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
