A Barn is Born

We decided to save some money and build the garage ourselves. Except that we aren't calling it a garage - we call it the barn. I guess it is because it is as big as a barn.



And no, we didn't build all of it ourselves. Dennis and his crew framed it. But the country doctor and I and the country doctor's brother Jed - but mostly the country doctor have been doing everything else - which includes the siding and the roof and a lot of other things I would never have imagined. Like nailing up these super long 2X4s on the gabled ends.



The siding consists of twelve inch wide boards of cottonwood, a tree native to our area. You put the boards up tight together and after a few days they start to shrink and "cracks" appear between the boards. Then you take a long thin board and nail this over the "cracks" - thus you have board and batten siding.



The design for our barn was inspired by the barns at Country Carpenters They build beautiful post and beam barns with a real classic look. Hopefully when we are finished we will have something similar.