Tag Archives: barn

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Back to work.

June 11, 2020 Rivergirl 24 Comments

At what I believe is the slowest pace humanly possible.

We started on Memorial Day weekend Friday by attacking the baby barn again.

Trimming the window at a glacially slow pace because as we’ve previously established…. geometry is not our friend.

After more hours than I care to admit, we moved around to the door trim.

Which the husband insisted be wider than the other trim.

Did this work out well?

Not really. But neither has anything else in this remodel and he refused to do it over, so it is what it is.

The night before, we took a trip to Lowe’s for door hardware. I argued for 6 inch hinges, because well…. I’m a woman.

You know we love our 6 inches.

But the husband was having none of it and went with 4 inch hinges, trying to prove size doesn’t matter.

As we started to assemble the doors?

He realized in some instances, size does matter…. and sent yours truly back to Lowes for 6 inches.

Hinges!

I’m talking about hinges!

I won’t even describe the nightmare that was Lowe’s on Memorial Day weekend.

By the time I got back the day was done and we got virtually nothing accomplished.

Yay us.

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Because big barn needs a little time in the spotlight now and then.

June 8, 2020 Rivergirl 19 Comments

Since the baby barn has been hogging all the attention lately, let me reintroduce you to my favorite spot to spend late afternoons.

Comfortable furniture, blooming pretties, a good book and a cocktail.

Lowers my blood pressure just thinking about it.

I planted this garden bed two weeks ago, took a picture and realized there’s a hole.

Damn… another trip to the nursery will be necessary.

How awful.

😈

Big barn dwarfs baby barn.

And it’s where you can find me most evenings in the summer, surveying my domain.

Cheers!

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It was one of those days when you just want to freeze time.

June 5, 2020 Rivergirl 18 Comments

The weather was perfect.

75 degrees with bright sunshine and a gentle breeze.

We’d spent the day mowing and trimming and weeding….

And everything looked perfect.

Lilacs were cut for vases and perfumed the air with the scent of a long awaited spring.

And we ended the day with adult beverages on the big barn porch…. where the only thing to worry about was walking back inside for refills.

Life is good.

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Baby barn progress.

June 4, 2020 Rivergirl 26 Comments

So work continued on our project from Hell.

Trim completed, we started shingling the back half of the roof….. and if you know anything about the baby barn?

You know it wasn’t going to cooperate.

Oh, the first row was perfectly level.

Unfortunately…. it was also 5/8ths of an inch short.

If you’ve ever done roofing, you know what a nightmare this is. Tiny little strips of shingles had to be cut for every row and you can’t put them at the end. No, that would be too easy. They had to be tucked somewhere in the middle so it didn’t screw up the pattern… which meant cutting one other shingle on every row as well.

Time consuming? You could say that.

It literally took us all friggin’ day to do the back half of this little roof.

Okay, so the fact that the husband bought the wrong size flashing at Home Depot the night before (because he went without me and therefore to the wrong store) and then had to go back to Home Depot to return it the next day and get the right size flashing (again without telling me and therefore to the wrong store ) and because Home Depot doesn’t sell the right size flashing ( we’d bought the right size flashing across town at Lowes a month ago ) he also had to take a trip to Lowes.

The moral of that lengthy run on sentence? Tell your wife before you go somewhere so she can tell you you’re wrong. It will save you time and aggravation….. and she’ll thoroughly enjoy it.

No, that ridiculous waste of time didn’t help.

Of course, yours truly telling the husband he should have checked with me first didn’t help either…. but you know I had to.

Needless to say I put some physical distance between us after that comment.

I’m not sure the big barn porch was far enough, but at least it was out of hammer strike range.

So progress was slow, but it was progress.

And here’s a picture of a spider carrying off a dead fly….

Just for variety’s sake.

And then finally it was done.

But I didn’t get a picture because I was inside cooking dinner.

Hey, you’ve seen one crooked baby barn roof, you’ve seen them all.

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The little bastards.

June 2, 2020 Rivergirl 18 Comments

It’s not like I don’t welcome and feed all our visiting critters enough of a variety.

Three types of bird seed, suet, strawberries, peanut nuggets, oranges, grape jelly, blueberries, nectar, deer grain, salad scraps, old bread, apples and pears…

Christ, I even buy special dog food with taurine for the foxes.

And we don’t have a dog!

So yes, I was a little peeved when I went to sit on the barn porch the other day..

And saw that one of them had done this –

And this –

As well as this –

On every single seat cushion.

Ungrateful little bastards!

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So… this happened.

May 23, 2020 Rivergirl 14 Comments

The husband mowing the grass over the septic tank?

Not blog worthy.

But the husband mowing the grass over the septic tank with one arm because he’s done some kind of damage to his left shoulder and the appendage is hanging uselessly?

Relatively blog worthy.

It took me a week of him alternating ice packs and heating pads. A week of him moaning, groaning and being perfectly miserable before I could get him to the doctors for an exam and an X-ray.

Thankfully nothing was broken or dislocated. They said it might be muscle trauma, might be a pinched nerve. In other words they have no idea.

A weeks worth of Prednisone has helped a bit, but just when we were making baby barn headway….

It seems we’ll be looking at this a while longer.

I’m seriously beginning to think that building is cursed.

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A visitor and a test drive.

November 7, 2019 Rivergirl 44 Comments

As the husband was laying tar paper on the roof of the baby barn the other day, our farming neighbor dropped by to say hello on one of his toys.

Clearly my husband is not the only one who likes old and rusty things.

I have to laugh at how comfortable the husband looked up on the roof.

Give him a beer and a snack and he could happily watch the game from there.

Neighbor’s 2 year old son is a cutie and loves going for a ride with dad.

That being said…

You know husband had to take a ride himself.

And I can only hope our neighbor never wants to sell the damn thing…

Because you know where it would probably end up.

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Babies can be annoying.

October 21, 2019 Rivergirl 36 Comments

Let’s face it, there’s going to be a weekly baby barn update for the duration of the deconstruction/construction.

Which, at this point…. I figure will end sometime between Jesus, isn’t it done yet? and If I have to pry one more splinter out of my hand, I’ll shoot myself in the head and call it good.

Walls.

If you’re an immigrant during this administration? Not Good.

If you’re a rotting baby barn circa 1974? Very good.

Here’s a pic of the husband using his vintage (what feels like 50lb) saw.

You’ll notice he’s hunched over and applying pressure. That’s because the damn thing shimmies like a tilt a whirl on crack and might fly apart if you don’t.

Walls.

They’re a good thing. But sometimes…

You see where I’m going with this?

From the outside all looks well.

From the inside, things went a little squirrelly on the right.

Crooked?

little bit

Do we care?

We do not.

Do we wait for the wife to bring the dust pan during clean up?

So, another weekend done.

Another section framed and ready for siding.

Did I mention that the husband’s plan of starting at the halfway point on the front and working his way around makes it look a bit odd?

Rather like a schizophrenic.

Perhaps I shall name her Sybil….

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This is not what you want to find when rebuilding….

October 15, 2019 Rivergirl 42 Comments

Our old baby barn/shed has a dirt floor with heavy duty rubber mats on top. Due to numerous woodchuck holes and tunnels, we had to drag all the mats out. That sounded easy enough until I realized each one of them weighed the equivalent of an African elephant…

Seriously.

A pregnant, morbidly obese African elephant carrying a suitcase I packed for an overnight trip.

Did I mention they were all covered in pounds of dirt as well?

So as we’re moving the next to last mat…..

This.

A chipmunk burrow with tiny scraps of paper, plastic and leaves.

Upon further examination…

A maze of tunnels, which I thought was pretty cool, until… it moved.

Do you see the leg?

Yeah.

Not a tunnel.

A nursery…

Which means we had to find the other end of the tunnel and relocate them. Not an easy task.

Five minutes after we found them?

Momma found us.

And she wasn’t happy.

She ran around squawking and chirping and looking for her babies.

After a while I think she found them, because she stopped searching and started stuffing.

Stuffing her little cheek pouches full of all those little scraps of paper….

And scurrying back for more.

Within minutes she’d cleaned up the whole lot.

Watch her cram a dried leaf that’s almost bigger than she is below.

(And please pardon my husband’s cursing. Things were not going well with the rebuild at this point…)

After we wasted time relocating chipmunks, we realized we had to relocate a bird’s nest as well.

So many evictions.

I felt like an evil slumlord.

Back to work…. and things did not go well.

Which was completely the husband’s fault.

He had the crazy idea he could square the building properly (After 40 plus years of Maine frost heaves? Madness!) and changed the original footprint….. which in turn threw everything off kilter.

More good times.

Did I mention he uses tools from the 1950’s picked up at a yard sale or the dump?

This little jewel feels like it weighs 50 lbs.

But he has the original box… and vintage lube.

So it’s special.

P.S. For those of you who pay attention, this post is actually out of sequence. That back wall is gone now. Apparently my blog scheduling has run amok.

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And so it goes….

October 3, 2019 Rivergirl 37 Comments

Work on the baby barn continues, albeit slowly.

My husband’s master plan involves a serious amount of temporary screwing, refitting, removing and replacing. He’s not a huge fan of measuring… but he’s a man.

This is not surprising.

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Of course this means 3 times as much work.

I think one planned demolition and rebuild would suffice…. but I’m a woman.

What do I know?

There’s also a good deal of shifting the husband’s ~~crap we don’t need now, nor will we ever need again~~ stuff from one place to another. Like the hurricane generator we bought in 1992 when we lived down south and haven’t used since.