Howdy Ya’ll!
It has been a coon’s age since I last posted anything at
all. Literally, a raccoon could very well have been born, lived a very
fulfilling life, and be sitting somewhere in the raccoon version of Shady Acres
Retirement Home asking someone to turn up the thermostat since I last posted…
As most of you know, our family has grown by one last July,
and the Piglet is getting huge. Not “Daddy I ate the entire month’s worth of
food and now I’m morbidly obese” huge, but “I’m wearing 2 year clothing a year
early huge”. This kid is growing faster
than a well fertilized crop. (Come to think of it, he does give off a good bit
of his own fertilizer…overflow maybe?). Anyway, he has outgrown his little
corner of our room and we decided to convert our garage into a master
bedroom/bathroom and give the Piglet his own sty. To do that, we needed
somewhere to store all the yard tools, power tools, and miscellaneous treasures
that a family tends to accumulate in the garage. The plan was (note the past
tense) to build a barn in the back yard and then build out the garage
ourselves. We learned quite a few valuable lessons during this grand endeavor; for
instance, I apparently have delusions of grandeur. In my own mind, I am a
magnificent master of construction who can build the barn and room all by myself
in two weeks, which is the timeframe I took off of work and gave myself to
complete this project. Now make no mistake, I still have the aforementioned
delusions. Just not about my contracting abilities. Needless to say, we are
still in the same master bedroom and are about to move the Piglet in with the
Monkey. The Zoo is staying the same, just moving the animals around.
Regardless, the purpose of this post is not to cause you
concern of my mental health; that is still as screwy as a sow’s tail. This post
is all about the barn, which was to be step 1 of the project, and became the
whole project in and of itself. Now my Darlin Bride will tell you, I don’t do anything
small. When I decide something needs building, and I am the one to do said
building, it’s going to be big. As I was looking at ideas for the barn, I
determined that the stuff in my 20’X20’ garage wouldn’t fit in some puny little
12’X12’ shed despite it only taking up about one half of the garage. I decided the barn was to be 18’X24’ and 16 stories high. My bride (after recovering from her gut wrenching laughter) kindly
suggested that I might want to consider making the barn smaller than the house
itself. The final outcome was a 16’X20’ masterpiece of barn building that
actually looks halfway decent. While I would love to be able to tell you that I
singlehandedly whipped this amazing edifice up in two week with my own two
hands, that would only be a partial truth. The WHOLE truth is, I could never
have built this thing by myself. Not only was it physically impossible, but I
found that I don’t know all the tricks of building a structure. In fact, I knew
almost nothing at all! If it weren’t for my Dad-in-law and a couple of work
friends, the barn would look a lot like this….
That being said, here is a picture history of the barn
build. The first step was to clear out a 25’X25’ section of brush in the back
yard that contained yaupon, small pines, and the nastiest bunch of thorny vines
this side of the Mississippi. This took
up about three days of the first week, and the only fun part of that
whole affair was getting to run the chipper and punishing those wicked yaupons
for growing in my yard.
Now here is where my first lesson
in “You don’t have a clue” was. It wasn’t until AFTER I cleared, chipped, and
shredded the dense forest that I learned that the grade was WAY too steep to
build anything but a waterslide. There was about a 3’ drop from front to back.
Just a touch outside my architectural ability, so I opted to move the location
to our garden, which was less of a grade and wasn’t producing anything but
weeds this year anyway…
It was also about this time I realized that while the grade
was not nearly as severe, it was still present and required yet another trip to
Lowe’s Home Improvement for some cinder blocks to raise the foundation. Once I
had the blocks in place, I was able to set up the blocks on gravel and attach the
rim joists to the 4X4 skids and start building the floor. This was about the
time one of my work buddies stopped by to check on my progress (since I wasn’t answering
my phone), and immediately called our boss and took the rest of that day and
all of the next day to help out. Not that I couldn’t have done it by myself,
but, well ok… I couldn’t. Now that this was all in place, I (and by “I”, I mean “We”) attached the flooring to the
foundation and things started looking like a REAL construction job.
Immediately after the floor was finished, we built the walls. Apparently square actually MEANS square and not an estimate thereof. This wasn’t really important until much later when we started assembling the trivial parts of the barn such as the roof, doorway, siding, you know, the little stuff. Who knew, besides professional builders, I mean….
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| In the beginning there were walls.... |
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| And the walls were good. |
Once the walls were up, Dad-in-law came over and helped me
assemble the roof trusses. Now, for those of you who don’t know him, Dad is a
life saver and a genius when it comes to things like this. He showed me how to
make a template for the trusses, which made 99% of them come out identical (the
one that didn’t was entirely the fault of the crooked board, or at least that’s
my version of the truth!). When the trusses were finished, Dad-in-law and my
work partner came over and helped me hang them and install them correctly.
The trusses went up with almost no hitch, and we installed
the sheathing. When the sheathing was in place, I built the eave end extension
(actually by myself this time) and installed them, and then my Beautiful Bride
and I put the tar paper up. As a side note, it will not rain until you are in
the middle of a barn build. Literally, EVERY time I started a project on this
build, it would start raining. You think God was trying to teach me something?
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| Dad-in-Law hard at work....again |
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| Hmmm...what did I forget? OH YEAH...the DOOR..... |
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| Aaaaaand, we're DONE!!! |
Thank you to everyone who helped us on this project! I (WE) really do appreciate it!
Until next time,
