::start of a barn remodel - exterior front::

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Look at this amazing picture of my old homestead!  I can hardly recognize it back in 1972.  You can see he big silos in the back that are just the cement bases now.  Our old rusty barn that is about falling down looked brand new.  Our big barn has so many different out buildings near it that are gone now, but this certainly explains the huge amount of cement that we have around here.  

Here is what our big barn looked like when we closed on this joint.  

Around 12,000 square feet of various problems and concerns, but coolness galore.  

The old windows on the side of the barn had been broken and replaced with cut up road signs and any firm plastic they could find.  This building hadn't seen paint in a few years or more.  

Since we couldn't start demo on our house right away because we didn't even know what we were going to do with it at first, Josh dove into the barn.  This picture was the start of barn demo day.  

Some times a grumpy kid would  need an occasional time out against the barn to reevaluate life.  

Since redoing all the metal wasn't a financial option - a coat of primer was a good place to start.  

Some hotness occurred with the paint going up.  

Side note - seriously?  Meow.  He's over 40 now and his hotness is escalating.  

Lots of kids helped supervise as roof repairs and patches happened.  

Barn roof repair

Black paint on the door and it is good for this year.  

Next for exterior:

Landscaping

New metal doors

Replace metal where needed

Replace roofing as possible

Add small porch above the door

::teenager drive in::

How is it even possible that Lily is 14!  WHAT!  14.  

It's not like I didn't see it coming but still...

14

This year for her party we decided to turn the party barn into a drive in movie.

I used my old luggage cart as a blanket rack.

Quinn helped with the popcorn machine.  

I loved the treat table.

We had hot chocolate with mini chips and sprinkles.

Whip cream got brought out latter.  

My lovely friend Emily and her family gave me this bowling pin vase. 

It made it too the party table because it'ss so cute.  

When it got dark we drove the trucks in and filled them with air mattresses and blankets.  

Max decided he would sneak in and join the party by sitting on the roof of a truck.

It ended up being five girls total. 

They had a really good time.  

::putting a new barn door - in an actual barn::

My 40th birthday party is coming up!  

I haven't had a real birthday party since junior high and I am kinda excited.  

It's actually a 40th birthday/graduation/house warming/dream job extravaganza.  But calling it my birthday party is a bit simpler. We are going to have it in our party barn space of our big barn.  

Unfortunately as we get moved in the "center room" has turned out to be a storage room for lumber salvaged from the house remodel.  

It's not horrible - like the good little hoarder I want to become.

Let's say - it's disorganized.  

Here it is.

Stop eyeballing my barn wood scraps.  

They are mine.  

(See- hoarder in the making)

Josh gets shit done.  

He walked out there and agreed with me so he modified a different barn door we had taken down from another space to go in the track that was already above the open doorway between the center room and the party barn.  

We took really old white washed boards that where on an old barn exterior door that got blown apart in the wind in a storm this year and reused them to make up the old door.  

I was in charge of nailing them up.  

Josh was in charge of remaining hot and cutting all boards to size.  

There it is open to the center room and partially closing off the chickens area.

And here is is closed and blocking off the center room.  

::lily's bed build::

Here is the original layout of the house.  The first window on the bottom left will become the front door. Along the hallway on the right was three tiny bedrooms.  They had two different ceiling heights and an old chimney hiding behind some walls.  The three bedrooms got turned into two bedrooms with a laundry room.  The two windows on the right hand side became part of Lily's room.  

The door to the old hall got closed in and part of the room became a hall closet.  

The wall blocking off the part that would be Lily's bed got removed.  The two windows where one of the few things to be reused.  

Here is the finished plan.  

This was when they torn down the wall between Max's room and Lily's room.  

See the old chimney that had to come out?

And the football floor found it's self into the dumpster.  

The window you see is what will become Lily'e bed nook. 

The yellowish wall in the background in the wall that is now gone.  

You can see the awesome beam that we got to expose wrapped in drywall to the left of the window.  

 Lily may have the best room in the place.  We knew from the first that a built in bed was in the future, but we were not sure when we would be able to do it.  Her room has an L shape and this area of it was designed to exactly fit a queen bed.  

I dug through Amazon one day and found a very inexpensive mattress that had really good reviews.  I bought it and it came shrink wrapped in a box that was smaller than a dishwasher.  So far - I would highly recommend it.  It for sure beats the twin mattress she had on the floor. 

Josh started by building the frame into the wall. 

It's all anchored in to studs.

Quinn was very helpful in making sure it was all strong and up to his codes of safety and fun.  

Her nook for her cell phone is in the background.

Cross bracing for strength. 

Notice Q's feet are not even on the ground.  I think if it can hold these three it will do.  

Plywood decking being added. 

A piece of trim board covered the 2 by 4 construction.
Josh and Lily marveling at the handy work.

Here is the bed nook all done with her 100 pillows.

We intentially left room under it to add a trundle bed latter.  

When you lay in the bed you have a view of the original hand cut beam that's holding up the house.  A big window and an industrial crystal chandelier. 

One happy teenager.  

Still left:
Add a built in desk at other end of L shape
Display shelves above desk
Closet doors
Door for secret pass through between closets
Add trundle

::boys bath::

Here is the original floor plan of our house.  There where two middle bedrooms that had a wide hallway between them.  The smaller bedroom had to be passed through in order to get the bathroom.   This section of the house also had very low ceilings, like around 6 1/2 feet tall.  Parts of those drop ceilings were dropping themselves to the floor with damage.  

That wide center hallway got the ceilings raised and vaulted.  It got narrowed to make room for a hall bathroom.    

Green shows the walls that basically stayed in the same location, with green X's showing the parts that got removed.  (Again - I know marker and cell phone pics are not the most professional stuff, but this is for me to remember and the kids to look back on so bare with me.)

In the new floorplan you can see the layout of the hall bath and how they used the basic layout of the old walls to make up the new hallway.

Once the demo was done you could see some amazing old logs and hand cut beams in the walls and ceilings.  Here is some cosmetic damage from an old kitchen fire (in a spot that is different from where the kitchen we removed was).  

They had to cut access panels in the original sub floor and reworked the location of some plumbing and electrical to work around more old beams and logs.  There was no going through that stuff.  

The counters for the boys bath are wonderful.  I fell in love with them the second I saw them and I wish they were in my room instead. 

Here is the sample back with details.  

The beam was covered up on accident by the drywall folks.  We were just going to let it stay covered and love the other few we had exposed, but then we needed the space to fit everything in and it got re-exposed.  The bottom of it got cut out since it is just cosmetic at this point and the cabinet slid into that spot.  

I really wanted the single trough sink with two faucets but the cost was huge.  Lucky for me my builder/designer can up with this inexpensive option.  It has worked perfectly and I love the look.  

The beam shows cut outs at the top from old construction projects.  Poor thing, its had some abuse in its life.  

The cabinet is really solid and might actually hold up to my crazy boys destruction for awhile.  

I got the shelf for above the toilet from a flea market for $25, all made and ready to hang.  

We took some scrap wood and attached two hook for towels.  

Next:

Mirror - lucky the boys don't really care

Toilet paper holder

Organizers for under the sink