Hi All,

Here’s a picture diary with some notes of when my family came to visit this year! We had a great time.

One of the many projects everyone worked on was putting up the fence around the “foal paddock.” Everyone pitched in and worked hard. It cam out looking beautiful. Grandpa Joe even took time to help spread the weeds. =) (Just kidding, he worked on it more than anyone else.)

Here’s some family photos:
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After all of that Construction Preparation, we have finally broken ground!

On the night of the 29th (just after the last post), Donald came out with his skidster and worked long into the night digging out a level spot of ground for the epic barn project and creating a drainage berm on the hill behind where the barn will be. Thank you Donald!

As you can see from those pictures, we have piles of wood EVERYWHERE! We have finished cleaning up the mess at Buzz’s, and moved all of the materials to around the construction site. Here’s some shots of the endless amounts of wood:

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Hello everyone! This is Geoffrey up in Montana, and I was given the honors to write a blog for my bro so he could go out and build his barn.

In case you didn’t know, our family is here in Polson, Montana at the Ashton and Anna Headquarters, but this time the activities were epic! Ranging from barn raising to water skiing, the family has lined up for a week of fun and games in true Montana style, basically.

I created a AshtonAnna header design for this blog, which you can see here:

Here are some photos of some of the activities on the Lake:

Here’s me and Ashton flying around in the tube (also a new header):

This is AshtonAnna’s “I’m on a Boat” picture:
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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:

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

July 19

After I arrived, we spent that Sunday taking down the West gable:

(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.

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

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:

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.

That man is just a work-o-holic.

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!

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:

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.

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

Here’s the final pic of the day:

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

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:

Here’s Buzz pushing down the last wall:

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