Construction

So we’re about 2 nope, I think we’re 3 weeks behind. We’re still missing stuff.

We now have a door that doesn’t fit, but that’s OK. It’s just like building a house.

The weather hasn’t cooperated, and neither has the supplier. But we are making progress and that’s all that counts. It could be worse. We could be building a Fischer Home. Must suck to be one of those folks.

But with some luck we’ll get the barn filled, the loft and stalls built and the fence up and the horse home in the next 2-3 weeks. Sounds impossible eh?

Wanna help?

The Barn, which should be complete by now, isn’t.

It’s been a comedy of errors with material delivery.  Only we’re not laughing.  We’re still missing the corner trim, and enough siding to complete about half of the east side wall.  The 8 foot door on the east side wall isn’t right, either.  

Some how, some way, they thought we were putting in an 10 foot door or something, but that still doesn’t make up for the lack of siding material.

I hope there is enough adjustment in the door hangers to make it right or they’ll be building a new door.

Other than that things look good.  We’re only two weeks behind at the moment.

On the attic front, Home Depot delivered our wood yesterday, which coincidentally was the day I was going to take the receipt to them and well, get a little ‘Jiggly’ with them.

So all in all we’re still moving forward.  This weekend we should make some progress, they are supposed to fill the barn today and start the ground work, though the weather doesn’t look conducive if you ask me.

We still need to finish the fencing, there’s bracing to be put up, fencing to be stretched and nailed and gates to be hung.

Giddy-up.

Rounding 3rd and heading for home on the barn.

Carlie and Co, worked about 4 hours Friday and about 6 hours Saturday. Apparently we’re missing a few critical pieces of metal or they would have gotten a lot farther. They can’t put the sliding doors up or anything around the doors because they are missing some backing trim. We also don’t have our sky lights. All of the missing stuff should be here Tuesday and they *plan* to finish then or shortly thereafter.

We also plan to lay out the loft and stalls shortly and make a decision on building stalls or going with free standanding stalls, or something in between.

We finished up the perimiter fence for the first field but ran out of time and strength to get the dry lot fenced.

We knocked out over 50 posts between friday night and Saturday, and I was feeling it Sunday big time.

Pictures are below. The last photos show the barn from the field to with the back of the house in it to give you some perspective on where the barn sits.

Today Charlie and the boys got busy with the trim for the doors in preperation for the siding. Once they get the doors put together it’s all down hill from there.

Barn Gallery

We have a working man door now, and for the most part the sliders are framed in but they aren’t put together yet. We’re missing a few pieces of trim. They’ll be back tomorrow to work all day on what they can around the doors.

I left work after lunch around 1:30pm. On the way home I hit two tractor dealers and got a quick education on compact tractors. Then headed home to do more work on the fence.

I picked up the BobCat from Baker and got busy. I set 11 punched in 15 new holes, re drilled 3 others and set 11 posts before Claudine got home with dinner. I’m wiped out.

We plan to set the remaining 40+ posts tomorrow and be done with it. Woohoo!

This morning Halsey delivered *most* of the siding. Charlie and the boys showed up to start work.

I took off bright and early to get our electrical permit. We have a rather unusual situation. Well probalby not all that unusual. To get electric to our barn we don’t have any simple options.

We can:

• A) Have Cinergy set a pole $$$ Ouch
• B) Have Cynergy set a transformer to an existing Pole $$$ Ouch
• C) Trench a boat load of very expensive cable back to an existing pole $$$ Ouch
• D) Tap it off the house.

Option D is the best except we have no capacity off the house which is why we added service to the old barn.

So we now need to upgrade the service to the house, something we’ve been needing to do for a while now. This in itself involves other issues. We have to change the attachment point, update the panel, move the meter base, etc. But we get to bring 200amp service to the house, and pull 100 amp service to the barn off the house.

I picked up the permit for that this morning.

Home Depot and Customer Service Or the story or the 1???x8???x8’ Pattern 116 boards.

OK, the story begins with what we’re going to put on the wall of our attic as we refinish it.  After looking at drywall, some close-out hardwood flooring, trimmed out plywood, and other options, we discover this really cool tongue and groove pine, 1×8x8 pattern 116 boards.  (It also comes in other lengths but 8 foot is all we can comfortably get up in the attic.)

As you know Home Depot doesn’t stock a lot of anything good when it comes to wood, good wood that is.  When you visit there, if you want decent wood, despite their advertisements you have to pick through piles to find stuff that’s straight, not warped all to hell and not beat up by the folks running the fork lifts.

To finish off the attic we need approx 105 of these boards.

We stopped by our local store, I was lucky to find ten that were good enough to use.

I took a UPC sticker from one of the boards and decided I’d shop around, even check with the local lumber yard.  There had to be a better way than buy these 10 at a time.

On the way back from another trip I stopped by another Home Depot and they too only had about 7 reasonable boards in stock.  I stopped by the “Pro??? Desk and asked for some assistance.

“What if I need 100 of these? What are my Options????

The Clerk was very helpful, he looked in his computer and told me, This store had 75, this store had 100, this store had 30, this store had 50.  I could drive around all day and pick from the piles until I had my 100…

OR, the stores get these in bundles or a skid of 108 at a time.  As inventory gets low, they automatically get an order for 108 more.  My store, the one closest was due to get 108 new boards in the next 3 days.  I should go there and have them hold that, not break it up.  They could deliver the 108 to me for $59.  I could use the good from the 108, and return the bad.  There would be more good, than bad because they would be handled less.

Sounded like a plan.

Last night I attempted to purchase that skid worth of boards.  However it had already been stocked.  In stocking them they bust them up.  Apparently, these Tongue and groove boards come in 4×8 sheets.  A lot of them get dinged up when they do that.  The guy that stocked them even told me, “Good luck finding 100 good ones???.  So we started over again.

I asked them to order for me another bundle, another skid or package.  How hard can that be?

I pre-paid for 108 boards.  No one there knew how to make that happen but they promised to call me the next day to let me know it would be done.

Today is that next day.  Apparently they can’t order anything that they stock.  It can only be ordered when their inventory gets low enough.  So my only option now is to start over or find a store that has a bundle.  We think we found that store but it’s a lot farther away.

They are doing the refund and purchase over the phone and we’ll see how long it takes to get the wood delivered.

I’m not holding my breath.

Buying things like this shouldn’t be that hard.

Moving right along now.

Charlie and Co. arrived right on time at 7am. It was a bit foggy but none the less, they were there to get started. It’s amazing how crooked things can get, (wood that is) and how you can coorce it into going straight. A little lean on it here, a little come-along there. We’re within an 8th of an inch square across the entire pole barn. Watching Charlie make adjustments and square stuff up like this that makes me glad I didn’t do this myself the first time.

They finished up the top board and waited for the crane to arrive. It’s a good thing too because nobody wanted to set trusses by hand. We didn’t get any more rain last night so they were pretty sure the crane guy wouldn’t have a problem getting back to the barn and he didn’t.

The crane was right on time at 8am and it didn’t take long to git-r-dun.

Barn Gallery

All I know is with trusses on it, the barn just got a whole lot smaller.

Barn Gallery

The trusses were dropped off today and Charlie and the boys finished off the perlings up to the top board.

They did a little tweaking to put things back square.

They will be back in the morning with a crane provided it doesn’t rain too much tonight. If it does we’ll be raising the trusses by hand and I’ll get to help out.

I let them borrow the Paslode framing nailer tonight and things moved along rather quickly with two framing nailers.

I should be a manufacturers rep for Paslode. That thing sure is sweet! Now all they need to do now is make a gun for fence staples and we’d be set! I can’t believe one doesn’t exist.

Whew, it was a very productive day. I am spent and sun burnt. I am a true red-neck now.

My man from Tractor Supply showed up bright and early, but he didn’t beat Charlie’s Crew, although they hadn’t really started. After the storms last night the ground was nice and soft and the fog was so thick you couldn’t see 20 feet in front of your face.

We unloaded the poles and fence, and I waited for Charlie. I don’t think I have enough poles. In fact I know I’m 10 short but, this doesn’t look like enough.

The fellahs got busy by 8:30am, squared everything up and were digging holes with Bakers BobCat. Charlie originally told me he was going to rent a dingo but hey a free loaner BobCat is always better than anything you have to pay for.

It didn’t take but a couple hours to get things looking serious.

The Bobcat started acting up, it started acting like it was starving for fuel even though the gauge read full. Apparently there’s a fuel hose thing that goes to the bottom of the tank which goes bad or drops in the tank. We kept having to top it off.

Once Charlie got his holes dug I decided it was time to learn how to use a BobCat and dig some holes for the fence.

We knocked out about 30 posts plus another 10 or so holes today. Only another 60 or so? more to go?

Michael was a huge help with the fence, in the afternoon Claudine chipped in a hand and in the late afternoon Maggie did too. We started to get a system down and it was moving rather quickly. I think we set 7 posts in the last hour or so.

It’s coming together very, very well. We’re putting up standard no-climb wire horse fence with a top ’sight’ board. So the horse will be able to see the fence. It’s going to look really good when we’re finished.

I’ve created a new Gallery for ‘Barn’ Photos Here so we can keep track of the progress. It’s not going to happen over night but it will happen fast.

By the end of the day Charlie and crew were *almost* ready for trusses:

They could have been but they cut out early on account of this being Easter weekend and all.  With some luck we’ll have trusses ready on Wednesday or Friday.  We won’t get back to the fencing until the weekend after next though unless we find time during the week.

Well, the spot is marked:

Halsey-Meyers had dropped off the first load of goodies (though it was after this photo was taken).

Tonight I purchased 50, 4″ 8 foot treated posts, and 15, 5″ treated posts, as well as 400 feet of no-climb horse fence. With luck I’ll get to use the “Dingo post-hole digger” tomorrow after the guys are done setting the posts for the barn to set a few fence posts.

At a minimum I hope to set the corner posts to get things started. The posts came from Tractor Supply, I was surprised that they actually stocked them in quantity. At the store near me there is a gentleman named “Tim” that that works there who is going to deliver them tomorrow morning. $40 bucks, was reasonable to me. I’m not sure how many I could get on the landscape trailer but I’m sure it would take at least two trips.