The crew

My daughter Jennifer after a photo shoot for their engagement.





This is the work crew that helped me so much this weekend. Jennifer, Freddie, Michael, Emily and Sandy. Without them I would not have accomplished half of what I did.

Painting and installing windows

Here is a great view of the new windows and the back of the barn.





The front after painting it. I am still working on stripping the doors so they are not finished yet,


This is towards the end of a few hard days of work. Sandy and I just got finished for a thunderstorm. Eight windows were installed ( 2 in the back) and 6 to go.



Sandy installing the grids in the windows.

Siding the upper gable and installing the gable vent

My son Michael and I are working up at the peak of the roof installing the gable vent I built. Everything went in smoothly






We're about 25 feet off the ground in this picture.

Siding the gable

This is the design I came up with for the corners of the upper gable. There is about a 1 inch offset from the rafter beam.



Here is the finished front.



This is pretty challenging. I'm 25 feet off of the ground and every cut is an angled cut. Michael and Sandy did a great job of cutting my boards for me.

Finishing the lower siding

Next we started setting up for the upper gable. I knew this would be challenging and I am glad we are finally started.

Here we are finishing the siding on the front.

Siding Inspector

Getting to the end of the siding on ground level. My wife Sandy helped me frame above each window.




Here is the siding inspector and the window inspector checking out one of our new windows. We will have a total of 14 windows, all the same size.

Siding- reinforcements

Jeff Rhodes and his friend Dave came over to help me put siding on. Here we are on the last side and I am working on the long transom windows that go above each door, We want a New England style of barn.











Dave cooling down out of the sun

Siding 2- Half way

My friend Jeff Rhodes helped me on the longest side. The back is 50 feet long and only has two windows so a lot of siding was used back there.





Here is a side view with 6 windows framed out and a gable vent framed out.

Siding- Getting started

A friend lending me a hand putting on the siding. Jarod Bare, a former student stopped over to give me a hand with siding.







I started in the corner that I want to bring electric into. I hope to set my service soon now that most of the siding is on. This started out really rough until I got a routine going. This is tongue and groove siding called a 1 X 10 that I got from the Hicksville planing mill.


Getting to this point took a while.

Installing the big doors 2

Here Michael and Adam are positioning the door for the lift.



The doors need stripped and refinished but they are in pretty decent shape. This is one of the pocket doors that allows you access to the barn without opening the big doors. They have really unique hand forged hinges.




Here is one of the doors in place.








This was the technique we developed. We had two guys on digging irons that raised the door one block at a time which was 2 inches until we were in position to line up the hinges with crowbars.

Installing the big doors 1

This is our safety rope holder, Sandy. The door out weighed her by about 300 pounds. Luckily it did not pull her up to the ceiling.



The doors are massive, They are 7 feet wide by 12 feet high. Two of them have pocket doors in them. I am pretty sure they are made of 1 inch thick redwood. They have hundreds of 3/8 inch through bolts in them. They are well made.



Here Freddie and Michael are positioning the door for installation. We used long digging irons and blocks to take it up gradually. They all fit back onto their original hinges. I think each door weighs about 400 pounds. The 3 doors we installed today took about 2 hours total.





Michael's friend Adam helped also and he is a welder by profession. He is going to make me a replacement pin for the only one that was broken.

Framing the Gable Vents

This is Jeff Rhodes helping me frame out for the gable vents that I made in my workshop. I had to custom make these to fit in my opening in the gable ends.



It took longer to set up the scaffolding then it did to put up the framework.
Here I am test fitting the gable vent into the opening.

Framing Windows

I was able to start framing the windows in. I'm using full size 2 X 4 lumber I got from a local sawmill. The windows are 2-8 by 2-10 and will have 6 over 6 frames in the windows. There will be a total of 14 windows and I got 6 framed today.



Finishing up number 6 window.