Let's Get Newcomers Up to Speed

After the fiasco that prompted the abrupt deletion of all my blog posts relating to our barn-into-house renovation, there is no background on what the heck is going on with this big project. Let's call that event D-Day (for Deletion Day, not for the WWII event, it wasn't THAT bad). I thought it would be a good idea to post something with some snapshots in time so that anyone who wasn't reading about what we are doing before D-Day could get some idea of what the heck is going on.

My original opening post on this blog went something like this:

Once upon a time there was a little barn. At one time this barn was the home of some cute and cuddly llamas, but they moved out many years ago.... blah, blah, blah. Pictures were included and the whole thing was cute and clever. I can't remember what all was said, though, and can't recreate the cuteness and cleverness that used to be.

The point is, the barn started out something like this, and we affectionately refer to it as "the llama barn" even though no animals have lived in it for going-on 15 years. These photos were taken after tons of demo-work had happened, but I can't find photos farther back at the moment.

The plan was to move out the wall of the front porch to make the structure 900 square feet total. Moving the porch allowed us 150 additional square feet. If we had not moved the wall and eliminated the porch we would have had 750 square feet of living space...but we would have still had a porch, which we don't have now.

All of the dirt work that you get a glimpse of in the above photos was done by hand (except for the trench on the outside of the building). S's dad did almost all of it himself. Just a man and his shovel. Back breaking work, but he likes to be busy so we never heard him complain. I would have been complaining the whole time if I had done it myself.

Time went on and work kept happening. After a while we had this:

The floors we starting to be created. I never knew I loved floor joists so much until this project happened. With one person working on it (alone) full time and a second person helping part time (and us helping when we could on the weekends, but we both have physical limitations), the floor was a long time coming.

Then this happened:

Do you see what I see? Walls! And the exterior kind-of closed in with Tyvek® weather barrier. Well, it's not Tyvek, it's a different brand, but it's the same thing. It's house wrap that goes under your siding or brick or stone or whatever to help control moisture and weatherproof the house.

Then some plumbing happened along with all the electrical, including a new electrical box, and eventually we had things like this:

Windows, siding, a bathtub and Sheetrock. The Sheetrock is only on the interior walls. The interior side of the exterior walls (I hope that makes sense) was slated to have cedar planks milled from trees on the property instead of Sheetrock.

When we moved in we had painted walls where the Sheetrock was, sub-flooring with paint on it, and a working bathroom and electrical. We did not have counter tops in the kitchen, a kitchen sink, a dishwasher, a light in the kitchen, a stove, a hole in the wall for the dryer vent, cedar planks on the walls, upper cabinets in the kitchen or cabinet doors or drawers on the lower cabinets, a heater...you get the idea.

Now, almost three months later, we have a beautiful handmade counter top made from mesquite, cherry and ash, our stove is installed (that happened within a couple days of moving in), a kitchen sink and a light in the kitchen, a working washer and dryer, cedar planks on most of the walls (this is still in progress), a propane tank, a heater,

etc. Here are some more photos:

Sorry about the glare, the sun was coming in the window
right above the heater.

That's about where we are now. The cabinet doors are on in the kitchen and bathroom now, but that's not shown in the pictures. I have also put the drawer pulls on in the kitchen but not the cabinet pulls on the cabinet doors. I need to get on that. You can see some of these photos in my other blog posts.

Now that you are up to date I can update things as if you all know what is going on. If you made it to the end of this very long post, thanks for sticking with me. I hope you will come back and visit me.