goat barn roof is off!

What a hugely busy day we had today. I started off thinking I would start setting the posts for the trellis, but wasn't happy with the ones that I had found laying around. I needed the ones that were holding up the roof of the goat barn. So I decided to bite the bullet and just do it. It's hard for me to start something if I'm not sure how to do it, or if I'm afraid I'll die in the process, but I needed those posts!

It actually didn't take too long--around 3 hours. I used the chain saw to cut the beams and some of the wood, and just started working the boards loose. It was interesting in that there was one board that was holding the whole thing up. It was rotted and barely there, and yet... Also, I found that one shouldn't underestimate the strength of roofing to hold a roof together. The side on which most of the roofing material was already off came down in a third of the time as the other.

It wasn't that scary either, although I had to make sure that I always stepped on the floor above the beams. The floor boards are really rotten and wouldn't have held me, I don't think. Besides messing the blade of the chainsaw up because I hit a few nails, everything went fine. The guys sat out there to make sure I didn't die, and if I did, we had a plan in place on who they were supposed to call and which neighbor's house to run to. Thankfully they didn't need to do that. Here's what the sucker looks like now! It's great to see the barn start to come down.


After I got the posts from the barn, I started setting them in. I also was able to get the 2x6s attached so now all I need to do is start the sheet composting. That should be fun. I'm sure Bill will do his best to make a mess out of it all, but hopefully I've got the posts set in strongly enough that he won't be able to knock them over. I'll put some top beams in to connect them all together, as well as run some supporting ones lengthwise up the posts. I can't wait until next year--it is really going to be awesome.



The other good thing is that I don't think the barn will take too long to get down, which means I'll have all the wood I need for my ceiling. There are also 8 very large beams that I can reuse for the wood shed. That will help a lot. Sweet, eh?

But I'm tired and didn't drink enough water. It's supposed to be in the 90s the next few days. Not sure how much I'll get done then.....