Southside Barn Doors
How was everyone's winter? Ours wasn't too bad all things considered. The best part is, it’s almost over. The boys were ecstatic the other day because they saw a robin, our first one this spring. Sometimes we see them in February, and usually by the first of March. But this year they didn’t show up until the middle of March. Now we have robins, killdeer, red-winged blackbirds, and someone said the other day they heard a meadowlark, but I haven't confirmed that one by sight yet. So, spring is finally on its way.
I finally got my seeds planted also. I can't imagine what plants will go for this year, so am starting my own. Seeds prices were up when I made my seed order.
The barn project is still moving along slowly as we made some progress on it this winter. The first order of business was hinges. We needed hinges for the hayloft door and for the south barn doors.
Kit and the boys got busy in the shop forging hinges. A few times JW2 and to pull double duty holding Kit’s hinge and CW’s hinge so they could do some cutout work.
Then the hammers were brought out. CW has been running the 8-pound sledge hammer for a year or two as a striker. It is amazing how much more steel the 8-pound can move versus the 2-pound hammer.
Here is the first set of hinges Kit and the boys built for the smaller hayloft door. They have a clover leave pattern that we designed on the end of them.
Here is the door. It was too cold to stain so we will do that when the weather warms up.
This is the handle Kit built to go on the inside so the door can be pulled shut. Then it was on to the big southside barn doors. We decided on just two hinges instead of the three that we did on the northside doors. We used 4-inch wide steel instead of 3-inch to make sure we had plenty of strength.
We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last year. So to commemorate it Kit made hearts on the end of each hinge.
The doors almost ready.
And hanging the doors.
Must say they do look awesome. And now I can actually open up the south doors and let the sun shine in, and as it warms up the concrete floor I have been able to wash my floors all winter without much ice buildup. I think we got down to about 18 degrees in the barn a couple of times and I couldn't wash because it was freezing, but other than that it was fine.
A closeup of the heart end. Looks so cool. And then continuing the heart theme on the inside of the doors Kit built me two door handles with hearts.
Here they are installed with twisted handles, and opposite facing hearts top and bottom.
Now all we have left is a hay loft door on the north, a door between the milk room and the milking parlor and then doors on each of the stalls inside. And of course when the kitchen door is done then we can get started on finishing my milk room kitchen!!! One of the main reasons we built the barn!