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.

Quick Spray Paint Fix

There are a bunch of radiator pipes around the house that weren't really "finished off" where they entered the floor.







The couple of pipes that did have the floor rings around them, looked like this... Not pretty!

So, we bought some new rings, which needed painting so they wouldn't be bright, shiny silver.

We used Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint and painted some old ones, while we were at it...

A couple of hours to dry, a few minutes to snap them into place, and we were done!

It's not a huge difference, but something that was irking me for a while now.


In other news... today we got a roll-off box delivered to get rid of all the debris in the barn.  You know what we'll be doing this weekend!

Lots of not-so-glamorous-yet-very-necessary stuff we're working on!

Front Porch Fix- Part 1

Looking at the following photos, do you notice what's missing?  

(And I don't mean the greenery, or the seasonal decorations)

Some of the lattice work that covers beneath the porch was broken and/or rotting.  

Close up of one of the broken spots

This weekend Mike took them all down to fix them!

The first step was removing the four sections of the lattice.

While we had the lattice off, we took a good look under there.

Here's a photo...

I find it odd that the stone work that was visible wasn't just a pillar.

There are four mini walls that extend all the way back to the house (perpendicular).  

And there are basement windows under there...

I wonder if the front of the house didn't look completely different at one time-  

Why would they have put windows to the basement, just to have them covered up by the porch?  

Maybe there was no front porch?  

I wish I could find a REALLY old photo of the house...

Anyway, back to the porch... while the lattice was down, Mike re-graded the front flower beds, so that rain water won't run under the porch (and into the basement).

Next step...
Mike was able to salvage some of the lattice, but all the frames needed to be rebuilt, since they had been put together with ring shank nails that couldn't be removed without damaging them.  Plus, the originals weren't made of pressure treated wood, which we want to use since it's so close to the ground.

Thank goodness Mike now has electric in the workshop, and was able to do all of the building in there (especially since it was quite windy out last weekend!)

Rebuilding the frames

So, we're about halfway done... (left side of porch still needs to be finished)

Next we have to re-paint them, but it's too cold now.  

We added that to the list for spring!

We have another porch item on the list for the spring as well... hint: it's looking up!

Stone Wall- needs fixing

A couple of weekends ago, a car ran off the road and into the stone post at the corner of our front yard.  Luckily, no one was hurt.  The only injury was to the stone post, and two little bushes that were ripped out by the car...

Insurance is paying for repairs to the post & stone wall.  But it's one more thing to add to the list of things to do!  We've gotten a few estimates and all of the masons said they need to wait until the spring to complete the work.

We may take this opportunity to extend the wall down the side a little (just a couple of feet), so that it makes a nicer flower bed for the corner.  The masons said that big pile of rocks in the backyard will match the rest of the wall perfectly (we've already used some of them for the backyard flower bed).  But first we want to check with the town that we don't need additional permits/approval to extend it.

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.