Going Straight

I hardly believe it has been over a month since I have posted.

What a glorious summer it has been so far! Very, very, busy working on the building I started on my flat farm over 3 years ago. The original intent for the building was for storage. Tractors and fresh lumber downstairs, hay upstairs. When I first started it went great guns for most of the first summer, but life can sure be distracting. When designed I planned on siding it with hemlock board and bats.

Met this guy who needed stumps ground around his home. He is a fellow barterer and had several piles of steel siding that he brought home. His plan was to build a shed with it, wife nixed it. So we made the deal. His stumps are gone, yard graded, grass replanted, his wife happy as a clam. I loaded and took over to the flat farm over 20,000 square feet of 39 inch steel sheeting in lengths of 24, 16, 12, and 10 feet. I also got several hundreds of trim pieces, drip cap, J channel, F channel, corner bead, building corners, etc.......oh and about 50 pounds of self drilling , self sealing, screws!

After summer number 1 I had the poles in the ground, all the pearling on, the red metal roof with 8 translucent light panels installed. It looked like a 39 foot tall picnic shelter. I had a great reason for building this thing 39 feet tall, that was the tallest measurement I could get from the massive telephone poles I used to frame with.

The poles are buried over 6 feet and sit in pockets dug into the slate bedrock. Makes for a stable build. The dasher boards are done in 2x10 larch lumber, all full length cut from trees I paid to bring home! In fact every board on this monster is from trees I was paid to bring home! The pearling is full length black pine or mast pine all nailed with ringed barn spikes.

My children are musical! WTF does that have to do with anything? They took over my building and it became an open air jam shack. By summer #2 I had three sides sided and it started to look like a very tall silver barn with a red roof. Under the eaves I left a 2 foot opening where I planned on putting more light panels. It stayed like that for quite some time.

As luck would have it that plan changed too. Mark called. He says, " You got any use for thermo paned, argon gas filled windows, that are photo gray on the inside, and silver reflective on the outside?" I says, "Hell yes!" Mother have I got windows, 4 different sizes, the largest 5x5 feet, and the ones closet to my 2 foot opening 26"x59." Somewhere around 200 total windows and I have already used 25 or so. After ripping my opening another couple of inches I framed the opening in continuous glass, over 25 feet! It looks sharp as hell and now the building looks like a studio instead of a barn. Also I hung the fourth side.

Did I mention it is raining? That in why I am not up on my scaffold doing the trim on my overhangs that I did on the break yesterday. The soffets, facia, and gable overhang metal and no more wood showing. I am getting close.

Doors, I have four. Drive through north to south or east to west. North and south openings are 13 feet tall, east and west are 10 feet. Many years ago I picked up some massive wrought iron hinges, 6 pairs of them. To get them out of the way I used the block and tackle to lift them up into my workshop loft here at the homestead, they have been there ever since. Not anymore they are going to swing stylized wooden doors on the east and west side. The tall doors on the north and south are going to slide on antique hardware I got from a tear down, again quite some years ago. Those will match the barn and each end will have a man door built in.