Clearing out the Barn and Upstairs Ceilings

May 29, 2019

Clearing out the Barn and Upstairs Ceilings

My uncle and I were back at it again. I met him out at the house around 9:00 A.M. With the contractor now taking over the dirty demo work, we decided to focus our efforts on other projects (of which there are MANY!!!). I guess the contractor didn't understand me last night when I said in the affirmative, "Let's plan on it," after he asked me if he had the job, so he isn't starting tomorrow like he had originally mentioned. That's a bit frustrating. I don't know how he thought that comment was a negative, but that's what happens when texts are used to communicate.

But with non-demo work to be done, today I asked my uncle to help me clear out the barn.

When I purchased this property, I had taken all of the thousands of pounds of wood out of the rafters in order to protect my nieces, nephew, soon-to-be pigs, and myself. I had no great place to put it, so I just stacked it inside the barn. Well, unfortunately that meant that the barn was packed...and quite un-useful.

The barn became unusable pretty quick with the spare wood.

The main area of the barn became a catch-all the last couple of months.

So my uncle and I loaded up every piece of barn wood and relocated it to the machine shed. I am choosing to keep it for now for repairs at the farm, but most of it will likely be sold. There is just too much of it. I just don't want to have a pine 2x4 used in the barn for a repair if I don't have to. I might as well use a proper and original piece.

As we took it out, I also made the decision to just burn a lot of it. I'm in a stage right now where it's just nice to get rid of stuff. If any piece was marginal, then to the burn pile it went. And we burned a LOT of wood today. But we also kept a ton, too. There is just that much.

One of the several loads hauled from the barn to the machine shed.

Little by little it's clearing up! Sunshine, anyone?

Some of the barn wood that we burned today.

This seems to be a common theme out here.

The wood stored neatly in the machine shed.

I just love the barn being open again. It really WAS unusable with all of the wood basically blocking the majority of the barn. And the animals didn't take long to acclimate to the new look, either. The chickens adopted the covered home rather quickly.

The barn is now a barn again!

The barn is open again! Woo hoo! I love it.

More of the wood we burned.

With the barn all cleaned up, we headed for the house to take down the wood paneling on the ceiling of the upstairs bedroom. I really want to give this contractor the easiest demo that I can, so I figured this would save him some time and effort. That way he can just come in, demo, and get out! The plywood took awhile to take off downstairs with Dad, but my uncle had a better method. Just take it off without taking out the screws! He REALLY is aggressive! But they came down, so that worked!