Weekend Demolition

Saturday morning a notice went out on Freecycle offering the wood, metal roofing, and loose hay from an old barn that was to be torn down. With several outbuildings on the to do list, we were soon headed across the river to a nearby town with my parents, two vehicles and two trailers to haul stuff in.

There was one other taker on the offer who arrived before we did. She wanted to build a small garden shed, so we worked out what she needed to salvage, and the rest was ours for the taking. First we went through the contents of the building. Mom found a decent porch swing and some other things. I found some old jars, including half gallon canning jars. There also was a whole box of unused jelly jars!

Next was the loose hay in the loft. What a messy, stinky job! Papaw would rake the hay down and Tim would shove it in the end of the cattle rack while Mamaw and I tried to stuff it in as much as we could. Eventually we gave up and let Papaw and Tim handle it.

The hay is old. There probably isn't much nutrition left in it, but it will make great bedding or filler. They baled it yesterday and it made 20 bales. They went back and got the rest, which filled the cattle rack again. The second trip yielded 26 bales.

Next the men (and my little man) headed to the roof to remove the metal sheets. They ripped off and Mamaw and I stacked them in the trailer. The other people were there also working on taking the siding boards off the one wall.

After the roofing was all off, the guys knocked out all the boards that the roof was attached too. Again Mamaw and I stacked. Next came the notched rafters. Four were given to the other people for their building and the rest were loaded on top of the roofing in the trailer.

The younger kids helped some and played in the yard. There was also a box of books leftover from a yard sale. Lydia spent a lot of time reading those herself, and reading to Nolan and Vivian.

We worked about six hours, and were just about at our quitting point when the owner offered to buy us dinner. Gratefully we accepted and he went to town and brought back pizza and pop. While he was gone we cleaned up the area a bit, and he returned to find us all sprawled out in the grass exhausted. This picture was taken when we were almost to calling it a day.

The process seems very simple as I type about it. In reality, it was a lot of hard exhausting work. We all are still dragging from the hours of physical labor put in that day. There still is a lot of barn to tear down yet, but all those materials will be put to use in new buildings here. The hard work will save a ton of money. Now to find another day and the energy to go do it again!