The Barndominium Build Continues!

Three weeks into Kevin’s build we are making great progress! Beyond learning a lot about the building process we have realized far more. It is something I guess we knew but never really put a lot of thought into it. This realization is that there is no better feeling than helping someone be successful or realizing their dreams. It is part of what energizes us. Whether it be at The Farm, Pasha Lake or now helping Kevin build his house. Helping someone you care about be successful is very rewarding. Yes, the work can be hard but it is well worth it.

A little over a week ago we had all the first floor framing up along with 3 of the 4 garage/horse stall walls.

Over the past two weeks we started the walls and decking on the 2^nd level.....

First section of the 2nd level!

Kevin putting the top plate on

A section of trusses going up!

2nd level decking down

Next up was trusses and roofing on the wings......

Unfortunately we did not meet Kevin’s goals for his 3 weeks here. Cold temperatures and 2 snow days really hampered progress.

This is where the house sits today, roofing and waterproofing on one of the wings and the rest of the house ready for trusses  and roofing. If we had those several lost snow days back we would had all the trusses, roofing and windows in but now we will have to wait until sometime in April.

Speaking of snow, in the past 10 days we went from a winter wonderland……

.…to a muddy mess with very little snow.

So what does one do when you run across a road covered in water? You plow right through it of course! 

Good way to wash off the mud!

Good news bad news. It is nice to have the warmer weather but there is mud everywhere! We cannot get up our driveway without 4 wheel drive and some of the roads are totally flooded. 

One of several muddy spots on our driveway

We have had a couple heavy truck deliveries at our place the past week. We had 1250 gallons of water delivered for our cistern, our first two loads of lumber for our house build as well as a 500 gallon propane tank. We try to time the deliveries for first thing in the morning when the ground is still frozen but that is not always possible resulting in huge ruts in the driveway. 

No more running to town for propane every couple of days!

The lumber trucks certainly did not help the driveway!

The cool news is that our water hole that has been dry the last couple years is now totally full of water! I doubt it will stay long but it is nice to have for a little while. We are going to look into lining it with bentonite so it will hold water year round. 

With Kevin now gone things have quieted down a bit and we did get out on one adventure when we stopped by a small school house/church/cemetery from the 1880's out in the middle of nowhere. The surrounding area is virtually untouched and you could almost imagine kids walking from the surrounding hills to go to school

An inordinate number of headstones just said "Baby Smith" or some other last name.  Times must have been very tough back then. While many of the dates on the headstones were from the late 1800's and early 1900's there were a couple as recent as the last couple years.

We are going to take a couple of down days and then start our house hitting it pretty hard. As a whole, the thought of taking a pile of lumber and building our own house from the ground up is overwhelming. But we are going to take it wall by wall taking our time so it does not become too daunting.  By our next post we should have a couple of walls up!