Week 13

The big news of the week is that we are NOT working with This Old House on the farm house project.  Norm, however, did comment on how much he liked our house. So, if Norm needs any projects for his season coming up on Yankee Workshop, please feel free to contact us at any time. 

We met with the structural engineer this week.  Everything seemed fine overall, but we are going to look a little closer at a couple of things next week.  We might need to add any support to the bottom of the house.  We are also going to dive into the wonder that is our free standing field stone fireplace.  I am very interested in seeing what we are going to have to do to make sure we can have a fireplace in all three main rooms of the first floor.  After the structural engineer goes through the house again, we should be ready to out the final drawings to paper and get some bids.

With warmer weather moving in toward the end of this week, I was able to get a couple of projects done on the barn.  First, I finished up the floor and the door frame around the big, sliding front doors.

There are still some adjustments that need to be done, in order to allow the doors to slide smoothly.  But, overall, the door frame, and the front of the barn, should stay in one piece for a while.  With that mostly done, and the sun shining, I borrowed a ladder from the in-laws and began to clean out the gutters on the barn.

I am no roofer, but I think this might be why we are getting some moisture in the basement of the barn.  As I started to remove all of these branches, I realized that they were not just branches laying in the gutters, they were actually growing small trees. I cleaned out the front and back gutters, and they ended up a little less scary.

That's a little better.  We are meeting with the "tree guys" on Saturday. I would like to get rid of a couple of the trees around the barn so that I don't have to clean out the gutters weekly.  Actually, there are a bunch of dead trees on the property and a couple of big branches hanging over the house that we would like to see removed.  Otherwise, Spring is here and I am interested to see what pops up out of the ground this spring....