Barn Door Handles

I love finding unique little things to fall in love with around this house!
Here's the latest...

Isn't that prettiest little door handle?!?  Even with the spider webs!

This little gem was hidden away on the inside of the little back barn door.  It's so dark in that stairwell, that I never even noticed it until we had the door hanging open all day while the guys fixed the roof!

Now I'm trying to think of a more visible place to use it... we'll see!

And while we're on the subject of door handles, I might as well add that we've finally purchased some for the sliding doors of the horse barn.  (Who knew that it would be so hard to find ones that we liked?!?)

The old ones were mismatched, and all of the new ones at Home Depot, Lowes, & Tractor Supply didn't feel heavy enough to me.

Then we found these on eBay for a set of 6!  That gives us 2 extra, which I'm sure we'll find a place to use (like maybe when we make doors for the goat barn?)

Mike installed them last week...

Outside

Inside

I love how solid & smooth they feel when you pull them- no fear of breaking them, or of hurting your hand.

Another little job done!

The Back Barn Door

I don't think I have mentioned here that the workshop barn has a back door.
It's one of my favorite things about the barn!

You can see how it opens up onto the landing of the stairs that go to the 2nd floor.

When we were working on the roof the other weekend, we had it opened for Mike & my brother to set their Gatorade, and for the tunes to be plugged in.

With the door opened, I noticed the sill at the bottom was missing...

Mike said he'd fix it right then, if I could find a board to use from the scrap pile (the one that we started when the recent storm brought down a tree on the picket fence!)





Not one to turn down a quick project- I scurried over and found a board.

The rest didn't take long at all...










The door isn't hung completely square, and unfortunately, that's more noticable now... but it's just the barn (and the back of it to boot!), so I'm not even worrying about that right now!

Barn Roof Finished

Last summer we put the new roof on the front half of the big barn...  but shortly after phase 1 of "Project Barn Roof", my brother (who was helping us with the roof) had a serious break & surgery on his wrist.
Obviously, the barn roof was put on the back burner!

Now that he's fully healed, he came back to complete the job :)

This time, Mike went up to get some up close pics... the back of the barn roof was in bad shape!

In progress...

And Done...

Hard to tell in the photo from the ground, 

but it really looks fantastic.

(I was too chicken to climb up for photos!)

Another HUGE THANK YOU to Nick for helping us with this!

Behind closed (garage) doors

Here's the dirty little secret we've been hiding in the barn...

Lots & lots of debris.  Quite embarrassing!  

We had all this garbage accumulated from the bathroom renovation, the foyer ceiling collapse, cleaning out the second floor of the barn, the trampoline & random damage from Hurricane Sandy, and other odds & ends we've done around the house.  Better in here rather than in full view outside, but still... It was time to call in the dumpster!

We ordered a 30 yard dumpster (22 ft x 8 ft x 6 ft) which arrived on Friday morning.

By Saturday afternoon, it looked like this...  Pretty much full!

Not to mention the pile of recyclable metal that we separated out:

We spent Sunday double checking the basement, attic, and other barns for any other items to toss in.

The best part, is that the garage side of the barn now looks like THIS:

Well, okay, I'll admit that there's now a couple of items in there... just some yard sale stuff that was too "good" to get thrown in the dumpster... mostly kids ride-on toys, etc. which will be sold this spring.

We now have the room to fix the broken window & door on the right side of the photo.
We also need to replace that ugly/broken pull down garage door.  We're thinking we may build them, like we did for the horse barn... but we'll need to see if it's worth the DIY effort or if it's better to just buy them.

Workshop Clean Up- Second Floor

As I mentioned back here, we've been slowly working on straightening up the the barn that Mike uses as a workshop.

Mike spent a weekend cleaning up the second floor, where we had been storing a bunch of stuff.  Some of it was left by the previous owners... stuff like extra fence pickets (coming in handy!), old doors (used the hardware!), and we have plans to replace the screens of the barn with some of the old windows that are up here.

BEFORE

BEFORE

There are more "Before" photos in the barn overview here.

BEFORE: Boards & Tar paper

One of the issues in the barn was that the third floor "attic" space was just a series of boards laid across the beams, and spaced about a foot apart.
In the gaps, they had laid down tar paper.  You can see some of the tar paper hanging in the right side of the above photo.
It was getting to be a bit of a mess.

In Progress:
Removing Boards & Tar Paper

Mike pulled down all the boards and the tar paper.


We still used the beams for some storage of long boards, and some insulation.  But for the most part, we left it wide open.


It's hard to tell from the photos, but it really does feels so much bigger in there now...
especially since we've consolidated most of the stuff we decided to hold onto (for future repairs, etc) to one side, and the other side is just about empty!

Definitely not the most glamorous project, but certainly a good job that needed to get done!

Next step- renting a dumpster to get rid of the debris we removed from up here.

Working on the Workshop...

...to make it easier to work IN the workshop!

The big thing we wanted to do out here was to re-run the electricity.
The barn had been previously wired, but was disconnected at some point before we moved in.  We weren't too sure about their integrity, so decided to replace them.

So on a weekend that Mike's dad was visiting --he's our electric expert-- we decided to focus on the "workshop" portion of the barn (not the "garage" half of the first floor, or the second floor- those will be added later!)

Old Stuff

New wires run

Mike tore out the old wires.











His dad helped him run new ones...

We already had two fluorescent lights, so we bought two more to match...

New Lights!

And new outlets were added...

And now we have light!

Mike's happy to be able to easily plug in his tools (rather than run an extension cord from the other barn).

Oh, there's still lots more to do... like getting a dumpster to clear out the scrap from other renovations that's been collecting in the "garage" side.  I'm too embarrassed to  even post pictures of that mess!  At least it's out of sight, behind a closed door.  But don't get me started on the garage door itself- yuk!

We also plan to replace the crusty old screens up on the 2nd floor with windows.  That will also be a huge improvement!

Working towards that goal, we did get the 2nd floor a little bit more organized.
More on that soon!

Lighting up the Barn

With the barn doors painted, the horse barn is looking pretty good.

There was still one thing bothering us... the light outside the tack room door.  We liked the fixture itself, but it hung at a funky angle (sort of dangling) & was a rusty brown color.

Last weekend, we decided to remedy that.

Mike disconnected the light, and handed it off to me for taping & painting.  We decided on black to match the hardware on the big barn doors.

Then we had to address the dangling issue in order to re-hang it.  The screws holding it were too long, so the fixture couldn't get snug against the wall.


To fix that, Mike cut a hole in a  rectangular piece of board, then painted it black to match the light fixture.

Now the light is nice & sturdy up there.

Barn Gutters

Mike got another project done on the horse barn recently... putting gutters up.
I was going to include this in the last post (if you look closely you can see them!)  but since I didn't have any close-up photos, I decided to hold off so I could include better pics.

Back of barn

We were worried about the new doors rotting (like the old ones) since the rain dumps right down onto them.
So, Mike installed gutters to the front & back of the barn.

Blocks (still need to paint white!)

The tricky part was that the wall was too far back from the roof overhang, so Mike used blocks of wood to bridge the gap & make the connection between the gutter & the wall.

We've still got some odds & ends to finish up the exterior of the horse barn...

<-- Like fixing the exterior light that's hanging at a funny angle.  I'd like to paint it black too.

-putting some hardware on the sliding doors (handles to pull it open & shut).

-possibly re-hanging the sliding doors, since they're not gliding as smoothly as we'd like.

Barn Doors Painted

We took a little vacation last week, and came back to this...

AFTER

My mom had painted the barn doors while we were away!

She even painted the inside white, which really helps brighten it up in there.

I love them.

Here's how it looked right after we built the new doors:

In Progress...

And take a look at it from last January...  wow, what a difference!!!

Before

Mom also touched up the white frame around the door to the tack room, the window frame in the goat barn, and cleaned all of the windows in the horse stalls.  

Side of the barn

Goat Barn 

Looking pretty spiffy!

Related Posts:
Tour of this barn
Building the door
Fixing the light

Before/After: