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Epic Barn Project Ranch

Epic Barn Construction Prep

Today, we spent quite a few hours doing the following:

  1. Removing nails from any boards that still had them. (There are a lot left still…)
  2. Moving 30 old bales of hay.
  3. Removing two fence posts.

Here’s a little Collage of everyone at work (Thanks Grampa, Mom and Dad!):

Barn Blue Print

After all that, here’s our cleared space where the barn will go (outlined in green).
Barn Blue Print
Barn Blue Print

I, Ashton, have spent a lot of time over the last couple weeks putting together the layout of this new barn. I want to keep it as similar as possible to keep the amount of work to a minimum (ha!), but because we cut a lot of the boards off the poles, we have a lot of shorter beams, so here’s what we have ended up with:

Barn Blue Print

Hopefully, I’ll catch up on the posts soon…
Ashton Anna

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Epic Barn Project Ranch

Epic Barn Project: Destruction Completed!

By the time I got up to Buzz’s, he and his wife, Connie, had already started taking down the poles!
Epic Barn

I jumped right in, and gave Connie the camera to be our official videographer and narrator. She did a wonderful job:

Epic Barn

At the end of the day, all that remained was a large mess:
Epic Barn

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Epic Barn Project Ranch

Epic Barn Project – 11th Day

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 11 days since this project began (or than I haven’t posted in 8 days). This is going to be a pretty fast mash of what has happened in the last 8 days. Enjoy!

July 18

Buzz and I took down 75% of the East gable Long Boards, but Buzz got the remaining 25% down before I was able to take a pciture of it the next morning:

epic barn

Buzz also pulled nails out of most of the East gable before I got back the next morning.
epic barn

July 19

epic barn

After I arrived, we spent that Sunday taking down the West gable:
epic barn
(I have to use the crowbar, but buzz just uses his hands.)

At one point, a bunch of the neighbor’s cows came by to see what the ruckus was about.
epic barn

It took about 3 hours (including lunch) to get all of the long West gable boards down.
epic barn

The reason it took so long to take down those boards was because 3/4 of the (huge) nails stuck out though the other side of the wood and had been bent down with a hammer. But overall, we got some good work done:
epic barn

After Buzz went inside I stayed up with Beau, a great neighbor who had offered to help. We took the nails out of almost all of the boards in the hopes that Buzz would be forced to take it easy on Monday… How wrong I was…

July 21

Two days later, Buzz had taken down all of the inside planks and the highest gable boards, so we only have the north wall left to take down.

epic barn

That man is just a work-o-holic.

epic barn

July 24

Over the last couple days Anna, Buzz and I brought down a few loads of wood in the back of Buzz’s Pickup. We’re trying to make organized stacks of the wood around where the barn will be reincarnated.

Today, when I made it back up to Buzz’s he had chainsawed all of the support beams down for the South half of the barn!

epic barn

We started by taking down the final boards on the North wall. There used to be a little pig-pen behind the barn there, so we had to take out the old water-trough and shed that was nailed to the barn:

epic barn
We didn’t even notice that the sun went down in the two minutes it took to flip the pen over.

Then we had to get back to removing the exterior walls. The most time consuming part of this was preparing the boards so that the bent nails didn’t split the vertical 2x12s. Here’s what we did to take the bent nails out without breaking the siding (vertical) boards:

1) Drill a large hole right behind the bent nail.
2) Gently hammer from the back side of the board to try to create a gap between the siding the horizontal support beam. (Brace as necessary.)
3) Using a crowbar or spud bar, pry the boards apart.
4) Pull out the top nails and remove.

remove bent nails out without breaking the wood

Then we just removed some of the remaining rafters and leveraged a post out of the ground:
epic barn

Here’s the final pic of the day:
epic barn

I can’t believe how much has gotten done in only eleven days! Super thanks to Buzz for all the great ideas and hard work. Great neighbors rule!

Ashton Anna

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Epic Barn Project Ranch

Epic Barn Project – First Wall

Today was a pretty fun day. Buzz and Ashton got to use the sledgehammer, saws-all, grinder and claw foot quite a bit. (Anna was finishing up a different project which she should post about soon.)

I only was able to work on it for just under 4 hours today. We did manage to get one whole length of wall down though. Here’s a quick picture blog of the progress we made today:

Epic Barn Project Before
Epic Barn Project Before

Here’s Buzz pushing down the last wall:

Epic Barn Project Before

My original idea was to take down these different wall sections, load them on a trailer and then just nail them back up at our house. Although convenient in theory, it may end up being harder than taking the entire walls apart. Buzz claims to have a very easy way of taking the boards apart, which is the most daunting aspect of taking the walls completely apart.

More to come,
Ashton Anna

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Epic Barn Project Ranch Summer

The Epic Barn Project Begins

We love our Montana neighbors. I (Ashton) have always longed for great neighbors, as growing up in a good part of the city led us to having lots of friends within a few blocks. Most recently, after I graduated in LA, and the first few years in Montana, the neighborly friends decreased in numbers at an alarming rate as friends went off to college and other adventures in LA and not knowing any people in Montana who had anything better to do than “hang out at the bar”…

When we moved out to our ranch where we really could only see four neighbors from our property, we were very fortunate that they were great neighbors.

With that said, one of our coolest neighbors, Buzz, has a 38’x32′ horse barn that came with their house that they don’t really use. Anna and her mother now have more than 10 horses so to make a long story short, we are going to be buying his barn and moving it to our property! Since I already have a post about helping out on Buzz’s Latest Barn, I’m going to call this the “Epic Barn Project.”

Epic Barn Project Begins!

Here are some pictures of the Epic Barn as it looked this morning. You can consider these “Before” pictures.

Epic Barn Project Before

Epic Barn Project Before

Epic Barn Project: Remove Roof