How my wife and I spent Mother's Day.....De-construction of 4-hole outhouse, end of the day reflection and constipation....errr, CONTEMPLATION.

You really know how to treat the lady to a special day!

Rodin in camo. Great pic.

Her birthday was Friday, today was Mother's day, our kids spent the entire weekend at Grandma's........It was her weekend, to be spent in whatever fashion she chose.

She picked tearing down an ant-infested, woodroach laden, rotten timbered, outhouse.......who says the romance has to fade with time?

How'd you bust up the concrete?

Do any digging in the compost that was left for bottles?

Or what to do with-out an outhouse .

We didn't bust it up. Since our property was an old campground, there are 4 of these outhouses scattered about. We're going to maintain two, for family reunions and gatherings, remove one, and this one we're going to convert into a covered fish cleaning station. Already wired for electricity, (lights for midnight bathroom visits), and a water hydrant is just a few feet away.

They haven't been there long enough for bottles (since the early seventies), AND they're sitting on 1000 gallon concrete tanks! No diving for me.....

Wow...that's a lotta, er, fertilizer...do they have a lateral system similar to a septic or do you have to just have them pumped out if/when they get full?

They were pumped out when full....this one appears about 1/2, but it hasn't been used in many years and has solidified...at least on top.

Took awhile, in between umpteen other projects, but it's finished.

VERY nice job!! Cool wife also, they're pretty rare.

What kind of tree is that to the left? I see then around here every once in awhile but not common..

It's a Beech. Very common around here.

Looking good. Any plans to screen it in? I find in the fall the yellowjackets are a PITA when cleaning fish outside.

A hole cut in the table top with a bucket underneath will allow you to just slide the parts you aren't keeping into the bucket without picking them up.

No screen plans, but I am pondering the idea of a fan to help keep the flying annoyances at bay.

Without picking them up?? Whatsa' matter.....you afraid to get your fingers dirty??

Nope, just lazy! Scraping the slime/scales off of the cutting surface and into the bucket is easier than picking that stuff up too.

I suppose I should throw a rod in the truck?

"I suppose I should throw a rod in the truck?"

If you've got the time, I've got the fish......!!

Nice looking fish cleaning station. The bag holder keeping it open to put the meat into is a nice touch.

I like esshup's idea of a hole for dropping the scraps off into. You could do that on the opposite end of the bag holder end of the table, and just have a bucket or bag holder below table level and scrape the stuff right off the end into the bucket.

Wife and I have talked about different things to facilitate fish cleaning. Have not done anything yet, but need to by next year when fish harvest will pick up significantly, so looking for ideas.

It won't take up a lotta room!

What material is the table top? I'm looking to build one myself.

There used to be a BIG HOLE there for that

Four big holes to be precise. I considered leaving one riser, and doing just what Esshup suggested, having a lid that could be removed to empty the refuse down below. But, the thought of the smell produced when various mixtures combined, led me to seal all four up.

The top is 1/2" thick plastic over the metal. I've used stainless tables, but they require a cutting board of some sort to keep from dulling your knife. This one doesn't. Just wash it off with a little bleach and I'm good to go.

The table came to me just like you see it. A buddy of mine happened across it at a yardsale, recognized its potential for fish cleaning, and bought it for me. It has sat outside beside my barn, serving well at its intended function, for 15 years. Lots of people who saw it there tried to buy it, for the same purpose I was using it for.

It's finally under roof.

I suggest enclosing it and adding a refrigerator and air conditioner. Fish cleaning isn't so bad in 65 degrees with zero insects with plenty of ice cold beverages.

Good work so far!!

That is really a great recycling project. It looks fantastic.

We had an old two-holer outhouse on our present property when we bought the property a number of years ago. The outhouse a corrugated tin roof, two pink toilet seats, some old license plates nailed to the wall, and a few shoes on the floor. We wife had me use our front-end loader to push it out to our burn pit to get rid of it.

It had been Patsy Cline's family's childhood outhouse (Hensleys and Shifflets). Her extended family is all over this area, and her early years were spent right near here. Her second husband still lives a few miles north of here, and his relative are all around. We later found out that her cousin (former adjacent property owner) plus the former owner of our present property decided to move the outhouse from the old homestead to this property.

I burned it!

Gaunt's drugstore, in Winchester, VA, where she worked while in high school is closing its doors at the end of the year.

Nice spark! I'm with Dwight on his suggestion.

We have plenty of fish cleaning stations around here, due to the charter activity on Lake Michigan. Some of these are really nice.

The owners of one at the docks in GH were having issues with a few of their patrons operating the disposal.

This has a Start button on it, which obviously start's the disposal (flush water too), then it has a STOP button, which one would think it should turn it off, right? Not so my friend. The Stop button initiates a shut down of the disposal and we are looking at motor current to be within a window that tells us, yeah, it's cleaned out really well, then it shuts down. More to it than that, but you get the idea.

Well, there is an Emergency Stop button on this. People assumed it worked like a household disposal where you flip a switch to be on or off. That was confusing to quite a few. There is a BIG sign right in front of them on how to operate this gizmo, but nobody reads it. They hit the stop button and nothing happens. They panic and slam the E-Stop. They feel good because it shut off, but the disposal and piping is still full of their stuff waiting for the next patron to do the same.

Yeah, there is formal training on this now by the owners to the patrons that utilize this facility.

I think you guys are giving me too much credit...my fishing skills are such that I seldom catch over a dozen at a time, meaning I don't spend much time cleaning fish!

Great job! It came out nice. I like the table, it looks like it's made out of an old farm gate. I would leave the bag but you could add to the work area. Since the ends of the table are open you could make and attach a simple bracket to hold a square plastic dish-pan flush to the top on the other end. No need to cut a hold in the top. The pan could slip into the bracket resting on the rolled top edge of the pan. If the pan can snug up to the table you can just push the fish scraps in or put your fillets (with ice) or fish to be cleaned or whatever in the pan.

You can get a pan like this at a dollar store sometimes, they come in various quart sizes. Meijer had them in black, white, blue, green etc., cheap. A baking pan might be a better size.

Just an idea, it's fine the way it is too!