15 November 2018

Just before noon, Chree and I returned from six days at Alex, Katy, and Devin’s.  Shortly thereafter, I espied Mike Many out by the barn, taking down and taking away his staging and other assorted weapons of mass destruction.  Mike finally saw, and approved, the cap I had built for the top of the cupola.  After discussion, he agreed that, if he finished the cupola metal roof down at his shop this winter, come spring, it could be hoisted onto the top of the barn without damage.  So I fired up the Kubota and forked the cupola down the road a half mile.  Then I spent the rest of the afternoon converting the tractor into a snow-blowing machine, as the forecast is for 6″ – 9″ of snow tonight.  Wait, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!

8 November 2018

Finished putting the extension jambs on the barn people door hinge side, then, with help from Chree, put on the ⁵/₄ x 4 Koma^® door trim and top drip edge.  In English: the people door is pretty much done and, after a coat of paint on the trim and jambs, will be ready to have shingles installed on the surrounding walls (a project for next spring).

5 November 2018

Installed the screen rack in the barn loft this morning.  Not too shabby!  After lunch, finally stopped procrastinating and started building the extension jambs for the barn people door.  You’ll recall that I mistakenly ordered that door with jambs for a 4 inch thick wall, forgetting that the concrete curbs were going to be 6 inches thick.  So I have to fabricate extensions for the jambs, made significantly more challenging by the fact that the door is plumb (uh, huh) and the wall is plumb (uh, huh) but somehow there is a ³/₁₆″ difference in the jamb width between the top and the bottom of the 80″ tall door.  There also is a ¼″ difference between the door jamb and the wall framing, top to bottom, on the latch side of the door.  So the latch-side jamb extension has to be a trapezoid in two directions.  Fortunately, some adroit use of my thickness planer allowed me to achieve close enough to the two desired tapers for government work.  By whiskey drinking time, the top and latch side extension jambs were screwed into place.

4 November 2018

The last bit of tomfoolery in the barn loft is to fabricate a rack to hold all the Anderson window screens for the six months each year they are not needed as insect protection devices.  Again using nothing but scrap material left over from earlier barn construction, cut out all the pieces needed for that rack.

3 November 2018

Finished sorting the 24 boxes of cedar shingles and then moved them to the barn loft (neatly organized, OF COURSE).  Also removed to the loft various items heretofore residing in the house storage room but not needing a climate-controlled venue in which to live out the rest of their lives.  When the kids inherit the property, they are going to have so much fun trying to figure out why the _____ we kept that stuff all these years.

2 November 2018

Finished the barn loft shelves.  Even if I do say so myself, they came out really well… some of the best rough carpentry I’ve done.  Chree made sure they were plenty strong…  After lunch, transitioned to sorting cedar shingles by size.  Got half (12) of the boxes done by quitting time.  Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Sorting shingles!  There goes Doug being a Type A AGAIN!!!!”.  Maybe so, but past experience (woodshed and sauna buildings) has taught me that the shingles go on a LOT faster if they are presorted so that you can just grab the one you next need instead of having to paw through a pile / box looking for one the right size.

1 November 2018

With much help from Chree, started building the barn loft shelves… which are being made entirely from “scrap” material left over from earlier barn construction activities.  Only whacked my head on low-lying roof joists countless times while putting up the shelving framework.  You’d think the first blow would have knocked some smarts into my poor excuse for a brain…