Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Progress on the barn

The barn is coming along nicely and I'm learning a few barn building terms. The banding of the trusses has begun. That's I think putting 2x4's up & down the trusses to tie the roof all together and make it stronger and to have something to nail the tin roof onto also. The bands also hold the trusses nice and level.
Ray & Matt can only work on the barn when they come home from their jobs, so the building is coming along rather slowly. There are also other obligations, like church and Ray as a Deacon of his church does visitation on certain nights as well. Jimmy just shows up there at 3 p.m. and if they can work fine and if not we visit.

This is the current horse barn and because it is beginning to rot, one of the horses, Rebel, is doing his best to kick the walls out. Matt, Tori and Suzanne have had to go down there and repair it several times and right now Rebel has a 3 inch gap that he's working on. Suzanne & Tori recently bought Rebel a ball to keep him occupied. He can kick it around and pick it up with his mouth and toss it around and keep himself amused while he's in the barn. Rebel is a little over 18 months old I believe and is Matt's horse. Pebbles who is 3 years old is a well behaved filly? who belongs to Tori. The reason I put a question mark beside filly is because I'm not really sure if that's what she is called, but I've heard that term used in connection with female horses before.
This is Matt on the left and his dad Ray on the right. They are on the roof nailing in those bands.

Suzanne is helping too. She is culling out the bad rotten warped new lumber and Jimmy is doing the sawing of the boards and keeping the ladders moved and in place.

Jimmy is taking a break and leaning on the wagon. The barn will have doors on each end and you will be able to drive through it. It's really a very wide drive as you can see by the wagon that's sitting in the barn. With this wide drive it will also be easier to move the horses around. It's an 8 stall barn, but only 4 stalls will be finished as horse stalls on the right side as we look at the barn in this picture. The two horses will have four stalls so that when their stalls need cleaning out, the horses can be moved to the other two clean stalls. That way they won't have to go back into a freshly cleaned stall that is still wet and it can dry out. On the left side one of the stalls will be a closed-in tack room and another one for feed and hay. There will also be a horse bathing area or shower room with a concreted floor. Besides their new home the horses will each have their own space to wander in outside. With the old horse lot, only one horse could be out at a time, so this is great news for the horses.

Just another shot of Matt up in the rafters of his new barn. He is so excited about the new barn and is very anxious to get it done. There is still a lot left to do and so far the weather has been cooperative. On this day although the skies look blue the wind was gusting at 50 mph so they sometimes had to hold on tight. Today was a church day so no work was done on the barn as far as we know. Matt works 24 hours on and 48 hours off, so sometimes Ray & Jimmy work alone and on those days there's a lot of climbing up and down. Up to measure and down to saw and then back up to nail the boards in place. I could do the sawing, but they haven't asked for my help. Maybe I'll volunteer for that job the next time Matt is at work and see what they say. I could always sit on the board while Suzanne does the sawing.

3 comments:

tomlaureld@yahoo.com said...

The barn looks great and sturdy. We have had enough wind lately to test it.

Merle said...

Hi Sandy ~~ What a huge barn and a big job to build it between work and other things. The horses won't know themselves when they get in to it.
I enjoyed the Taxes post too.
Thank you Sandy for the jokes you sent me, and I will post some later
in the day. Hope all is well with you and the family. Take care, Love, Merle.

Granny Annie said...

I am happy that you are getting a new sturdy barn, but oh how I love old barns. I love to draw them and photograph them because they tell such stories. Your old barn looks very classy!