I'm not a great blogger. I actually really stink at this. And something else I stink at is keeping a good attitude about building a house when only one guy is doing the work. So,with that said, here is what has been going on:

One area of progress is the stone. We finally made the decision and within a month the stone was on. We ordered through our own small town guy Don Rohrer. The manufacturer of the stone is Dutch Quality. The name of the stone is Weather Ledge. The color is called Quail Grey. You can find it here. Don's guy that installed the stone was super nice. I'm afraid that he thinks I'm difficult to work for. I had an image of an old barn foundation with lots of mortar and I probably repeated exactly what I wanted far too many times. In the end, we are so happy with everything about the stone: the color, the size, and the larger gaps with lots of mortar.

Another sign of progress is siding and windows. The exterior of the barn and part of the house side has siding and windows.

 And we have a chimney.

Three of the overhead garage doors have eye-brow roofs. We love details like these, but they take so much time. The middle door will get some type of goose-neck barn lights. 

These doors go from the porch into the barn. The front door is this style but it can be stained .

These are the four-foot french doors (smaller than standard french doors). There are four sets of them. They open out onto the porch, which just so happens to be my dream. Ahhh. They were also almost the death of Rod. They take a special screen but I'm so happy that he finally agreed and I can't wait to live in the country because of these!

Also going on around the farm:

These girls...ahh. They have had a restful winter, but our show season is upon us and I hope they are ready to start giving it their all.

Our first baby of the season. It's a boy! 

Not a great quality picture, but our 2nd baby of the year. Another boy! It was Mabel's first calf and it was our first experience needing to give a cow a little help. The front hooves are supposed to pop out first; however, every time she pushed, all we saw was the calf's face. After Rod called around and consulted others, he reached in and found the front hooves. After that, Caroline and Rod had to help pull the calf.

It was a great experience for these two, but they were exhausted.

And on yet another note, we had a great trip to Chicago to celebrate Toby's birthday. 

That's all for now. Thanks for following. 

Stone Complications and Floor Encouragement

Five months and this is where we're at. The biggest changes since last time are: The building has a roof, the porch now has a roof and the steel siding is starting to go on. The windows and doors are ordered. 

The biggest hold up has been the stone. All along we weren't sure if we even wanted stone, then Rod decided he does.  Which is great. I could have gone either way on this one. The problem is that he knows I need to pick it out in order for optimal marital happiness and I need time to make decisions. This isn't anything new; we are both terrible decision makers. Hence, the three year period between the beginning of this project until now. I think we're getting closer to having that decision made, finally! You can see in the above pictures that there isn't much room at the bottom of the siding for stone. The reason for this is that we want it to stay low to the ground so it sort of looks like a stone foundation. It will go around the barn and house both. We will use the same stone for the fireplace. Below is the inspiration for the stone. It comes from the current season of Fixer Upper. You can see more pictures of this stone on the Magnolia website here.

Also going on at the farm, we are just finishing up our Christmas vacation. On our first day of vacation, I stopped to take some picture. Notice the temperature...

For this poor girl, the struggle was real that morning. Rod always assures me that the cattle love cold temperatures. However, he said that at -10 he even noticed that they were little stressed. But, we live in northern Indiana. It might be in the 40's in a few days.

On another note...the best news that I have stumbled across recently, concerning this project, that is, is that I think I have found the flooring of my dreams. I saw it online before but dismissed it because the nearest location is in Chicago. And even though a girl would go to great lengths to secure the floor of her dreams, I really couldn't tell from their website pictures if it really was the flooring of my dreams. And then, a miracle...I was on Pinterest, shocking, and this woman blogged about her new floor and voila, it was THAT floor. You can see her blog and pictures here and below. The floor comes from here. After a little more research, this company will ship the flooring; however, I might muster up the courage to ask a certain retired couple for a huge favor and a road trip. They have been very persistent in asking how they can help, after all. The thing about this floor, to me, it looks like an old barn floor and it's exactly what I've been searching for and it's more reasonably priced than the other engineered floors we've priced.

That's all for now. Thanks for following.

A Roof

The barn side of our project has a roof! It's a galvanized silver metal--a little hard to see in this picture.

Here is the back side.

Rod!

And just some random pics of the farm and the beautiful sunset last night....

PEACH!

I've been thinking about flooring lately. I feel like flooring is a major thing. Even though we're not ready for it, there is a lot of coordinating of woods that needs to be decided.

In the beginning, I really liked this porcelain tile floor. It's the least expensive at $3.88/sq. ft. from Lowes. Since we will have heat in our floors, I think it's a really good option. I love that the "planks" are 8-inches
wide.

Then Rod wanted me to find engineered hardwood, and I found the following:



This one is my favorite. Find it here.

Or this one:



Find it here. 

And this:



Find it here


This:

Find it here


No decision yet on that yet.

That's it for now. Thanks for following.

Finishing Up the Framing

Construction keeps inching away here. The framers just finished up for awhile. Now Rod will work on the insulation, siding, and roof. He gently mentioned that maybe being moved in by Christmas isn't going to happen, something I've been suspecting for a week or two. I'm ok with that piece of news now and I am still so very excited about how things are shaping up.

This is the front of the barn. The left side is the living quarters. The framers will come back in a few weeks to add the porch roof.

Front side again. Different angle. The start of some insulation.

More insulation and the realization that Rod is putting in some long days.

This is the view as you come out of this kids' bedrooms and look out onto their loft area. 

This is hard to see, but I was so excited about this so I wanted to try to show it. As the kids' bedrooms were being framed in, Rod noticed that above the areas right beside each of their bedrooms, there would be room to add lofts. The area is small, maybe only big enough for a twin mattress. The kids really like this about their rooms.

Speaking of kids, Max walked with me a little last night and saw first hand how excited the calves are to have us live there so they have a little more excitement in their lives.

That's all for now. Thanks for following along.

Trusses, An Upstairs and More Inspiration

Many people have been confused about the style of house we are envisioning. I won't be mad that they didn't read and only looked at the pictures. Again, the previous inspiration pictures that I posted were for our original floor plan that we scrapped. This barn with living quarters that we are actually building is so different. I love so many styles of design and loved that craftsman/mountain look for our original house design. However, for his project, a more modern/industrial barn is the look we are going for.

The siding is white steel with a board and batten design. Even though we want this to be our budget project, splurging on the board and batten steel siding was something we are willing to do.

That's all for now. Thanks for following.

The First Six Weeks in Review

After One Week:

The ground is excavated and water lines are in the ground.

After Two Weeks:

Well....this interrupted our progress so there wasn't much happening.

After Three Weeks:

The perimeter was staked out. Forty, 4-foot deep and 18-inch in diameter piers were dug, filled with concrete, and perma-columns were inserted. In this picture, the concrete is already covered back up and basically all you see is the steel part of the columns.

After Four Weeks:

The forms were built in preparation for the concrete slab.

After Five Weeks:

Rod absolutely baked while he laid out a layer of silver insulation. On top of this is a heavy wire mesh. Zip tied to the mesh is hot-water heat tubing that runs 12-inches apart in our living quarters and 18-inches apart in the barn/shop.

After Six Weeks:

The concrete has been poured and the framing has started.

The living quarters are narrower than the barn/shop part so this gives us room for a wrap-around porch that can be seen framed in below.

So, this is where we are at after six weeks of work. At this point, our move in date is before  Christmas.

And here is the main level floor plan. We created it ourselves using floorplaner.com. 

I would be mortified if someone in the architectural or drafting world ever found out that we did it this way, but the bottom line is this--This barndominium has been our budget plan all along--end of that story.

Floorplanner.com is pretty easy to learn; however, if I didn't have Rod (who has built several houses) sitting right beside me telling me to add measurements to the center of the windows from an outside corner and various other technical construction lingo, then I wouldn't recommend it for actually building something. But it is super fun to play with if you like housing and design. That was a hint to Mrs. Robertson.

That's all for now. Thanks for following!