A 150 year old find!

One day Kyle said "here I have something for you" and handed me a well worn and rusty horseshoe. They found several of these in the walls of the barn as they tore down the walls. He gave me one and they put the rest of them back in the walls as they rebuild the walls. This shoe had to have come from a horse that was used at the time they built the barn (150+years). It will hang in a place of honor in the barn.

After the walls were rebuilt, drain tiles were placed around three sides of the barn. The white pipe in the picture is the tile.

Stone were placed over the tile to add to the drainage. The barn sits near a large spring not far from Liberty Creek that runs through the center of the farm.

There was lots of outside work but there was just as much going on inside. A new floor that covers the entire upper level of the barn was put in and many support beams had to be replaced. Some of the new support beams came from a dairy barn (built in 1916) that was on the property and was taken down before the house was built. Walnut was a common wood used in that barn but then walnut likes to grow here so why not!

Denny is putting in the new windows, they make the windows themselves, back at their shop.

WHAT IS THAT GUY DOING?

He is working on the inside of one of the windows at the peak of the barn (don't think those will get washed very often).

A close fit!!! The dirt floor on the lower level had to be dug out and replaced with gravel. They made the one lower level doorway just large enough to get the "Bobcat" through.

Mortar and Stones

A close up view of the hoist that had to be built to move the stones and mortar. The materils are placed in the red pan and then hoisted up to the work area.

Work continues on the upper level of the barn. Here is the hoist again.

Almost done with the south wall.

Just about to finish the rebuilding of the stone wall. The white tent is being used to store the dry mortar.

The last stones are being put in (a view from inside the barn) place. Yeah!!

Rebuilding continues

Iron beams were inserted into the wall to re-enforce the wall and upper level floor.

Lower large doorway and frame work. All of the bracing is still in place as the walls are being rebuilt.

Lower portion of the South wall is rebuilt. Two door ways one small one and one large enough to get the bobcat into.....more on that later.

Break time on a beautiful fall day!

Time to rebuild

Most of the south wall has been removed and lots of braces are in place. This is a critical time, so hope it stays up right!!

The rebuilding started with making a wooden form so a cement foundation could be poured.

Here you see the foundation has been poured.......just watching the cement dry, pretty exciting !!!!

The first stone goes in place as the south wall is being reconstructed.

The walls come down!!

The supports are in place and now part of the wall will be knocked down stone by stone. Because of the large crack and bulge on the south wall much of the wall had to be removed.

Click on picture to enlarge

The walls at the top part of the barn are about one foot thick. The middle portion of the walls are a foot and a half and at the bottom two feet thick.

WOW!

Stablization begins

The entire barn was wrapped with cables. Thc cables were used to straighten and pull together the barn.

click on pictures to enlarge

The cables stablized the barn so that restoration work could be done.

Wooden bracing on the outside helped to stablize the barn and the scaffling went up.

The foot of one of the outside braces.

The old and the new window frames.

The bright colored mortar is the results of tuck pointing. The old loose mortar was removed and replaced with new mortar.

The set-up begins

Oh! No they are setting up camp, tent and all. Actually the tent is for the big and I do mean big bags of mortar mix.



A semi-truck parked on the edge of the road and down the driveway came this little machine carrying bags of mortar mix. This may not look like much of a machine but it is carrying 3000 lbs of mortar mix per bag!!

This is only a few of the bags of mortar mix. The total amount delivered was about 50,000 lbs of dry mortar mix and almost all of it was used. I wonder if they are going to use any stones in this project? Guess we'll wait and see.