months ago I committed to setting aside this summer to finally complete the replanking of my 25-year-old, rapidly rotting cedar deck, which had never been treated with any preservative. I started the project a few summers ago in bits and snatches.

The lumber must all be brought over from Sunset Builder’s Supply on Lopez Island. That endeavor is limited by how many 8- and 9-foot planks I can fit into the back of my old Ford pickup, Ranger Rick, and into the cabin of my 20-foot cruiser, WeLike.

The thickness of my wallet has played a role as well. Cedar decking currently sells for $1.06 per foot on Lopez. That’s about 7 cents more than it goes for in mainland Mount Vernon, but a relative bargain compared to the $1.50+ I was paying on Lopez at the height of supply-challenged COVID.

So it’s been a piecemeal effort, involving many hours of yanking nails, prying up old planks, sawing new planks, staining them with a cedar-tone preservative, and drilling and screwing them into place. I’ve even been adding waterproofing caulk atop underpinning supports to lengthen their lifespan.

So, expensive, slow and methodical.

Despite the tortoise pace, over the course of several summers I’ve managed to renew the largest deck area, the 15-foot-by-19-foot surface where I have Adirondack chairs and an umbrella table for entertaining when neighbors drop by for a cold beer or a barbecue.

But plenty remains. Five-foot-deep sections of deck span the front of Nuthatch Cabin and wrap around to the front steps. Here, while I’ve concentrated efforts elsewhere, planks have been gradually collecting moss and lichen and slowly rotting away to the point that arriving guests might just fall through next time they visit. Not quite the welcome I’m looking for.

So, at the end of June I got out the measuring tape. I determined that I needed 651 board feet of lumber to complete the project.

New cedar planks are gradually replacing old across the front of Nuthatch Cabin.

Without delay, I hopped aboard WeLike and spent day after day ferrying cedar from Lopez Island. Other than one quick mid-month trip to Seattle for a doctor appointment and a bit of socializing with friends, I’ve set aside the entire month of July to finish the rebuild. (Today is a rare day of rain, so I get a day to write.)

Just checked my bank statement. I’ve already spent $617 on lumber for this final phase of the rebuild. Not to mention the cost of caulk, stain, deck screws and new Velcro-fastened kneeling pads. The old ones, purchased at the rebuild’s outset, were now held together by duct tape and about as effective as strapping old kitchen sponges onto my 69-year-old knees.

With the mostly sunny days we’ve had, the work has been pretty much nonstop. The days can be hard but the progress is satisfying. In college I read Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” This is like that, but for homeowners. When I groaned a bit about aching joints, my friend Daniel comforted (?) me with a reminder. “The deck lasted 25 years. You’ll never have to replace it again!”

Unless I live to be 94. Not going to think about that.

Keep in mind that I live on a remote island with no trash-removal service. So once the deck is all done, I need to dispose of a large pile of old rotten wood. Can you guess where I’ve been storing it in the meantime? Under the deck!

I’m not going to dwell on that right now, either.

Mr. Fix-It rides again on Center Island

The doughnut-shaped part that needed replacing sits atop my tool box in the cargo area of my golf cart, Mr. Toad. As always with a DIY repair, kitty supervision was key.

FEW THINGS ARE MORE SATISFYING than repairing something yourself, especially when you live on a remote island with no Mr. Fix-It shops just down the road.

It’s especially satisfying when you’re fixing something about which you know very little, such as my golf cart, Mr. Toad. And the fix works.

I’ve never been a golfer. Until a couple years ago, when Barbara needed more help getting around, I never had reason to own a golf cart, though the electric-powered flivvers are the preferred method of personal locomotion on Center Island, where covenants prohibit personal vehicles powered by internal combustion.

I still prefer to walk (the only way you get to see the Golden-Crowned Kinglets mobbing trees along the airfield), or ride my bike, which I do for exercise when the weather is nice. But my golf cart, which dates to the Clinton Administration and is named for the speed-happy amphibian of “Wind in the Willows,” comes in handy when it’s time to lug trash to the dock or transport groceries back to the cabin.

After buying Mr. Toad in summer 2020, my first big fix came last fall, replacing the bank of six 6-volt deep-cycle batteries, which cost almost as much as I paid for the whole darn buggy. But the new batteries gave me the needed oomph to get up hills again.

Then all was fine until recently, when a new problem became apparent. Instead of accelerating slowly and smoothly, Mr. Toad began hopping in short bursts. No matter how carefully I trod the accelerator, either it wanted to sit still or go full-tilt, which seemed perfectly fitting for its fictional namesake who was imprisoned for his reckless driving. But it didn’t make for a relaxing ride to the clubhouse.

I can occasionally be clever with tools (see “A tool chest full of memories on Father’s Day,” June 2019). After taking a community college class in marine-diesel repair years ago, I never had to pay for someone else to repair my sailboat engine. But I knew bupkis about what made golf carts go, other than the batteries.

Here’s where the internet earned its keep, which is a big admission coming from me, Mr. Luddite 2022. I asked Google, “Why is my golf cart going herky jerky?” Within minutes I was watching a YouTube video in which a well-fed, jovial little man in Texas told me all about my E-Z-GO golf cart’s inductive throttle sensor and showed me how to change it.

From online research, I found other possible fixes, including a part that cost $400. But the inductive throttle sensor could be had for $23.99 on Amazon. I always like to start with the cheapest likely fix and go from there. I hit the order button. The part would arrive in six days.

The Chinese-made part was sold by a company that inexplicably calls itself 10LOL. That’s the numeral “10,” followed by the letters “LOL.” I wonder where some of these Chinese companies get their names, and who is advising them. Don’t they know that in the U.S.A., “LOL” stands for “laughing out loud”? Maybe the Omaha-based marketing consultant who helped them pick that name is laughing all the way to the bank.

The new part looked just like the old one: a doughnut-shaped piece of hardened black plastic, about two inches high, topping a small platform with a couple of electrical hookups. It didn’t look like anything that should make a difference to how my golf cart accelerated, but it did the trick for that well-tummied Texan. I said a Hail Gary (most fix-it guys on YouTube are named Gary) and proceeded.

Happily, the part came with detailed, illustrated instructions that showed every step needed to make the replacement in my model of golf cart. Even though it involved time-consuming removal of a lot of bolts to access the part, which hid in a little box beneath the floor mat, I was done in an hour.

I took Mr. Toad for a test drive. The acceleration is once again as smooth as a frog pond on a sultry August afternoon.

I feel like such a master of the wilderness.