Week 2 of the Barndominium Build!

Board after board, hour after hour, day after day we continue to build. After each wall goes up we take a break and admire our work, imagining what it will look like when all the work is done and we are just relaxing in our new home. If we don’t do that it just becomes too overwhelming, you have to keep your eye on the prize and carry on.

This week was all about tall walls. We were pretty nervous about them. Short walls are one thing, we can lift them up ourselves and control them from falling over. But tall walls are a whole other story. Our first tall wall we were going to put up was the kitchen/dining room wall. 18’ wide x 16’ tall. It took a lot longer to build than anticipated as it has two windows and a sliding glass French door.

It took us most of the day to build and we were just getting ready to put it up when we realized that due to the configuration of the surrounding landscape we would not have room to maneuver the skidsteer  around to put the opposite wall up if we put this wall up first.

So we used the skidsteer to move that wall out of the way and started on the opposite wall. Since this wall was 25’ wide and 16’ tall we split it up into two sections. The first section included the a window over the stairs and the front door. After building it we took a break for lunch, set up a couple of cameras and videoed our first tall wall raising! How did it go? Well, you will have to watch the video below to find out. Don't worry, we sped up the action 6x so it is not as long as it actually took.

Our confidence high we started on the other section of the 25' wall and got it done just before quitting time. We would have to wait to raise it until the next day. But.....while we were building it I looked off down the valley and saw three mule deer watching us curiously from about 100 yards away. These were the first mule deer we have seen since being back and wondered if they were Barb's friends from last year..... maybe...… So she went and got some corn and shook the scoop and they came a runn'in! 

From that point on they hung around the rest of that day and everyday since. They just sit up on the hill and watch the strange humans play with wood.

Not to be left out, the whitetails visited us on frosty morning before we started working. 

We have not seen the turkeys on our property yet, they may have gotten the word that archery season opens this weekend. 

The next day we got the other section of the living room wall up......

Then we turned around and put up the kitchen/dining room wall we had set aside the day before.

We finished out the rest of the week building the garage walls. 

Here is where we are after two weeks. The yellow lines are week ones progress, green this week. After getting the opposite garage wall up I expect visible progress to slow down next week as it will include more tedious tasks like sheeting, top plates and prepping for the loft floor system. 

In our off time Barb has been scouring the internet for a used Lance camper for our next Alaska trip. She is looking for an 11 ½ foot model somewhere in the 2004-2012 range so if you know anyone out there who has one they want to sell let us know! One thing we forgot to do this week was take our day off and have fun, we will have to make sure to do that next week!