THE BARN ROOF REPAIR PART ONE-THIRD

 

 

Halloween had come and gone and the weather changed quickly. The warm days turned cold (Yay!), the daylight turned to dusk, and the long summer drought finally ended with an average of one nor'easter per week. As I write this on the ninth of December, we've had seven in four weeks. One's on top of us now, and rivers are climbing their banks.

 

The cheap cover for my outdoor kitchen proved to be nothing at all for the first one.

 



                                                               It lived for two weeks.

                                                      Time took its toll on my pumpakins.

   The school bus still slowed so the kids could see their slow demise. It's a good lesson for the young.

 Knowing the winter was fast approaching, I knew I'd need some more workspace. So I deconstructed the wood cookstove in the machine shop, moved it to the greenhouse, and built my first permanent built-in workbench. One that could handle long pieces of trim and other wood to be cut by my chopsaw, on top of the table saw in this pic.

 

Now was the time to tackle the barn and get it ready for winter. The lesson with the blue canopy was not lost on me; one good snow load on the barn roof, and say goodbye. I knew I couldn't replace the roof all at one go, so I did the most I could in a short time.

 

 Swayback barn before I pulled in the wall of the right section. If you don't recall, the right third is circa 1860 and the left two-thirds is a completely independent structure built in the 1700s, likely around 1710, if the stories and archaeological evidence are to believed. In this picture, taken in early summer, the wall of the right barn was being pulled in. Go back and read about it in an earlier post.

It's okay; I'll wait.

 

Dum de-dum, de-dum...

 

Right. All caught up? Good, you forgetful cretin. Let's continue.

 

 I wanted to work on the right barn roof, but was compelled to stop any outward movement of the left barn wall first. The brace to the right is temporary at best, as the rafters that support the roof are pushing it out. The barn should have been built with joists or a second-story loft structure tying the walls together, but this was either never done or the loft is now gone. There is actually no evidence of a loft having been there. The wall below the brace has moved out almost sixteen inches. It is very stable; no amount of pushing or pulling can budge it. But in time, it will come down, taking the rest of the barn with it.

 

I decided to tie together the plates upon which the rafter ends sit; made of 8x8 chestnut, the one to the north was completely intact, while the one on the south side (in the pic) was nearly completely deteriorated at the mortise that holds the central vertical support's tenon. Whew! I hope that was as hard to read as it was to write. This side of the barn has a corner post to the left, a corner to the right (just to the right of the door), and a center pole that is actually a tree, rounded with a tenon, sitting on a rock. That is the weakest point in the barn.

 I braced the central vertical support by tying it to the central beam (bottom right of the pic) and sandwiched the plate between two pieces of 2x. I connected the pieces with two sections of 3/4" threaded rod and an eye bolt. Large washers spread the load. The diagonal brace will have to be loosened and repositioned when the wall is moved in.

     The north plate was intact, so I put the eye bolt through it and a piece of plywood on the outside.

                                  Industrial come-along hooked to the north plate eye-bolt.

 Doubled 2x6 plate on deteriorated south plate. This 2x doesn't have to run the entire length of the plate; it's the longer one on the outside that carries the load. The pulley on the come-along hook doubles the pulling capacity of the machine. Increases it, anyhoo. You physics majors put your faces back in your books. The 2x4 scab is there to support the rafter end, above the most rotted part of the plate. Note how it has dropped in relation to the others. The roof sags badly at this point, which is directly above the central vertical support. The cable should keep the barn's south plate from moving over the winter, although I'm keeping the exterior brace in place (as well as adding a few more this week).

 Looking down at the Old Barn floor from the loft. The plan is to build a scaffold in the center of the barn and set up a support system for the north roof, which will have to be jacked into place, removing the sag in the ridge and allowing the rafters to come back into place. The south wall will be pulled into position at the same time, then the north rafters will be attached to the south rafters at the ridge by plywood gussets and the south plate will be repaired and rebuilt. The central support will be repaired (likely sistered onto) and the rafter ends tied to the repaired plate. The jacks will be removed and the whole building will collapse as all will be kilt in the demolishments.

No, NO! That's not what I meant at all.

What, you don't think it will work? Let me show you how.

 Before jacking the east barn (New Barn) roof, I needed to remove the rafters and support them, then pull in the south wall. I did that a post or two ago. I also rebuilt the corner post/plate joint at the southwest corner. The pic above was the condition of the same joint at the northwest corner. The southwest corner had dropped so far as to split the beam where the tenon goes into the post's mortise. Nothing could be done to correct this, as the loft from which I was working was built after the barn itself, and the structure of the loft dictated what could and could not be pulled together. So I added some 2x L-brackets as corner braces and installed a triangular 3/4" plywood gusset to keep it from moving further.

 

 All the time I had been working on the front wall during the late summer, I had the rear roof structure supported by a 4x4 post, here moved and ready to be replaced by jacks. Note the diagonal 2x6 on the rafters. The upper jacking plate has been offset from the support structure below; I didn't want to LIFT the roof, just to move the back section to the north, dragging the now-loose south rafters with it as it went up naturally. This meant I had to jack on the diagonal, a tricky thing to do.

 In addition, I had to jack the northwest rafters ends at the north plate, as their ends had softened and they had dropped. I installed some sisters and ran a new 2x6 drop plate onto the existing plate (the sisters are in the pic but the drop plate is not) after some light jacking (stifflegs are in place). Next I had to remove the small sections of wood that joined the end rafters of two barns. If I didn't, the lifting of the right roof would carry the left roof with it. The evidence that they are two separate barns is obvious in this picture. Different sized rafters and centers, different roof sheathing, and an offset in the plate ends (hidden somewhat by a piece of wood nailed to their faces). Note the plaster stripes on the scabs that join the rafters of the New and Old Barns. Typical that they would have been recycled from another building. Yankees never waste anything. That goes for me, too.

 This was the barn roof as I began jacking. Note the VERY slight height difference along the joint, at the left side of the roof hole. I had barely tightened the jacks into place at this point.

 The initial jacking system. One hydraulic 8-ton on the loft plate for the lowest end, and one large 20-ton screw jack placed above the central loft plate below the floor. Stifflegs are always in place and constantly being moved tighter or supported with extra 2x blocks below. This keeps any jack failure from becoming disastrous. Jack failure can still maim or kill, however. It must be done slowly, with an eye on the jack's alignment at all times. A well-trained person can feel when  jack has enough pressure on it, will shim his stifflegs, then removes the jack and repositions it. Note the jacks are positioned at an angle to move the roof back, not to lift it UP. Do not try this at home. Or anywhere else, unless you've done it a number of times.

 

 At the end of the first jacking, I have the roof up by almost five inches. The gable end has not sunk, so it is only the west side that needs jacking. This roof has no ridge plate (known as a ridge pole) between the rafters at the peak. The older barn in the background DOES have one. I tied the rafter ends together with blocks of 2x4 loosely screwed to each rafter with one screw. This would allow independent lateral movement of the rafters as they were moved back to the north.

 At dark, I left the jacking for another day (three weeks, actually). The ridge still has considerable sag, but it is coming up. Note the 2x4 scabs on the ends of the original rafters; they keep them supported while the roof is lifted backwards and also gauge the progress though comparative measurement along the plate.

 

 Three weeks later, back at it on the first good weather day. A third jack moves the rafters adjacent to the old barn roof, the sheathing which was dragging the other roof upward. Naughty, naughty! I caught(y) it in time. Note the independent stifflegs for the old barn rafter behind the silver jack.

 Plywood gussets were made and installed, but initially only screwed to one side. This last set of three rafters were recalcitrant, needing another jack to get them back into place. Note the gap in the sheathing/roofing above.

 

 The roof pushed up and back as much as I deemed possible/necessary. I had some slight adjustments to make to the middle at this point. The rafters, sisters at eight feet long, are in place. I decided to add a small overhang to the roof to allow for the use of gutters.

 Almost nine inches higher, though it doesn't look it.

 Tying the rafter ends to the plate.

                                               Simpson Strong-Ties, eat your heart out!

 Screw in the gussets and rafter sisters, then remove the jacks. A slight creak was heard, then....silence.

 

Only the stifflegs supporting the Old Barn Rafter are still in place, and will remain so until that roof is jacked. THAT will take all winter and a bit of spring. It is a HUGE project. The New Barn roof was just practice.

 

ANNUAL REPORT





 



  Well, it's been a year. I moved in around late October and it's amazing how much (and how little) has been done.

 When I arrived on the first day (it was night), I couldn't get in the house (the lockbox with the key didn't open so I broke it), the electricity was off, the water didn't work, and the house smelled like mold. I practically slept on the dogs that first night.

 The next day I turned on the electricity, got the pump working, and found that the water heater, toilet, and bath plumbing needed rebuilding. Oh, and the sink leaked. There was no dog fence, all the outbuildings were filled with household garbage, and the woods were filled with briars and poison ivy.

  This was not really news, but it did cause me to wonder how deep it would get. And it would get deep.

  Most of the leaves had already dropped and it would be three days before my moving truck would arrive. I didn't know my way around, had no idea where the grocery store was, had no stove or refrigerator, and though I went to visit my new workplace, I wouldn't start for a week as I needed to build a dog fence first. The briars and poison ivy would have to wait; the harshest winter in fifty years settled over New England, keeping us snowbound from December to March. April, in my case.

  In addition, the only liquor store I found was manned by taciturn unfriendly people that treated me as it I was a foreign bacteria.

  They still do. Or would, if I hadn't found another.

  Careful readers will know that I eventually solved all these problems, though it took a good deal of the winter, all of the spring, and I'm still removing trash from the outbuildings.

  But I have heat in most of my rooms, the dogs are contained and happy, most of the trash has been removed from the outbuildings, and though the briars still sway and growl on most of the property, I've managed to remove most of the poison ivy, briars, and bittersweet from the wooded areas within fifty feet of the edge of the yard.

  Trust me, it wasn't easy. I have the scars to prove it.

 

 This is what the area just behind the yard looked like when I started working on it in late May   (though the pic was taken in early October this year).

 

 Progress.

Note the vine on the side of the tree to the right. That's how big the poison ivy is.

 

 The walls (actually animal pens from the early 18th century) being reclaimed and exposed.

 

 Unfortunately, the insides of those walls (pens) are filled with broken glass and rusted steel, sometimes up to three feet deep. I'll get a front-end loader next year.

 

 This is what the area behind the barn looked like; briars and raspberries, poison ivy and bittersweet. To you uninitiated, bittersweet is the bane of the Connecticut farm (it's the yellow stuff to the right). It grows as fast as bamboo, strangles everything it touches, and climbs high to the tops of trees in what seems like a matter of minutes. It's vines are sinewy and strong enough to make rope from, pardon the dangling preposition. It gets caught in your weedeater or brush cutter and requires continual removal from the cutter head with hand clippers or a sharp blade. It can only be killed with serious brush poison; Roundup won't even phase the stuff.

 

 Behind the barn. This was the first area I cleared in May. It has been kept clear only by monthly cutting, yet still has new growth. My land is very fecund.

 

 This was big deal; cutting through the briars to begin the foray along the property line. I hope to reach the corner by spring next year. The pond lies just beyond the rock wall at the end of the cut; briars crowd both sides.

 

 One of the three stand of raspberries I intend to keep. The barn and tractor shed are in the background.

 The hornets' nest, abandoned and disintegrating.

 

 Though a lot of my time is spent getting rid of brush, this is an exception. It is a one hundred fifty year old boxwood salvaged from a restoration we are doing in North Stonington. I hope to have it live another 150 at the Standish Farm.

 

 I hadn't carved a jack-o'lantern in nearly fifteen years, and I arrived too late in the season (and had more important things to do) to decorate for Halloween last year. This year, I decided, would be different. I took some of the stick-figure designs from Blair Witch, added small pumpkin heads, and got to carving. These will likely stay until the pumpkins rot. I added some desiccated fabric on the arms. More has been found in the barn and will be added later.
 

 A ghost in the doorway?

 

 Yep. Definitely a ghost.

That's a goat skull above the skeleton. With bulging eyes. The skull came from central Texas.

 

 With all the fun of carving the jack-o lanterns, I stumbled across this huge cottontail yesterday while I set up the scarecrows and pumpkins. Its head was cleanly removed and sits under its chest. Big rabbit. But despite the decapitation, it was absolutely intact. What kind of predator does that (other than humans)?

This rabbit was found on the EXACT spot I almost stepped on the fisher cat last winter.

The 30-30 is loaded and ready.

 

            I ended the first day of Halloween Week with the first fire of the season. More will follow.

AUTUMN, HARVEST, STOP, GO, AND CHANGE GEARS

I'm sure my two readers have noticed a dearth of posts. Or not.
Well, this time of year demands different  directions, and sometimes I end up finding that I've crossed my own footprints, often more than once. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be on this track anyway.

It's presently October 12th, and the seasons are changing in that oh-so-New England way that those from other places like to come up here to see. Leaf-peepers, we call them. And though the countryside is simply the most beautiful on Earth, it also a time of scrambling, preparation, and getting things ready for Winter. And this year, all the old timers and farmers are calling for another harsh one, though the orange and black wooly bear caterpillars seem to disagree, including with each other. Their orange stripes, which should predict what kind of winter we are going to have, are wide on one worm and narrow on another, denoting opposite winter conditions. Of course they won't be around to feel it, but I will.

The weather this summer was much cooler and less humid than is normal; we broke ninety less than seven days the entire year and then the rain simply stopped in mid-July, drying up our vernal ponds and causing an early end to our usually fecund autumn tomato crop. Oh, we have them, but we are not bathing in them as is normal. They are greener later and the skins are somewhat tougher. The Weatherheads say that this is the driest summer in Connecticut since 1864.

The Standish House interior has suffered a thick coating of dust that reappears as soon as I remove it. Prolly has to do with the dogs rolling in the dry dirt and bringing it inside. Yark yark.

Lately, however, there has been a small, nearly useless rainfall once a week (still too little), and it usually falls on Saturday. So between the drought and the nuisance showers, I haven't been able to clean up the trash piles (the transfer station is only open on Fridays and Saturdays). It's also been too wet, dry or windy to burn. My brush piles continue to grow. It's also hard to describe how wet the morning air is here in the northeast; the dew is so heavy that nothing can be left outside that can be affected by being wet.

But life on The Standish Farm carries on nonetheless.

 The big maple across the street turns before all the rest around October 1st.

 

 Note the much larger hornets' nest to the right of the tree on the power line. It has grown to the size of a small basketball, and not one bothered anyone. At the time of the picture, the little buggers were busy beginning a new colony. They would soon leave to go underground for the winter, abandoning the nest.

 

 Summer sunsets like this would be no more.

 

 Speckle, Schlogg extraordinaire, will not stay still for a portrait.

 

 Say goodbye to summer thunderstorms.

 

 A pile of 500 year old longleaf pine cutoffs wait to be split into quick-starting kindling and outdoor firewood. Note the long pile of flat wood tot he left, under the tarps. Old white cedar, that. Being thrown away at work, it will be used for future projects. A large cleanup in the woodyard at Early New England Restorations is taken advantage of by their "oldest house" worker. More on what I plan to do with all that wood later.

 

 The only barbecue I get up here comes from my own smokers. Chicken, pork roast, and ribs come from the second use of the new smoker, the only thing I've bought since moving up here. Well, the only thing that wasn't directly used to fix the farm's buildings.

 

 Not a Boston Butt, but a 'chop' type roast. Not as good as a shoulder, either. Note the molasses. Brush with this before dusting with dry rub for a wetter crust that merges sweet and spicy.

 

 Where the temporary outdoor kitchen is now, so there will be a permanent one, hopefully next year. Note the luxurious outdoor recreation area to the left. Even I October I need the fan to keep the dusk mosquitoes at bay. Also note the empty black plastic tub (Speckle's Pool) on the berm. No more swimmin' weather.

 

 The new smoker, still a virgin. The weedeater is getting quite a workout this fall, as I have now seen a full growing season and know what to whack and what to keep.

 

 Some longleaf pine, already split and sitting by the fence near the future firepit.

 

 The bare dirt spot was my original burning pile (the permanent burning pile can barely be seen beyond the trees to the left). It will now be the permanent outdoor fire pit.

 

 More ENER wood scrap, this time hemlock that includes half-round timber cutoffs for fence rails.

 

 Also longleaf pine 1x for the barn siding.

 

 Large flat rocks (very valuable) uncovered in the yard. All schist, much loaded with small garnets. Note the play sand bags; I'm loading up on sand and ice-melt this year, as it disappeared by January last winter. The ladder leads to the machine shed roof, which had a couple of small leaks.

 

 More longleaf pine, this much thicker. It will be used for flooring. More will be added to the pile soon, and the piles will hopefully be moved to the tractor shed before snow falls. The wood is carefully stacked and stickered to allow for air movement, so if it has to stay under tarps for the winter, it's no biggie. My Christmas Tree awaits decorations behind the tarp.

 

 Tractor shed bulging with longleaf pine. The thin stuff in the foreground is 1/4" to 3/8" thick, and will be sanded and used as wainscot. I'd have already converted this building into the main wood storage, but the yellowjackets kept that from happening. I flooded them out a month ago; note the hornet spray can and the long black plastic pipe. I used the latter (over twenty feet long) to flood the building from a far. The YJs were buried deep beneath the white thing below the back of the pile, in the center.

 

 There used to be a window behind the plywood. It is this piece of plywood that was the favorite place for the whitefaced hornets to harvest their cellulose; I had to be very careful anytime I came near it, as one or two were almost always there, happily stripping the graying, desiccated wood fibers for their nest.

 

 The Barn Loft project is on temporary hiatus, housing mostly maple leaves. It will begin again this week.

 

 I was able to clear out the scrap wood from the barn, though a few bags' worth of trash remain. And oh, yes, the furniture. What am I to do with THAT?

 

 I got a load off to the dump one less-than-rainy Saturday ago.

 

 The pile in front of the greenhouse went, too. There is always more (sigh).

 

 The asparagus garden, with one cherry tomato and a mutant cucumber in the middle. Neither offered much in the way of vegetables, but the asparagus is thriving. I'll be lucky if I get a few spears next year, but in two, I should be swimming in it.

 

 The tomato in the herb garden, on the other hand, has been loaded all year. I made good use of the tarragon, rosemary, sage, and thyme this summer (still do). The basil was harvested last week; it was beginning to pale and scrawn out.

 

 The Standish Farm Horseradish Empire, part one.

 

 The SFHE, parts two and three. I started with over twenty plants. Sheesh. These babies will be harvested at first major freeze (it was 32 degrees this morning, but that doesn't count). Any remnant of their roots, even the tiniest, should grow into more spicy roots next year.

 

 Last of the hydrangea.

 

 Hard to believe that this was a spray of peonies. Now the wild phlox and goldenrod are fading. I kept the goldenrod, a weed by most people's reckoning, because it attracts tons of bees. Our bees need all the help they can get, thanks to our overuse of pesticides.

 

 Last of the front garden. Only a bit of a geranium and some small vestige of SkyBlue remain, but they will be back. The wildflowers perty much took over (note the yellow/orange flowers and pale green leaves). Weeding stopped by late July.

 

   My two tropical bonsai starts, ready to be replanted and slowly acclimated to the inside for winter.

 

 First harvest of pears from a windstorm that came through this week. This is a sampling. There will be many more, except for those the dogs eat. Them pups just lubs they pears.

 

 Basil destined for pesto!

 

 First load of split firewood, mostly maple and ash, destined for the woodbin. Gotta get me some kindling!

 

 The ....LARCH. Only the top is green.

Wait a minute. Isn't this where we...

...came in?

 Basil and cherry tomatoes.

 Other things got harvested this week. This is a load of red cedar, boxwood, and a living white cedar to be replanted somewhere in the yard. They came from a property the company is restoring in North Stonington. I am a natural with the chainsaw (besides I have a Stihl with a 20-inch bar), so I got to cut down the trees (as well as make off with what will eventually become carved walking sticks (cedar), Naturamas, and tool handles (boxwood).

 

 One of the 100+ year old boxwoods in the yard. I cut down the shrub to four feet and had the track hoe pull up the rootball. We then replanted it to keep it alive over the weekend and will pull it up again on Monday for transport back to my house. Old boxwoods are very hard to find, and they grow VERY slowly. Trained properly, this one will make a permanent oversized bonsai in the yard. It will not exceed eight feet high (prolly only half of that). Thanks Oswaldo, for giving the pic some perspective!

 

 Hate to have had to move it at all.

 

 This dogwood will produce some very fine (and extremely hard) wood. I have some ideas for it.

 

 The Hornets' Nest, showing less and less activity at the beginning of October.

Note that the tree has lost almost all its leaves in a week's time.

 

 Five days later, after a rainstorm (finally!) Abandoned now, it will disintegrate quickly in the autumn rain.

 

 The forest beginning to turn towards autumn.

 

The cellar bulkhead door also disintegrates. Another project that has to be done before snow....

 

The Standish House awaits the snows. It will get nice autumn cleanup first; I want it ready for spring's re-emergence next year.