Gallery upgrade
As you probably know by now, we have three large barns. When I bought the farm back in 2017 one of the barns were literally falling apart and the roof had caved in. The second barn was in desperate need of some tender love and caring. The third barn was in ok shape but did not really have any function or soul.
This is an update on the barn adventure featuring the barn in need of some TLC and a gallery upgrade.
Before and after.
I’m not sure what it’s called in English, but I’ll try to use the word “planking” and proceed to tell you that we changed all the planking on the barn. I’m referring to the vertical wooden planks serving as protection for the inner wooden log structure. Pjuh. We also changed the roofing and painted all the new planking red with the regional color “Trønder-rød”, commonly used on barns around here.
We also installed the new (old) grindstone using the old blue logs holding the gallery up.
The outer walls got a new coat of lime.
No, not lime as in the fruit or the color light green - lime as in the mineral. Mixing the lime and painting with it was interesting and very different from working with paint. When mixing the lime with water it gets really hot and it needs time to both cool off and to expand. In other words, rushing is not a good idea.
We did two coats with a thin mix to prevent the lime from cracking once it dried.
The cool thing about lime (except that is looks cool) is that it protects the wood from rot and insects. This wood is over 300 years old - with this new coat of lime it will last for another 100.
We found a large amount of slate slabs laying around on our plot.
The area under the gallery was bumpy and full of stones, weeds, dirt and some garbage. After cleaning it all out and removing some HUGE rocks we prepared the ground with cloth and gravel and put the slate down like a puzzle.
Our tenant, who is a professional bricklayer, helped us as the puzzle proved to be extremely complicated!
Last but not least we refreshed the blue and yellow with linseed oil paint.
This process was also interesting as we had to go hunting for the colors. The yellow color on the stairs was almost gone and we had to scrape off a tiny bit from a corner and bring it to a specialist. I love the way the colors pop!
The barn is currently empty.
I never really told anyone, but the chickens had to die. We ate them for the Heilung New Years party.
So, the first floor has room for animals. Chickens, horses and maybe a couple of sheep.
The second floor is perfect for workshops.
Let’s see what the future brings.
