Sandblasting!

     I had a couple of days before the sandblasters could do their work, so I decided to finish the fireplace hearth in the office.  I need this hearth to be in place before the fireplaces can be installed.  Here is a picture of the hole in the floor in front of the fireplace.

     I framed in the opening and then roughed in the bricks.  I used bricks from the walkway to the front of the house.  The bricks look a bit older than new bricks would look, and we need to redo the front walk eventually anyway.

 

Here is the finished product.

     Not too bad for never having done any brick work before.  The fun part was buying a diamond tip blade for my chop saw, so that I could cut the bricks to any angle I needed.  

     Next, I needed to get all of the old and new wood out of the barn and onto the driveway, so that they could be sandblasted.  With the offer of free beer, I was able to get a big group of friends to help me haul all of the heavy wood.  Thanks to everyone that helped!  

     The sandblasters showed up two days later and blasted all of the beams and the ceiling on the first floor as well as most of the old wood in the barn.  The sandblasting made all of the wood look more uniformed in tone and texture, but it did make the wood look a little pitted and rough, and the color of wood looks a lot lighter and yellowish.  

Here is a picture of Roger blasting the beams in the driveway.

 

     I talked to our painter and he thinks that once we put a couple layers of polyurethane on the wood, it should all look a little darker and smoother.  I now need to install all of the new beams between the old joists on the entire first floor.  First, I had to paint all of the angle irons that are going to hold up the new beams.

     The beams are oak and they are very heavy.  I built a dead-man to rest the beam on, so that I could wedge some shims in under the beams to hold them in place and then bolt the angle irons on to the ends to hold the beams in place.  I was able to get about ten of them done on my own.  Here is a picture.

 

     It was really hard to lift the beams up over my head, and these were the smallest of the beams on the first floor.  Plus, there are over 50 of them.  I was trying to figure out a way to hoist the beams into place without killing myself and keep them there long enough to bolt them.  I just ordered a drywall lift, that is used to lift full sheets of dryway up to an 11 foot ceiling.  Hopefully, this will work, fingers crossed.