Barn wood reclaimed

A few weeks ago Dave took my by this barn.

 He thought since there was an excavator in front of it, the barn's life was doomed.  He had stopped a couple of times and knocked on the door to the house next to it, but never got an answer.  So, he came home, looked up the owners on the internet and called them.  A lady answered and said her son was taking care of the barn, and she would have him call.  

We waited.  And the weekend before Thanksgiving, on Friday morning, around 8:30, Dave's phone rang.  It was her son.  He said if Dave could get there, he was going to have a meeting and talk about the barn.  He said there were others that wanted wood.  I couldn't wait to hear what the meeting was about.

  

The guy was very nice.  The only people there was Dave and another guy.  Both wanting wood from the barn.  The owner said they could have whatever they wanted off of the barn, or the house, or inside!  His only stipulation is if they found something cool, or money, they had to call him.

Dave came home and got me and you can imagine my excitement getting to go through the house.  On the outside it didn't look too bad.  On the inside....

 

it was a wreck!  I didn't take a thing.

But the barn.....oh that barn.....

Oh yeah, the thing was...we only had that weekend.  It was coming down on Monday.

So Dave got to work immediately!

 

Can you just feel the life?

I was going out of town that weekend, so of course I was concerned for Dave working by himself at this barn.  He worked mostly on the second floor, and there were holes in the flooring as you can imagine.  Plus, oh how I wanted to help get that wood!

 He worked hard all weekend long.  He let everything go but that barn.  The other guy had a "crew" with him!  Dave worked alone, and he got all of this tongue and groove pine wood.

He also got just enough of this wood that was also inside the barn.

 And he got this trim off of the house for me!  I LOVE IT!

He was working in the breezeway at that particular time.  And he got to thinking...wouldn't that red wood look nice

 on the ceiling.

 

As a result, I learned how to use an electric nailer.

 When we got to the very last piece, we wrote this on the back...

Here's what it says.
 This wood came from a barn a couple miles southeast of here.  The barn was built around 1890.  It's being demolished November 2014.  We tried to salvage what we could, so part of that barn still lives!
  Maple is who owns it now.  Dave and Cindy

TaDaa!!!  Here is the ceiling!

 

 

He also outlined this access area and breaker panel with some wood.

And I just had to show you this.....The date on it is July 18, 1926.  I can't quite make out what it says.  When I run across it again I'll try harder!  We've been a tad busy!

Cindy

PS  Told you it was going to be a cool post!
PPS  Dave said he went by the site and you would never know there was a barn there.  I haven't been by it since that weekend, but I'll go by and get a picture.  (Sad face)

Caulking the Entryway and Mudroom

A couple of weeks ago, before Thanksgiving actually....I caulked around the ceiling in the foyer and in the mudroom.  It was a lot of climbing up an down the ladder, but more than that...

but more than that....

it was about 25 degrees outside.  Made it about 35 degrees inside.  And brrrrrrr.....my hands froze.  This was through gloves.

Cindy

PS - My next post is being prepared and is pretty awesome.  Just warning you!

Woodstove and Insulation

The next thing that took us quite a bit of time trying to figure out was where could we put a wood burning stove.  We visited a friend that has one, and we loved it.

  At first we thought we could build a wall in our "grand banquet hall" and put it caty-cornered against the newly built wall.  See the L shape piece of wood above.  That would be the wall.  And we would have had room behind it to hide some wood.  Plus it hides the door.  Once we laid it out, I didn't like it at all.  

 I didn't like that it was taking up an entire quarter of the room.  I wouldn't have room for a buffet and I would have very little wall space left in that room.  For such a big room it has very little wall space.  We even moved card tables around trying to figure out a furniture layout to see if we could get it to work.  Nope. 

 So then we decided to put it in this corner of the room.  Complete opposite corner.  We wouldn't be using that corner for anything anyway.  So it would be perfect IF we could put some of the chimney inside the attic and have it exit the roof at the peak.  No can do.  The pitch of the roof, hence the pitch of the attic, wasn't in alignment with the ratio  we could angle the chimney.  Code is that the chimney has to go a couple of feet above the roofline.  So we would have about a 12 foot chimney sticking out of the front of our house, with brackets holding it up, if we were to put the woodstove in this corner.  So, we had an expert come out.  After spending an hour with us he determined the best thing we can do is go back to a wood burning furnace and put it in the garage, where the roof pitch is perfect for a chimney.  No stove for us.  I'm over it because if you look in the middle picture above the room next to the big room has a fireplace in it.  And I think that needs to be the focal point of both rooms. 

 So we got busy again.  Insulating.  The downstairs mudroom and bathroom is insulated.

 And so is the attic.  We started with this which was awkward because of the angles.

Note to self.  Do not raise up.  There are nails poking through the roof and they will hurt your head.  I have a hat on because it was cold.

 After all of the attic vents (blue things)  were stapled, we set to insulating.  There is very little room in this area so Dave would cut and I would lay the insulation down.

 I had to walk (crawl) across these boards that he installed so we would be able to get to that section of the attic.

 Then we both got to work on the bigger section of the attic and ta daaaah!

 It's almost finished.  We had about 50 rolls of insulation and ran out! 

 We have been putting insulation down in one direction, then rolling it across in another direction to create an R value of 50.  The R value of the insulation is 25.  This house is on a hill and it's windy out here so we have tried to insulate very well.

We had an extremely windy day yesterday, and there weren't any breezes coming in the house, so that's great!

Cindy

Upstairs Bathroom and Breezeway Floor

 This is the floor in the breezeway.  It's just a room off of the garage that joins the garage to the house.  I decided to try to stain it, with cement stain, like I did my garden girl statue.

It looks pretty good compared to a plain cement floor. 

 You can see a lot of the strokes from the cement.  And we think they sealed it.  Cement stain doesn't really work unless it has not been sealed. 

 

Dave put a door up to the breezeway, which helps seal the house from the garage.

Time out for a little romance...

 

 So, we were talking about how much the upstairs bathroom complicates things.  He has told me that many times, but I never understood what he meant.  Then he explained.  All of the bathroom plumbing need to connect to each other.  The basement bathroom and main level bathroom are aligned, but the upstairs bathroom is over our bedroom.  So, the plumbing will need to slope enough to, "get a turd to the septic and not get stuck."  I'm pretty sure he was saying that in laymans terms, but I got it.  So I suggested we move the bathroom over to the attic and align it with the other bathrooms.  Which he thought was brilliant....I tried to draw a diagram to help explain.

See where the top left of the diagram says attic...that's where we were going to move the bathroom.  Then it would be directly over the bathroom on the main level.  Then we were going to move the bathroom wall to the room that actually says Bathroom, and make it a bedroom, and make the front bedroom a sitting room.  It all worked out....in theory.

 Here is an old pic of our house....I couldn't find a new one.  So what we are talking about is the right hand side of the upstairs. 

 So we got to work.

 I helped pull wire.....

 

Dave was on the other side of the wall, on the main level, handing wire up to me and I was pulling it through those "wire boxes" (I don't know the correct term for them) and tightening them down.

Then we carried up the sub floor.  Which was heavy.

And while he did some other work, I screwed down the sub floor.

And we both finished up

Then we brought the tub and toilet into the new bathroom area and guess what....we do not like it!  There goes our theory!

It just doesn't look right and the attic walls slope so it doesn't give us as much room as we would have liked.  So, we are back to the original design and guess what....there is going to be one big closet upstairs!!!

Cindy