Browsing Archives for Barn Raising

On my days off from work, I have a strong tendency to occupy myself with the one or more of the following activites.

1. Stare blankly into space for hours.

2. Stare blankly at ceiling fan for hours.

3. Attempt to guide tea and sandwich into mouth while staring blankly at walls and fan.

4. Miss mouth while trying for several minutes to guide tea and sandwich into cheek, ear, eyebrow, and forehead.

5. Finally, find mouth and give self food and drink.

6. Wipe drool from chin with back of hand.

7. Nap.

The Country Doctor on the other hand is a whole different animal. He happily gyrates from one insane project to another. A few days ago he informed me that “September was yard month” and “October is barn month.” To celebrate the start of “Barn Month” the Country Doctor built himself some doors.

To build the doors, the Country Doctor used some left over tongue and groove pine floor boards from our mudroom flooring.

He managed to work in a few cute “barn type” details into the door.  

He enlisted Ethan to help him paint.

One of the doors has a window and one does not.  

He originally planned to purchase ready made doors, but at the last minute he decided to try and build some himself.

I am really glad he did.  

I wonder what other projects “Barn Month” has in store?  

I hope there aren’t any stanchions… or horse stalls involved.  

The Country Doctor has been building some doors for our barn.

These doors have opened up a new debate between the CD and myself in regards to hardware.  I would like some nice iron handles possibly forged by the CD’s father, while the CD want to fashion some simple handles from wood himself.

And it was while I was photographing these doors and mulling over our hardware debate  when I spotted Cookie on the window sill…

And suddenly I had trouble focusing on the barn door… or on the potential barn door handles.

Because I was distracted by a sweet fluffy tail which used to be connected to a fluffy body which is not quite so fluffy anymore…

And then I saw the dangling leg and I thought to myself… Oh!  She is so beautiful….

  

Look at that face.  

Look at it.  

Wooky Cookie Wooky over here at your mama.  

Oh sweet little Cookie cat.  

Who wuvs you Cookie?  

Who wuvs her wittle Cookie kitten cat?  

Wook at her! 

WOOK AT HER!!!

Huh?  What?   Where was I?  Oh yes, barn doors.  I think I will shut mine right now.  And go find my wittle Cookie Kitten Cat.  Sweet little girly girl kitty.  Here kitty kitty.  Here kitty!

On my way home from work a few days ago…

Because I was distracted by the sight of a strange man appearing out of what seems like mist, but it is not mist, it is actually just a very poor photo…

And here is another very poor photo…

But back to that strange man who was wearing shredded clothing and sporting a bad haircut.  

Who appeared to be painting my barn!

I had grown so accustomed to the “Bleeding Kansas Barn” that I was speechless!

No one seemed to mind that I was rendered speechless, especially the strange man with the shredded, stained clothing and the poor haircut.

A few days later, I took some more photos of our new red barn.

And then I took some more…

And yes sorry, just a few more…

The country doctor has been working on the roof of the barn since he came home from work on Friday night. This particular man may occasionally frustrate me for a multitude of reasons, but laziness is not among them.

He has been hauling both the long sheets of metal roofing and the pieces that fit over the peak, one at a time, up the ladder, caulking them together, and then screwing them down.

It is a monster of a job and I have not even been here to help him. Instead, I drove back out to western Kansas to pick up the boys from camp.

There are a lot of stories I need to tell you about that trip, the most important being how grumpy April gets on long car trips. Her normally tolerable level of bossiness, becomes practically unbearable.

This is a picture of her probably saying something like – Rechelle move your knees to the right, hand me some licorice, don’t drink so loudly, turn down the radio, lean further back in your seat, give me my chapstick, where do I turn, etc, etc etc… She is not a good choice for a road buddy. She also does not tolerate crumbs in her car very well.

I felt obligated to try and teach her some tolerance by sprinkling a few crumbs in the driver’s seat and elsewhere.

You can see by the way she is angrily wiping down her van, that my little experiment failed.

She is just not ready to admit that she has a problem. Only then can the healing begin.

Oh and by the way, our barn is not bleeding to death. The country doctor sprayed three coats of barn red paint around the top edge, to keep the roof from getting splattered when we paint the rest of the barn.

I didn’t want you to lay awake all night worrying about it.

Thanks you God for my in-laws, who are always willing to come for a visit, leaving behind their garden, and their comfortable home, to sleep in our lumpy guest bed, in our noisy house full of rowdy grand and help us with our crazy projects, bringing homemade bread and a helpful hand to do a load of laundry, cook a meal and babysit. What would we do without them?

Their most recent visit was to help us work on the barn. The Country Doctor and his dad built the barn sills and trimmed out the barn windows.

Here is a brief account of what the Country Doctor and his dad did to create these beautiful sills.

Snap a chalk line on the siding to create a guide of where you want to cut the window out. The window is already framed up on the inside of the barn, but the country doctor brought the siding all the way down over the window openings to save a little time.

Next – cut the opening.

Joe stood on the inside and yelled to the country doctor when he was off course.

Then place the sill in the opening. This step takes FOREVER!!! There is a lot of fussin’, and cussin’, and whittlin’ and fiddlin’ to make it fit just right.

Then cut the remaining trim pieces to size.

Now look at those sills! Have you ever seen anything prettier than that? It’s like we are Amish or something. Thanks Joe and Rita for coming down and helping us out. Now…next weekend – we were thinking about putting on that barn roof…

Little Bit of Building…

Little Bit of Jigging…

Little bit more building…

Little Bit of Partying on the Porch

We decided to save some money and build the garage ourselves. Except that we aren’t calling it a garage – we call it the barn. I guess it is because it is as big as a barn.

And no, we didn’t build all of it ourselves. Dennis and his crew framed it. But the country doctor and I and the country doctor’s brother Jed – but mostly the country doctor have been doing everything else – which includes the siding and the roof and a lot of other things I would never have imagined. Like nailing up these super long 2X4s on the gabled ends.

The siding consists of twelve inch wide boards of cottonwood, a tree native to our area. You put the boards up tight together and after a few days they start to shrink and “cracks” appear between the boards. Then you take a long thin board and nail this over the “cracks” – thus you have board and batten siding.

The design for our barn was inspired by the barns at Country Carpenters They build beautiful post and beam barns with a real classic look. Hopefully when we are finished we will have something similar.