A project, in photos

Life at the farm is busy these days as winter is just around the corner - must hurry to get the old barn ready to house both birds and horses, aiiiiiiieeeeee!

That's what happens when you inherit decrepit old crap on your property... the renos take up all your time, suck your meager savings into a black hole and pepper your hair with sawdust, cobwebs and regrets.

Regrets that I didn't wear a face mask for the first two hours of demo today...

Thank goodness for ventolin inhaler pumps!

I snapped a few pics along the way with our old point-and-shoot so excuse photo quality, but I wasn't going to bring my new camera into a dust-choked hazardous demo area. Shaking hands and poor light also add to the mix but hey, it was what it was.

Quick recap of the project:

I bought some new (ok old, very old antique but they're new to us!) windows for the barn as what's there now, on four sides, is falling apart: old, cracked single panes on the outside, plastic on the inside, a graveyard of flies and other various bodies in the middle. In some places sheets of plywood cover holes where windows used to be.

Our neighbor is doing the job in a couple of weeks but I wanted to prep the areas as much as possible since I can do some of the work myself to save paid hours.

I actually like carpentry work - HGTV is real life, you know :-D

While toiling away I decided to see what was behind some rotting wall particle boards as we need to insulate as much as possible and fill in foundation/siding cracks - not that any of that will keep rodents away but it gets drafty in there, specially at floor level where the chickens will be, so that has to be sealed.

The walls on three sides of the barn look like this -
see the rotten, chewed, wet bottom bits
from a decade of horse pee and poop?

This is what you get when you pull it off the wall...
Yeah, not much for insulation eh?

That's like 30years' worth of vermin bedding and poop right there,
you bet your arse it's disgusting!

Now the area is ready for new pink insulation,
a new vapor barrier and new fitted plywood on top,
all cracks sealed:

It just kept going and going,
like some crazy Pandora's box:

The glass panes have, for the most part,
missing quarter-inch round and caulking -
I don't know why they haven't shattered yet!

Some bits made me gag, like this section here...
there was more rodent shit than insulation-

I managed to prep about half the work space today,
it took about 4 hours in all:

This one was the very worst of all,
I had no mask at this point and inhaled too much dust -
well not dust, more like disintegrated insulation
and mountains of moldy rat poo:

Here I am, exhausted and red eyes and all -
Notice the full wheelbarrows in the back
as I ran out of big trash bags...
I still have to empty all of that and haul it to the dump!

And that's how I spend my days, folks...

It sure beats being stuck in an office eight hours a day, plugging away at a soul-sucking job. The way I figure it, we either have to pay someone to do the renos and to get that money I have to get a job I hate, or I do it myself and we manage with what we have.

I've been selling a bunch of stuff around the house that we don't need or want anymore (yey for online classifieds!) so it helps offset the cost of building supplies and material.

I'm all about recycling :-)

And to think... I used to spend my days coordinating sales teams, planning events, building sales projection charts and entering business expenses, dealing with irate customers and designing marketing plans, not to mention the travel to trade shows, heels, painted nails and all that things that used to define my life.

*sits in awe*

/end of Time For A Hot Bubble Bath post/