Creative Barn Building 2

It is taking shape

   Good morning Folks! Part 2 of building this Barn.

   So here we are, early morning, Ken, our permanent helper was all ready to go to work with his measuring tape, stakes and rope to create the size and who would know, Husband came out and told us to move it here and there and then it was too small. So we spend a whole morning just laying the thing out. Plans in my head had to be reworked and I just absolutely do not like when I got something already all worked out, someone has a different idea and insists that it had to be done his/her way. Frustrating! Well, I finally broke down and compromised, the building got a bigger footprint by the minute, but that was OK. We had enough material. We could do that. I swear, even the horses shook their heads in disbelieve over the foolishness we created. Digging holes and covering them up again just to dig another hole 2 feet away. then the pallet measurements did not compute, again we measured and dug more post holes.

Finally, all corners where determined and the digging to set the poles started. three-foot deep and a little bigger than the diameter of the tree trunk. Six holes, four corners and one each in the middle of the longer part of the building. In our dry and hard ground, that is a job and a half all by itself. But with a little sweat and muscle power, and water, it got done in one morning.


  Getting the trunks to the holes, however, was a different story and took some creative engineering. We rolled and moved, rolled and moved until the big end of the tree was right over the hole. Between Ken and I, we muscled it in the hole and set it up straight. While he was holding it up straight, I braced it with three brace boards. Then put the dirt back in, watered it real good and left it sitting to pack in. Watering is an essential part here in our hard clay dirt, it settles the dirt and packs tight around the trunk, much like cement would do. By the time we got all four up, the day was done, the sun was setting and we were worn out. I think the both of us fell asleep that night as soon as our heads hit the pillow. But it was a good day and a good start.

  The next morning started with me checking the poles, putting more dirt in the holes since the dirt we put in the day before had settled almost 1/2 foot and dried, and tamping it down with a heavy tamper. That was all done before Ken even showed up for work and I was ready for a nap before work even got started that day. Oh well, half a pot of coffee later, we got to work setting the first row of pallets. and determining doors. I wanted three doors, one from the tack room (that idea developed the day before with the changing in plans), one single door to the pasture and one big double dutch door into the barn from the yard. We started by getting rough door framing up that would fit the doors we got from the dump, the dutch door would have to be built. That done, we set the first row of palettes, That took a lot of moving and adjusting, but we got it done, nailed 2x4's all the way across to give it stability and set a dividing row to mark the tack room. 

A power nailer was a godsend and made things a lot easier and faster.

 Already it was looking good and we could imagine what it will look like when all the pallets are up. We figured that two rows would give us enough hight for this monster we are building. We got the Horses approval on that and called it a day. Yes, it is important to get the horses approval.

The first row of pallets well on the way to be set in place.

 As you can see in the picture above, it is starting to look like a building and we can see just how big we went with it. However, there was a hard lesson to be learned the next morning. When you live in a windy country, secure, secure and secure some more if you have only a temporary structure. We had a big windstorm coming up the night following building the west wall and it took that whole west-wall down. Thankfully nothing broke to where we could not repair it, but it took another whole day to get that wall back up and secured.

   But the two rooms are defined, big room for barn purposes, smaller room for tack and storage. In hind-side, however, I got to say that the smaller room is not big enough and the bigger room could use some extra footage too. Reckon we are never happy.

                          

Rafter poles are up and inside is taking shape

The rafters are up and secured, The Tack Room is floored and insulated with whatever we could find, mostly styrofoam I have collected from my husband's meal deliveries, then covered with the big and cut open dog food bags I also collected over the months. 7 dogs eat a lot and there are a lot of bags I had squirreled away for one or the other purpose. They all had been stored in tubs under the trailer house.

   The door came from the dump and has all the hardware still on it, so we build the doorway to fit the door and we did that with every door we put into this building. 

   Electricity came from Solar panels and a Generator, I think my biggest expense so far was the gasoline for the Genni and for screws. We tried to use screws as much as we could, mainly on structural important parts, like walls and beams. Nails will work themselves out of the wood in this area, but if you live where there is little wind, you should be OK with using the cheaper nails.

                                                       Outside is starting to take shape

OSB on the outside and it is starting to look like the building I had in my mind. These are 4X8 foot sheets and you can tell that the building will be 8-foot high. on the lower side, 10 on the high side. I decided that I really need to put new OSB up because of the strength it will and is giving to the walls. It was a bigger expense, but well worth it.

We also put on the roof and there we had it, our basic barn-shaped building.


It's time to move on to the inside and out of the sun!

The inside is starting to come together, The tack room is all separated and framed in, tools all over the place and we are having a hard time with the heat. It is only going to get hotter, so we decided we only going to work early in the morning and late in the evening. That will drag the building time out some, but it will also save us from having a heat stroke.

This is the finished tack room, ceiling all in, Walls are insulated and up, the floor is also insulated and put down. There are pallets under that  OSB that got stuffed full of insulating material.
The door was a dump find and we framed it to size. It leads to the feed and water stations for the horses.
So a little more cosmetics, some shelving, and that room will be done.






A few days later and my can good storage room is all done and I have already started to fill it up. The door is still missing and will be on there a few days after this picture was taken. I build shelving right on the wall, roll shelving on the side where I can store many cans and rotated them at the same time because I take the bottom ones out. You see in the picture below, these have been build also right on the wall               
           

Hooks are on the wall, Saddles are starting to move in and the food is getting stored. This room is about done.

The door is ready to be put on there to hide the food storage area and I decided that this tack room needs some additional insulation, so I am going to put some carpet in there.
Yes I know, crazy idea, but it will keep the cold out more.

Wyoming winters can get crazy cold.

Now we can move on to the bigger part of the Barn.
Sharon and Otto had found a big load of siding that we can use to cover the palettes on the inside and it is starting to look a lot better then what I first thought it would look like.
I ripped all pallet boards off again and we started to install the siding, Here is the north wall, we cut some rings out of an old PVC pipe and there we have storage for rakes, pitchforks, and other long-handled tools.
I put pallets on half of the floor space because I did not want the hay to sit on the floor and get rotten. The way into the tack room is also floored with pallets and siding boards on top.

                              

The west-wall is almost done with siding and the work-space I have envisioned for myself is starting to take shape.

The door from the main room in the barn to the pasture is framed and put in and soon we can dismantle the buck fence outside of that door, we now have a door to stop the horses from just walking through and escaping.

I wanted a Dutch door on there and we build one, put it on and it lasted all of one week before Curly decided it was in his way and kicked it down. So we had a metal door and adjusted the frame and put that on. One of these days I will build a solid dutch door for that frame again.

This is the west wall of the Barn, before and after I build a work table there. The multi-colored boards are actually outside siding we sourced from the dump and we got enough boards to cover all the walls in the bigger room of this building, Totally cover the OSB on the roof and have left enough left over to cover the roof of my woodshed that had been in bad shape.

W did leave spaces for breathing holes under the rafters, after all, I am planning to store Hay over the winter in there and that needs breathing space.
The workbench you see here will eventually go the whole length of that wall. All build from resourced tabletops from the dump and 2x4's that also have been resourced from different construction sites and the dump.

This is the north wall, facing the pasture/feeding station. The buck-rail fence is still up so we won't get surprised by a tool- stealing horse. Yes, I have one of them. My Scar has this thing where he takes tools out in the middle of the pasture (we talking a 20-acre space here) and literally laughs at us when we have to walk out there to retrieve the hammer or any other tool he can get his teeth on.
Two doors, one into the tack room, one into the main part of the barn. The door for the tack room is already on there, the barn ha to wait a few more days.

The north and south wall finished, well sort of.
There is still a lot of chaos going on, building materials everywhere and the big dutch door with a walk-in side door is not on there yet.
But as you can see, we got a building and the estimated cost so far is less the $900, most of that in the OSB.

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Creative Barn Building 1

The Confusion of the first few Days has begun!

Humble beginnings

    Having Horses and not a Barn is not a conducive way to store Hay and keep the horses safe. It leads to wasted feed and unhappy critters, especially here in Windy Country. The wind will blow the feed into the next county and the snow and rain will destroy what is on the ground. One of the Horses was a Houdini comeback and he got to where he wanted to go no matter how strong I build the fences or how secured I thought he was in the pasture.

   So I got this crazy idea of building a Post and Pole Hayshelter with pallet walls. The idea was to build 4 walls and a roof and use pallets as a wall to keep the hay out of the wind and save from the wet stuff that falls from the sky. I have seen that done and I thought I can do that with just a few dollars for screws and roofing.

   I had no idea how big this will end up to be. As in all my building projects, ideas come and go and most of the time, the project will be a lot bigger then it was originally planned on being.
Thankfully, where we are, we do not have to get permits and building plans for barns and sheds, so I went sort of overboard with the building.

   But first things first.
I started to collect and grab pallets wherever and whenever I had a chance. My local Lumberyard was very helpful and they had been free. They also let me take all the scrap lumber I could get on my truck, for free. Nice people and I can not praise them enough. It is a good idea to keep the Lumberyard Folks happy. Every so often I bring them a box of goodies to enjoy. It does not cost me much to bake and it keeps the guys and girls happy there. The Local ACE store was/is also a good source and so was the Feed Mill/Hardware place. We collected pallets wherever we went and brought them home. Every trip to town ended up with filling the bed of the truck with pallets.




   Over the next two months, the lot I use for firewood, filled up with odd size 2x4's, stacks and stacks of pallets (they do come in different sizes), poles and finally six huge 16-foot tree trunks, courtesy of my firewood guy. I would strongly advise setting plenty of space aside for this purpose. Things that are unloaded helter-skelter and not sorted out can magically disappear and come back when not needed anymore.

   Friends did some dumpster and dump searching and came up with all sorts of goodies that we can use, like windows and doors, siding and shingles that got thrown away, our 2 local dumps had been gold mines for us. We spend many hours collecting.  With the price of lumber, I am not too proud to find most of what I needed and use it.

Here is a very important tip: If you live in Rattlesnake or any other poisonous snake country, I would advise carrying a long and big stick. Stomp the ground with it to let them know you coming and give them time to get away. Listen for the rattle and look, look and look again.

My friends Sharon and Otto are very resourceful in finding these things and having the local Highschool in construction and them throwing a lot of good and usable lumber away, and I mean a lot of usable lumber, we struck pay dirt many times. We also checked out other construction sites and ask what they are throwing away and if it was usable we ask if we could have it. Most times they did let us loaded up because they did not want to cart it off to the dump. Sometimes they even helped us load.

   Slowly my yard filled up and we had to stack things outside the yard.
I believe most of the work was in finding materials and stacking them according to size and usability. After collecting about 2 months, here and there, we thought we are ready to start building. Sorting by size and shape is very important, you really do not want to search for a particular piece in a 5-foot tall stack of lumber. It may seem silly at first and whoever is helping will make fun of you, but come building time, you be happy you did this. My yard looked like a Tornado went through it many times and every evening, we stacked and restacked just to get a grip on the materials we had available.

   Screws and Nails had to be purchased and I did that over the previous 3 months, little by little. On a tight budget, that is not a cheap thing. But we got it done. Every time someone asked me to do something for them and what I would want in return, I told them I wanted a box of screws, nails corner brackets or whatever else they are willing to give. It was a bartering fest at its finest. I bartered for anything that I could use in building this for work or chore runs. I bartered for beadwork and sewing, for baking bread and cooking at gatherings. Whatever came up, I bartered.

                               

  The above pictures are the first tree/corner post that went in and the sort of frame for the door into the pasture. You can also see the four-legged critics that hung around just to make sure we do the right thing.

More in the next post. The construction has started.

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