Barn Straightening – Phase One

This house has a big old barn on the property that is likely as old as the house.  The only problem is the barn leans badly and appears as if it is ready to topple over at any moment. Every time we have a gusty day, I worry that I’ll walk out to find the barn has become a pile of wood and nails.

The leaning barn all boarded up

As you can see, the former owner boarded up the doors and windows to keep people out because it just isn’t safe.

We really want to save the barn and restore it to its former glory.  This is not a top priority in the grand scheme of things…considering everything that needs to happen in the house…  However, we were feeling that if we didn’t do something to sure up the structure, we would lose the barn forever.  The project would go from a restoration project (mostly in our control) to a clean up project (emergency project).

So…this weekend, we cleaned out the barn and attached cables to stabilize the structure.  There weren’t any fun surprises when we cleaned everything out.  Nothing worth saving… No cool piece of furniture unearthed, no cool classic car hidden under the debris.  What we did find was shit.  Lots and lots of shit.  Literal shit.  We found cow shit, horse shit, rabbit shit, pigeon shit, mouse shit, cat shit, bat shit, unidentified mammal (alpaca?) shit…and maybe even a pile of human shit.  Pounds and pounds of it.  It was really quite impressive how much poo we found.  The variety itself was amazing.  The quantity was truly unreal.

Pigeon Poo on the barn floor.

More pigeon poo

Bat poo pile

I can’t imagine how many years’ worth of poo we cleaned up, but it was truly the most disgusting thing we’ve done….so far.

We did go up in the hay loft (that’s where the ginormous pile of bat guano was).  It was pretty cool up there.  Hubby wants to have a barn party and have a band play from up there.  After seeing all the bat shit up there, I have visions of bats flying out at the band in a nightmarish wave and really ruining the whole party.

Hay loft and the green beast.

We did get the cables installed and the barn is safe(r) than it was.  We slept a little better last night knowing that we were *less likely* to wake up to a collapsed barn and I was very thankful today when the wind picked up!

Cables all hooked up!