Half a good weekend

Saturday was great. Sunday was not so great!

On Saturday, Spencer got right to work while I took care of a few other things. Our goal was to get the lower roof on the north side completely ready for tin. Spencer ended up crawling around in the rafters while I cut the 1 x 4s and handed them up to him to nail down. His parents came and put in a few hours of work, too. They cleaned up the building site (A HUGE help!) and his dad took over the duty of cutting boards and handing them up to Spencer. We all had lunch and then they headed back to College Station.

We finished all the 1 x 4 strips and then Spencer went up to the upper level of the barn to cut the rafters so the ends were even and I attached rafters to support boards with Simpson Strong Ties. We ran out of daylight before I finished the strong ties, but Spencer did the rafters measured and cut off even.

On Sunday, we got up and got to work. I was putting on the rest of the strong ties while Spencer cut the fascia board for the upper section of the roof and put together the boards for the overhang. And then it started raining. It rained just enough to get everything wet, making it too slippery to climb around on the rafters. I finished the strong ties and we quit for the day.

We're hoping to get in a day of work this coming weekend. If we can do that, the barn will finally be ready for the roof!

Getting ready for tin

With all the rain we've had since the fall, we haven't gotten to work on the barn much at all. We finally had a dry spell, but I had a meeting with 40+ people at the house for the rescue on Saturday. Spencer decided to work on the barn by himself, although he did get some help from a couple of the rescue people (handing him stuff, chatting with him while he worked, etc.). He got most of the rest of the 1 x 4s up on one side of the barn. These strips of wood are where we'll be attaching the metal for the roof.

On Sunday, we didn't put in a full day. We've both been working hard and needed to be a bit lazy in the morning. After lunch, we went to work. Spencer finished up the strips on the first side of the barn and started in on the second side. We ran out of boards and out of time. If we could have two good solid days of working, we could finish the strips and get the overhangs put up. Then we'll be ready for the tin for the roof. I guess we better start looking for roof metal!

It'll be awesome when we get the barn done. If the weather would just cooperate, we could get a lot more done!

Truss time Part 2

Today we spent all day working on getting the trusses up. We reattached the first one by hanging onto the uprights and trying not to fall to our doom. We got the simpson ties in to hold it in place when Spencer had an epiphany. He created little platforms made of 2x6s. We for the rest of the trusses, we stood on the 2x6s while hammering in the simpson ties. Spencer had to come climb with the circular saw a few times to cut notches to help the trusses better fit onto the cross pieces.

We didn't get all of them up today - we have six more to go. We'll see how the weather holds up and see when we get to work next.

Finishing the trusses and cross bracing

We got the last six trusses up today and Spencer put up the cross braces. This involved him being even higher up in the air on a slightly bigger platform while I was on the ground cutting the braces to be the right size. Since this is a man-made barn, it isn't perfect and you can't make 'one size' cross braces. There's three braces between each truss, so that's a lot of cutting and nailing!

After all the braces between the trusses went up, we also started putting down the 1x4 strips on the lower rafters. This is where we'll eventually attach the tin for the roof. We had hoped to have the roof up by the end of January, but the weather has not been cooperating with our plans!

Truss time!

We haven't been able to work much thanks to busy schedules and the weather. Too many weekends have been too cold and too wet to get much done. This weekend, we spent Saturday getting our place ready for a Christmas party (which was much fun!), but we managed to get up after the party and get to work. Today was truss building day. That involved cutting a lot of lumber and then nailing the pieces into a triangular shape truss. By the end of the day, we have 24 trusses done.

After getting the trusses down, the next step is to get them on the roof. Hauling them up there is fun - we tried a pulley but had no good place to attach it. So Spencer finally just muscled them up there. He won't need to go to the gym for a few days now! We both climbed up there, hung on and got the first truss up. I don't like heights and the wind was blowing and I was sure I would fall to my death, never able to enjoy my lovely barn. I survived and Spencer survived. But a good wind gust knocked the truss over before Spencer could finish securing it. So we're going to wait until next weekend to try to get the trusses upright.

There's nothing like help from the family!

My dad and his wife came down a few days ago to help with the barn. They arrived on Thursday and dad and I started working on Friday morning while Spencer was at work. We worked on the upper structure - getting in a lot of the boards that tie everything together. Once Spencer got home, he and dad and I kept working and by the end of the day had finished most of the structure that tied the uprights together.

We did discover one flaw - somehow Spencer and I had managed to put one of the 4x4s that's supposed to hold the stall gates/doors at 3 feet instead of 4 feet from. So we worked on digging the 4x4 up, removing all the concrete and resetting it. I seriously thought about just leaving it, but everyone pointed out it would look funny to have six stalls with 4 foot gates and one stall with a 3 foot gate. I knew they were right - but I didn't really want to hear it!

On Saturday, we put in more work on the upper structure. Dad and Spencer cut off the 4x4s and 6x6s to be even. And then they started installing the rafters. The barn will have a raise barn aisle. These rafters weren't hard to put in - but there are 48 of them so it took some time.

On Sunday, we worked just a little in the morning before dad and Cindy left to head back to KC and I had to head to Corpus Christi for a conference. Dad and Spencer got all the rafters up and even discussed how to make the trusses for the raised section of the roof. Spencer and I will have that fun later. For now, I'm happy with the weekend's work - a barn with rafters over the stalls!

Happy Halloween! It is a work day!

It may be Halloween, but it is also a work day here for the Williams. We had a lot of rain last week, and the bad news is that it caved in some of our holes. So Spencer had to use the manual pole hole digger to enlarge them. And we found out that some were not on the line - we're not sure how or why that happened. But he dug and fixed them. I couldn't really help as that's a one person job, so I cleaned the house and yard until he was ready.

Once he was ready, we had to work on pouring concrete into all the holes. That's another tough job. The bags of concrete are 80 lbs each and we would load the wheel barrel up with two bags. Then bring it over to the barn site, mix up the concrete. Spencer would get the post square and in the right spot and I would start shoveling in concrete. We wanted to make sure each post was on the line where it belonged and that each post was upright. Some of our holes had water in them, so we ended up mixing concrete right in the holes. Another hard day - but satisfying. I can actually see where the stalls and barn aisle will be now.