Labor Day 2020

It was a pretty laborious weekend for sure! Grover Cleveland made Labor day a federal holiday in 1894. Pretty sure this was not what he had in mind. Our labor union is poorly organized and can usually be bribed into attendance with food and drink. 

Brad worked at clearing the area around the barn the week prior to the long weekend. This was no small task.

For an unprecedented third holiday weekend in a row, Cody and Amy braved travel and arrived in the wee hours of the morning on Friday. 

Cody spent some time making stamped copper tags and they were applied to the main structure as it came down so everything was numbered and tagged....hoping it will go back together something like a 1000 piece puzzle. 

Bob and Gerri and Evan shlepped off to work Friday while the rest of the 20 somethings got after the barn project. To be a fly on that wall. They actually got an amazing amount of work done on this warm day. This involved cutting down several trees, moving in equipment and finally tearing down the roof. This barn had a wood shingled roof that was covered with standing seem aluminum at some point. 

They worked rather late on Friday to get things ready for the help arriving Saturday morning.

We moved the blackstone griddle from the sugarcamp to the barnyard for breakfast on Saturday. The union meeting didn't last real long though. The safety talk was pretty abbreviated. Don't do anything dumb. 

Dave was really the only person who arrived Saturday in completely appropriate attire. This is a before working picture of Dave

.......and this is what Dave looked like by lunchtime.

Justin, Dave, Ben joined our little family project for the day. We borrowed a telehandler from Locust Knoll Farms for the weekend. This made a huge difference in the ease of the tear down! 

We all laughed that the second floor, with the roof removed, was like a nice raised patio overlooking the sheep pasture! Sadly it was only enjoyed briefly.

This was the starting point on Saturday morning.

Evan used the home-made prying bar to loosen the boards. Amy and Kelsey pounded the nails out or down from the flooring while the guys stacked it to go.

 When the flooring was completely removed from the second floor, they basically started on the west end and worked east dismantling the structure. The siding was stacked to be cut up for the sugarcamp, otherwise all the rafters, perlins, flooring and finally the beams were labeled and saved for the reconstruction. 

It is easy to social distance during lunch when some are slightly smelly and dusty!!

The funniest moment of the day occurred just prior to the above picture, same configuration but Brad was standing on the far right. They removed the support post in the center. Brad was able to lift his end up and out only to realize the other 4 guys, on the other end, could not reach to finess it out and they began laughing so hard it took a while to get to the ladder and help poor Brad. The harder  Brad laughed the heavier the beam got. 

The far east wall. the last standing, was the only TUMBLE of the day, the middle support failed at one point and inward it fell! 

This is what it looks like when 4 guys supervise poor Dave working. 

It took some finess to get the wooden pins out in the floor joists. 

Almost done!

Much to Brad's dismay, we saved the flooring from the bottom floor as well as the second floor. His mother nagged enough he finally relented and made a stack! Gerri hopes this will re-appear elsewhere at a later date and likely this is why Brad did not want to keep it. Both floors were made with tongue and groove construction of various widths. 

Sunday morning...and running into most of the afternoon was clean up.....this always takes longer than you think!! Many trips were made back the lane with the wood for storage.....we told Brad that Johnny Jett from Barnwood Builders would not drive that fast!

Who needs an amusement park when you have rides like this?!

By 4 pm Sunday the site appeared like this!!

Jan Miller did the cooking for a short dinner on Sandhill Rd. It was actually a little chilly and dark for a trip to the pond by the time we all got clean and in the same place. A quick card game with Aunt Dorothy ended the day!! 

We were blessed with unseasonably cool, sunny and dry weather for our weekend project...until Monday...it rained almost all day. Cody and Amy headed back after breakfast for their long drive home. Paperwork and naps seemed to occupy the rest of us! 

We are thankful for a safe teardown project. Minus a couple of scrapes, Ben had the worst with a nail through work boot incident. The company of all was enjoyed...we have not had much of that this summer!! 

Our goal is to rebuild before the snow flies..we will see how that goes!