Our plan for the barn is for the first bay to be a garage. It will keep its barn character with a side rolling door like it has now. We have a contractor who will stabilize the barn and pour a concrete flooring for the two right bays and grade our entire driveway.
To speed the project up Dan took on the task of removing the loft above and the flooring in these two bays.
I didn't take any photos of him in the loft, prying up the boards and sliding them down. You'll have to use your imagination about how he balanced once he got to the last boards. Here they are spilling out of the barn.
Then he went to work removing the joists which held the boards up there.
These sizable beams got stacked on the floor.
Can you see the dust? I had to wash his clothes every night. They were filthy.
Looking up you can see the small plywood door used to access this upper loft. On the other side of that is the finished loft.
On another day he started with the flooring which was in two layers.
Under the bottom layer was a midden or refuse heap. Dumping grounds from before this barn was built.
I went to work pulling things out.
Eventually all the wood went into this pile. I salvaged one very long piece for a shelf in the rec room loft. Emily and I took some other pieces to make wooden quilts.
Here is some of the salvage. I did some research on the marks on the backs of the plate fragments and the bottle and the items date from 1890-1910. We figure that's about when the barn was built.
So this is how it looked on Monday, March 29th. Now all that is gone. A neighbor took the wood under the tarp and will build a small barn is his backyard. He used his Volvo station wagon to haul the loads. Some of the wood was 18 feet long and was a sight to see hanging out of his car. He had only three houses to go to unload. The doors, windows and shutters have also gone to new owners.
Work should start in the next few weeks on the conversion to garage space.
