Inside the homestead...

With the hot weather I have been cooped up inside more, so finally took a few pictures inside the house to share, though it is really hard to do justice to things. With the camera I have, I really can't fit much into a picture inside the house. I'll share some random snippets so you can get a general idea of how the inside of house finished out. No particular order.

Well, this is not exactly inside, but it was the view from the BF nook window last evening...


Kitchen in the morning...

From up on the balcony, looking over kitchen and into the BF nook...

Karen's favorite room, ... in full production it appears...

View from the reading loft upstairs....

Upstairs balcony,...

Downstairs looking down hallway west to east....

Dining room,....pass through in the upper right corner, fireplace to the left....

Living room....east end of house..

Fireplace between living room and dining room...

Sun room doors which lead into the West entry area screened in porch...


View from sun room out to front yard....

Barn Razing!!

I know there has not been anything new here lately, but we have not been sitting around watching the sunset every day! This barn needed some serious TLC. As you will see below the right hand lean too section was in a serious state of disrepair. Our goal was to salvage the main left side structure which seems pretty solid. We decided to add a support beam down the center to give it a little more support. That could have been a separate BLOG entry in itself. It took four adults and a couple kids manning hydraulic jacks to get our beam up against the ceiling and add the posts underneath it. Overall it worked out well... and no one had any posts fall on their head..almost but not ....

This is a look at what we were dealing with on that right hand side...

Although none of us really took down a barn before, I think we had an excellent crew, we were constantly deliberating how to do it without killing anyone. We decided to start with the roof removal and salvaged the newer pieces of metal previously installed with good intentions...

Next we started stripping off the siding, again trying to salvage as much wood as possible.

We noticed some interesting building techniques with cedar support posts notched out for supporting true 2 x4 framing pieces. I have plans for using two of these for either clothe line poles or hammock supports. I would guess they are at least 75-10 years old.

After the siding was removed we decided we would need to take the roof rafters and floor joists out one at a time, and one end at a time, .. which worked out well... we all took turns using the new SAWZALL that we sent Karen to Home Depot to get... she did well, and I think it paid for itself in one day!

And this is Brenda, who showed up in a long summer dress, obviously to assure we would not make her get her hands dirty!! She did play an important role cheering the guys on every time another rafter crashed to the ground....

She particularly like the view in the " Patrick Swayze Room" !!

Finally the last wall came tumbling down to the ground.... about 9 hours later.. not bad for a days work!!

This is the exhausted, but proud demolition team. From left to right: Curtis, Andrew, Anthony, myself , and Karen' s dad. I can't thank them all enough!

And last but not least the nail pulling team!!! ...

A previous weekend project, the nest box for future chicken coop. In case they start laying before it is completed.

And another weekend project, replacing the termite ridden, delapitated stairs in the garage building!

And last but not least,... a little photographic update of the turkey progress...