BARN! and NEW PORCH!!!!

[Devonviolet]

The gate has a chain latch, it goes around a post and a chain link slips into a notch in the gate. Joe can untie any rope, so he is prime suspect. Rocki (the big red mare) can grab the chain in her teeth and yank on it until it opens. Smarty pants horses!

Our front gate has a setup like that. I would think if you wrapped the chain around the post and then the gate & joined the ends with a carabeaner, Joe & Rocki couldn't open the gate. We love carabeaners here. Have about 25 small & 20 large ones that we got at Wal-Mart for cheap. All of our gates are security (second line of defense) latched with carabeaners.

 

[sadieml]

We had a dog when I was little who was a whiz with latches. He could open doors, open gates, open-up the crawlspace under the house, ring the doorbell, knock on the door and sound like a person knocking. He was a riot. No one ever believed us until they witnessed it themselves, but he could ALWAYS outsmart us. Such a delightful pup, my best friend and guardian when I was young. I had a congenital heart defect that caused me to blackout periodically. He would lie by my side until I awoke, or go get my mother and bring her to me. I might be under the azaleas and camellias, or in a toy box, but he would stay right with me while I was out, and make me get out of trees when I was about to blackout. I wasn't at all surprised when I heard of dogs alerting their owners to heart attacks, etc., because Pudgy always knew about me in advance. What a marvelous friend he was.

 

[Baymule]

@Devonviolet I will add them to my shopping list!

 

[HomesteaderWife]

@Baymule - WOW! That's all coming together so nicely! I bet you are very excited to have your porch done and the barn in the works. You know pictures are always a continual must, haha

 

[misfitmorgan]

@Baymule got any updates on the barn??

 

[Baymule]

@misfitmorgan thanks for the reminder! We got the outside finished and have plans to build a feed and tack room. We got a great buy on treated 2x6's 20 feet long for only $10 each. A builder had them left over from a job and returned them. We got 11 of them, plus a lot of other lumber from the reject rack, now stacked in the barn, waiting on us to get started.

This summer was so hot, we had the round bale set in the barn where it was cooler for the horses.

The horses LOVE their barn!! We still have to finish the inside, but they don't care.

 

[misfitmorgan]

It looks great @Baymule !!

 

[Baymule]

Well, it's been a year and we have been busy. We attacked an acre of green briars with machetes and hacked our way through the trees and now have a nice pasture and wooded area. We worked a little on the fence and got 2 more 200' rolls of non climb horse wire put up. The garden produced fairly well and I did lots of dehydrating, canning and freezing. I ordered 50 Delaware chicks, straight run, and wound up with 10 pullets. We butchered 33 roosters, the mean devils killed 7 of them. Our daughter had a beautiful little girl September 1 and we baby sit the girls every chance we get. My husband had knee replacement surgery and the following physical therapy. He is scheduled for shoulder replacement surgery in a couple of weeks.

So we have finally come back to the barn! Last week, we scooped poop, cleaned the barn up real good and spread chip mulch that a high line cleaning contractor dumped on our property. Then we got the outline 2"x6" frame put up for our feed and tack room. I measured and screwed in place the 2x6 metal thingies for hanging the floor joists. DH and I riffled through our pile of lumber that lives under the carport (keeping the car and truck out in the weather) and loaded up 10 sheets of plywood on the mule. Our neighbor Robert came over to play because he was bored at his house. Between the 3 of us, we got the floor laid and it doesn't look half bad. In between all this, we had rain, cold, and a day that we made a turn around trip to Houston to attend a funeral. Throw in a dog that had to go to the hospital for surgery and a Doctor appointment for my husband and keeping grand kids on the weekends. LOL

Monday we got our dog from the vet--he swallowed a hickory nut! Parker will recover. https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/we-almost-lost-parker.35174/ Then we again riffled through the lumber pile and loaded up the mule with 2x4's and took them to the barn. We put them on the "in progress" pile in the barn, then studied on how we were going to go up with the walls. I want the walls to go all the way to the ceiling, DH thinks I'm nuts. Neither of us have ever built a stud wall and raised it. We laid 2x4's in various places like we knew what we were doing--which we don't but that has never stopped us.

This morning we delivered eggs and came home and had lunch. DH called Robert and asked him if he wanted to come over and build walls. He has built various projects and has a nice shop that he built and seemed like a prime candidate for helping us mess up a bunch of 2x4's. So off course he came right over.

You have to understand that all the lumber we have is either cull rack rejects from Lowes or I dragged it out of construction boxes (scraps) or it is used and has had nails pulled out of it. ALL of it is bowed, curved, has bark rough edges, split, broken, splintered or screwed up in some way. The whole barn was built of my scrounged up reject lumber except for 21 twenty foot 2x6' rafters that we had to buy brand new. Oh, all the metal outsides was new too. The end result is an optical illusion that looks like a nice barn, but has not one square corner, not one level board, not one straight anything.

So today I put up 2x4's against the end of the proposed future feed and tack room. Robert and my husband built a section of wall, that will face out toward the alley, allowing space for a door. Each 2x4 was measured, checked for really outrageous bows and laid in place on our new floor. Then they screwed it all together. We raised it and proceeded to screw it in place. We got the door headers measured, cut and screwed in place. My husband got the level, gloating that it was only almost a half a bubble off. Sometimes he got downright pissy that things weren't level. For a guy with no carpenter skills, where did he get this brain fart that boards are supposed to be straight?

This is a picture from yesterday, before we got a section of studs up today. Joe is checking out our handiwork and my husband is telling him to smile for the camera. The 2x6's screwed to the poles halfway up are to keep the horses from tap dancing on the new floor.

 

[Mike CHS]

You two sound like us but I will leave it at that.

It looks Great!

 

[promiseacres]

am dreaming of a barn this year....