BARN RESTORATION

PART ONE:
REPAIRING THE LOFT

Without a doubt, the barn is the most endangered building on the property. I knew this when I first saw the place back in 2012. It was, like the other buildings, filled with trash and a few treasures. It was also seriously swaybacked and required some effort to gain entry. But when I saw how it was built, I knew I had to save it. This despite the three by three foot hole in the southeast corner of the roof.

 First view, 2012. The exterior roofing shingles are laid over vertical boards about ten inches wide. The joints between these boards were likely covered with narrow strips of wood called battens, and the sheathing was referred to as 'board and batten.' The battens have long since been removed and some of the wide pine and chestnut boards have been replaced with plywood. A door can be seen at the center right.

 A telling view of the barn's genesis. This end of the barn is an addition; the curve in the roof/siding at the left is where the newer section (center right) was joined to the older (left). The door at the right of the side with gray shingles leads into the end that contains animal stalls; feeding troughs are still there. Windows on the east side have been covered with plywood, and another door can be seen at the far right of the side with red shingles. If you look above that, you can see yet another addition on the rear of the structure. A small shed roof juts out about eight feet to the north (just behind the green maple branch).

 The inside of the main barn. The plate that holds the rafters is hand-hewn, complete with broadaxe marks. The age of the building is indeterminate, as there are so many changes and additions in both structural as well as the sheathing. My guess is that the posts and plates, which are hewn, are 18th century. The roof rafters are sawn. Plywood and newer 2x lumber  can be seen on the lower level on the left; all else is made of vertical boards. The vertical posts are pine logs with the bark still on. They are pretty much worm food, or were when there was still wood in them. They're pretty much all compacted powder now. Some of the many pieces of furniture in the barn can be seen on the floor.

 North side of the old part of the barn. Board siding is intact (some chestnut boards are twenty inches wide). The rafters are sawn, the plate and post tie are hewn. A wood shake roof can be seen on top of the wide purlins above the rafters.

 Barn before cleaning. Most furniture is now junk, but was nice at one time. Chairs abound. A fresh critter hole was found under the yellow foam. It contained the skunk I killed last winter.

 More furniture on a thick bed of straw. The table in the middle now resides in my bathroom.

 The beam is the dividing line between the newer and older barn; it is sawn, not hewn. Still pegged with trunnels, though. The loft, which is only in the newer section, is filled with colonial design chairs, many in good shape. The wall at the bottom is the back wall of the stalls to the east. Note the hole in the roof at the right.

The place where the new and old barns join. The joint is separating severely at the center right. The rafters to the right of the joint are 3x4 and the ones to the left, in the newer section, are 1 3/4" by 3 3/4". This picture was taken in 2012, on my first visit to the farm.
 

 The new/old barn joint has increased its movement by late summer 2014.

 

 Unloading some 400 year old yellow pine I scarfed from work. I was milling 5x7 joists from larger timbers, and was told to 'get the scrap off the property pronto.' You bet, boss.

 

 The chairs are still in the loft, and are still in the dry despite the ever-widening hole in the roof.

 

 Remnants of the furniture after an initial clean-up.

 1950's kitchen table, spool bed, vanity, chairs. Some might be worth saving.

 Damn. Looks like the hole in the roof has grown a bit since 2012.

 

The day stabilization began in mid-August.

 

 First order of business; cut down the monster briar to the left of the door, the mutant pokeweed, and remove the maple branches over The Hole. I knocked off the section of roof just above the plate to the right of the ladder before beginning work; it would have hit me in mah punkin haid.

 A little corner decay

 

Looking into the animal stalls and the fallen joist of the loft above. This section had deteriorated completely due to the roof hole, but the rest of the loft, a joist of which can be seen in the background, is intact. This section of the stalls is filled with decayed roofing, loft wood, and old household trash from the previous owner.

As the tractor shed is nearby, I expected to find some dangerous critterage in the rot. Only this beautiful millipede was found.

                                       Perty, ain't it? They abound on this property.

This softball-sized hornets' nest was found on the maple branch I had removed at the start of the project. Luckily it was abandoned, otherwise the project would have ended very badly on the first day. When I cut the branch, I had not the experience with the white-faced buggers I wrote about in the last post. I will be more observant in the future.

                       Trash that could not be burned is in the bags. Burnables are behind.

                        A three-inch thick wood floor I did not know was there appeared.

Note how the upper wall is leaning out by almost six inches. Many of the rafters connect to nothing, as the top plate has also moved. This is my greatest concern; the rafters opposite these, on the intact roof, are being held up by their decking. It should be the other way around.

Southeast corner of the new barn. Though the outside of the post is still very much intact, the plate has moved off it completely. The inside of the post, however, was an eighteen-inch-deep hole filled with dirt. A disconnected rafter can be seen, along with the rotted top of the plate where it sat. As the rafter end was soaked by rain again and again, it's end deteriorated, causing the top of the plate to do the same.

                                 A second floor on top of the first didn't fare as well.

                      Setting up jacks and a temporary support to lift the loft band back into place.

                                                                   Tools of the trade.

         The trash pile grows; landscaping tools were used to remove the decayed wood and garbage.

Getting some light and air into the now-cleared space to begin the drying procedure before adding new wood.

                                                        Another window unblocked.

Nice piece of manufactured iron hardware on the barn door. Several more were found on the many colonial-era doors left to rot in the yard and nailed to the sides of the stalls. The thumblatches on almost all are gone, of course.
 

                                The collapsed loft section removed, looking towards the stall.

 

Missing section of loft band replaced and attached to corner. It looks out of level, but it is actually the building that is out.

 

Yet more furniture packed into the dry area of the animal stalls. Most appears to be mid-sixties junk, but something nicer and older may lurk beneath. Likely a skunk.

Four hundred year old longleaf pine with which I will repair the barn. Some as boards and battens, some as structural elements, and some which will be re-milled into wainscot, probably for the house.

                                                                     Perks of the job.

The tractor shed, now off limits because of yellowjackets. I have lots of important wood here, so I have to evict them soon. Their hole is in the very center, below the pink beadboard bundle.

Some of the flooring in the stalls were street signs.

After the loft frame is rebuilt, I find cutting the 3/4" OSB decking easier from up top, where it is mighty crowded.

As the structure is seriously out of plumb as well as out of level and out of square, I had to fit each piece of decking into place, scribe it from below, and cut the short ends to match the older T&G decking. Otherwise the decking would not break in the middle of the 2x joist.

Low bridge. I thought of putting in stairs where the new section was built, but I'll be storing lumber up here and will want access from the larger barn space where the ladder sits, so stairs are unnecessary.

A good look at the rafters before jacking back into place. Some would be easy to lift by hand, others would be more difficult, as they had more old decking attached.

The new section was built to join the band on one side of the barn to the band on the other. The unlevel floor reflects this. No biggie. The whole structure is twisted.

Bracing installed before jacking the rafters back into place. This stage will be trickier. Stay tuned.

SMALL BUT DEADLY

I know I've gone on about he plethora of critters up here is southeastern Connecticut. God knows I come from Arkansas, Texas, and South Carolina, where the centipedes are a foot long and sport inch-long stingers (Texas), scorpions cling to the ceiling above your bed (the Arkansas Ozarks and Texas), fire ants abound (same as before), nearly microscopic chiggers borrow into you en masse (all three states), and backwards thinking goes hand in hand with the destruction of public schools while individual rights are taken clean away rather than eroded over years (again, all three).
But never in my life have I been subjected to such critterage as I have here.
The fisher cats and Lyme-disease carrying ticks, the blackflies that swarm in spring, the deerflies that bite (and hang on after they've been slapped), all that has been reported.
But nobody told me about Late Summer. Namely, The Plague of Late Summer.
I can deal with biting flies that leave welts and mosquitoes so small that a  window screen is nothing but a collection of holes to fly through, pardon the dangling preposition.
It's the flying wingstings I can't abide.
I'm allergic to the stings of anything yellow and black. Not honeybees or bumblebees, mind you, but paper wasps and hornets.

Ugh.

It's hurts me to just write those words.

Paper wasps and hornets.

Apparently, August is The Bigtime for these wingstings up here.

Example.

My Bonsai Buddy Eric came over last Saturday to pick me up for a hike on a nearby hill that might be good for springtime collecting of potential bonsai, so I showed him around the farm. During a tour of my wood collection, he remarked on the plethora of yellowjackets in the tractor shed, and when I saw that they were coming from a hole beneath the wood, we both beat a hasty retreat.
Ground-dwelling yellowjackets are not to be trifled with; they will attack in large numbers if you merely step near their nests, and I try to avoid those flying hordes that will kill me outright.
I saw the hole under the wood and decided I'd do something about it.
Tomorrow.

I waited until dusk, then spotlighted the hole and approached with a can of 20-foot hornet killer (it shoots twenty feet, it doesn't kill twenty-foot hornets. God Forbid). I'd had this since spring, when I figured I'd be deluged with the waspy little buggers. And though I've spotlighted the upper corners of my outbuildings' rafters every weekend, I've found nary a nest.
Anyway, I pushed the button on the can and got a large cone-shaped spray that outlined the nest entrance nicely but did nothing to kill any yellowjackets. They didn't even come out. At least I didn't see any from the comfort of my truck cab to which I had retreated quickly after squirting them.

So I went to the store and bought a can of stuff that was guaranteed to shoot a single jet. That night, at dusk, I repeated the exercise, with my open truck door nearby into which I could beat a hasty retreat. Rushing forward to the hole, I pressed the trigger.
Nothing.
I ran back out of the shed.
I noticed a red tab that said "REMOVE THIS TAB" and did so, pulling out the entire red safety device and making the can inoperable. Re-inserting the red device, I got the can to squirt once very briefly, then sallied forward again to  squirt the wingstings.
Again, nothing.
I jumped back into the driveway and screamed like Charlie Brown when Lucy takes away the football while he's trying to kick it.
"AAAAUUUUGHGHGHHH!"
I worked the red thing back into the trigger, was sure I'd got it right this time, then jumped within spitting distance of the hole once again. It hadn't occurred to me that the wasps might have already died of old age, or, more likely, that they were all expiring at laughter at my expense.
But yellowjackets and hornets HAVE no sense of humor.
Anyway, this time for sure!
Except that when I tried the trigger, the red safety device popped out completely and landed right on the hole of the nest.
I'm sure the only reason they did not come out en masse when I reached down to get it was because of their being exhausted from laughing at my feeble attempts, but I made one last try and
BINGO!!!
I soaked the nest's entry with the entire contents of the can, which emptied itself in about four seconds.

I went back the next day expecting to have regained access to my wood shed, but the goddamn things were busier than ever, and now seemed a bit perturbed.

So I've given up on the tractor shed for the moment.

But that's not the end of the story.

I told this tale to my fellow craftsmen at work, and each told me that yellowjackets are bad but not nearly as bad as white-faced hornets. These live in big paper nests and are more aggressive than any others. They also have a more severe sting. I now keep my epi-pen at the ready in the front seat of the truck.

While changing the sugar water in the hummingbird feeders the next day (no, the hornets and yellowjackets do not go to the feeders, but bumblebees do, and I never kill bees of any kind), I noticed a bulbous growth under the clamp that connects my household electrical line to the Big Line out on the street.
"No," was all I could say.
Oh, yes.

My binoculars confirmed it. It was a small nest (about a quarter of a football in size) of....you guessed it, white-faced hornets.
"Well, at last they're twenty-five feet off the ground. They pose no threat." I took a picture of the nest.

The next afternoon, while mowing the lawn, I noticed the nest had changed. There was a new layer of paper material halfway down from the top.
Halfway down. IN ONE DAY.

"Jeez Louise," I muttered.
I decided to keep an eye on it but to leave it alone. Winter is only a few months away, and the colder months of Autumn will likely slow the nest's growth. In December, I'll do what I have to to remove it. Probably call the power company; I don't want to destroy my electrical service.

So we come to the boffo end to the story (or at least the end so far).
Last night, while having a nice quiet sane drink in my backyard, I was lap to my ShitZoo Cheerio while the other dogs wrestled in the yard.
Then my youngest, SpecklePup, began to make strange noises. She seemed to be eating something and coughing and sneezing, then pawing and crying, all at the same time. Cheerio sat up to look, then went to investigate, as did I.
By this time Speckle was pawing something in the ground while sneezing heartily, and as soon as I approached, I saw why. The damn pup had decided to eat (you knew this was coming) a white-faced hornet, and it must have gotten her pretty good. I checked her mouth, but found nothing. Then I reached for a piece of wood, and, covering the incapacitated insect, I went in the house for a pair of hemostats.
If I'm going to be scared of something, I want to see it up close.
JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRACKER!!!

It looked like it was wearing a Jason-style hockey mask! Or perhaps kabuki makeup.
Then it stuck its tongue out at me in defiance.

It wasn't quite dead. I sent it along and told it to follow the light.

The nest on the power line continues to grow.