Building A Barn

Three years ago . . . 

 

I built a 12 X 16 foot tool shed for my friend Benjamin .

 

Then his brother in law built a nice house for him a couple years ago.

He then bought an old Ford 8N , I wonder where he got that idea ?

For which he built a shed . Came out pretty good too considering it was his first solo build .

 

Then last year he got the notion that a barn would be a handy thing to have. So he got some foundation pads and crushed rock laid out , and started pecking away at the sills .

Then he shouldered a bigger challenge .

Which made progress slow to a crawl . Lots of pondering and questions back and forth via e-mail so I figured it was time to make the hour drive up to Richmond and see what all the fuss was about .

Of course just looking it over was not enough so we labored on Labor Day . Spent a couple hours checking it for square and level and tweaking things a bit here and there . Then we did some heavy lifting . Just don't let my spinal surgeon see that .

 That there monstrosity we were moving was one of Ben's creations made out of sopping wet green hemlock . . . .

 . . . in order to make lifting equally wet and heavy hemlock beams into place on top of the posts he had previously installed .

They did work pretty slick once positioned as needed .

Trouble was moving them was a royal PITA but it made lifting the hemlock beams into place a breeze

Took some finessing to get some beams to fight right .

Well , its not like we are building pianos here anyhow

By the end of that day we got all six beams up in place . No small task considering they were probably three hundred pounds a piece .

 He then ordered some much lighter 2 X 8 X 12 kiln dried spruce and made some progress on his own . Built two tripled up beams and got a couple rim joists up . Which only resulted in more questions .

So last Sunday we made the journey back up to Richmond and after some adjustments set about making some headway .

 I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for that sort of monkey business .

But if its gonna get done right . . .

Tripled up , glued and spiked 2 X 8 X 12 KD Spruce headers , so much lighter than that wet hemlock .

Even so , the look on my face says it all .

Its strange but that guy looks frightfully like my own father .

Never mind that . . . . get to work .

And that's right when I smashed my finger into the head of another protruding nail as I was looking into the sun and could only make out the profile of the spike I was trying to drive home .

By two PM we got all six tripled up beams and the rim joists up in place so while Ben went to get us some lunch . . .

Annie and I got thirty two more common joists trimmed to size and ready to be installed .

And that's why I hurt at the end of the day .

Making headway quickly now .

By three thirty we had them all up .

Satisfaction . . . that's enough pain for one day .