Old Barn Under a Full Moon

Work began on some of the structure of the barn today.  Old oak boards are being removed, and new treated pine from Houston Wood Treating will be put on the outside of the barn.

The gambrel style of the barn will be kept, and some new fascia boards have been added on the East end of the barn to replace old boards.  The roof will be brought over to the edge when the new fascia is complete.  We are also adding soffit from treated pine.

There are large holes in the East and West ends of the barn where hay used to be transported in and out of the barn loft.  We have two large windows that will go where each of those holes are.  We found them from a really cool company that specializes in custom barns (for people that want a barn like ours, but don’t have one to restore).  They are called Sand Creek Post and Beam, and based on some of the pricing found on their site, I shudder to think what a barn like ours would cost if it were built from scratch today.

Remember how I mentioned that the height part of this barn work was the part the Brian and I aren’t tackling?  Check out this old fashioned scaffolding that Sam erected to work on the barn.  Two pump jacks are used to manually propel the vertical boards to great heights.  Sam explained that he got these pump jacks at an auction where he was “in a fierce bidding war” with an Amish guy for the tools.  Obviously, Sam won the bid, and we’ve admired the pump jacks and the job they do.  Neither one of us have tried them out, though.

Brian continues to excavate the barn.  Water lines and electrical lines run to the barn, and we’ll begin pouring a concrete floor, possibly this week.

Intercounty Electric is also expected out sometime in the next week or so to replace and set new electrical poles, put in a new transformer and do some other electrical work.

Maybe its was the waxing gibbous moon, the hollow sound of our empty kegerator, or just a desire to do something besides work on the barn, but we spent part of the weekend enjoying a little homebrewing.  There’s 30 gallons of homebrew in the basement–10 gallons of hard cider, 10 gallons of wheat beer and 10 gallons of pale ale happily bubbling away.  Homebrew fermenting in the basement makes it easier to toil away on our barn.