So Much to do...What should we tackle first?

We decided the best place to start was on the barn that was attached to house. Restoring the barn and making it into a workshop for Clarke so he had a space to work on the rest of the place made perfect sense to us. So tackle the barn we must, but where do we begin? We needed to clean out the spot before we could assess what all needed to be done. We think that the barn was built somewhere in the late 20's but must have 100 years worth of junk in it. This was a daunting task!

With the help of family and friends we got the junk cleared out. We also found some wonderful treasures left behind by our ancestors, Letters, notes, initials, shoes,bottles gave us a glimpse into the past. On a lid of an old wooden box we found this note "Low set Black Cow Fred L bulled June 19, 47" I guess it was common to write on anything that was handy.

After the barn was empty and all the trees and shrubs were cut away we began to see the extent of the damage. It looked like the barn was made of scraps of wood and we wondered how it remained standing all these years. All the footing was rotten, in one place it was rotten half way up the wall. We began to fear that it wouldn't hold until we could restore it.


Clarke and Jordan (our son) began to reinforce the walls so that they could jack up the building to pour cement for the new footings. It was a slow process.



By October 2006 things were beginning to take shape. The building withstood being jacked and leveled. We lost our fear of the building falling over and the barn was beginning to look more like a workshop every day.

This is the same part of the barn by the beginning of November.

The wiring and insulation was completed by the end of November. The barn was illuminated for the first time. Clarke's mom, Ethel said how glad she was to look down at the barn and see the lights on.

So close but not finished yet! Oh my if it is taking this long just for the barn how many years is it going to take us to do the whole house!

Nancy