Whirlwind Work Week at the Barn!

Last week was extremely busy and equally productive! In about 4 days we accomplished what would normally take us about 2 weeks. We were in a great rush due to our looming trip to Colorado. In order to meet our October deadline for the final inspection of barn construction, we had some essential repairs and improvements to make.

Our outside work consisted of a few major projects:


Continuing construction on the retaining wall to improve the appearance and stability of the bank and protect the house from it's tendency to erode.


Papa wrestled his bulldozer out of the garage and down the mountain to grade the driveway. Because of some unwise initial grading on the house pad, water tends to sit around the bottom of the barn like a moat! This has caused some unsettling rot around the entire perimeter. This grading will hopefully direct water away from the house.


Here, Collier uses the scrape blade on the tractor to smooth out Papa's heavy grading. To achieve an appropriate angle, Papa put some extra pressure on the left side of the blade by standing on it. I called this "mountain man surfing"!


We dug sawdust out of the Taj Ma-stall in preparation for it to receive a new cement floor. We have done a great deal of digging this week, to the point that I am developing bulging arm muscles again!


We chose paint colors for the exterior of the house, the trim, and the doors!

Meanwhile, on the inside of the house we finished priming the sheetrock...



Painting the whole house with the final interior wall color...



And faux finishing most of the higher walls while we had access to scaffolding!



Up close, the walls with texture (called Skip Trot), primer, paint, and faux finish looks like this...


While we are making this next trip to Colorado (see next blog), our carpenter will be pouring a cement floor in the stalls, cutting off about 2 feet of wood all the way around the bottom of the house and replacing it, and generally becoming our hero. Having this work done will set Mom's mind at ease about our rot issue and while it was not necessary for passing the final inspection, it was a major concern for the longevity of this structure. When we return from Colorado we will be continuing on with finish work!

There are many more pictures of construction progress in our photo album!