Day:49: Old is New Again

The work continues inside the barn. It's cold outside, barely getting above freezing most days, but in the barn the work continues.

Timbers under east floor

Above, if you look closely at the far wall you can see the added timber that raise the floor timbers up into their new higher position. This will give us almost a foot more head room downstairs. The new timbers brought in for this part of the project weigh about 500 pounds apiece. Roger said it was a bit tricky getting them in place, but they are now there and doing their job.

Below is what is of greater interest for me, the 'old' cross timbers which you saw in the above photo, that the flooring will be nailed to. Except for color, they look just like the new timbers that were used to raise the floor.

Flooring timbers from on top

We had blog problems which is why some of these pages took some time to post. It also allowed us to mash  up some photos.

Before the boards for the east section were nailed down, Roger had one of the guys jump on the boards on the new timbers and then on the old timbers. We didn't have enough old timbers or old boards to do the east section in all old. The new didn't move much, but the old had a little give in them.

New floor on the east side

Besides the interesting pattern given by the outside light, if you look closely you'll see the closer portion is nailed tight together while the further portion looks like it might have some space between some of the boards. In an earlier blog we discussed how old boards from the center would be used on the east side. Well there were less useable boards than what were expected. So about a third of the east side is old and the rest is new.