I’ve been beating myself up for the minimal barn progress that I feel like I’ve been making this summer. In all fairness though, it’s a bit hard to be your own contractor when you also have a full time job, get Covid, still want to ride and take a vacation…etc etc :)
Looking around this morning though, I think there has been progress worth documenting. An hour here or there tacked on to regular pony chores eventually had to add up!
A short list of July/Aug barn improvements:
- WATER! In the spirit of DIY, I learned how to be a plumber in the beginning of July. Or at least enough of one to tie into an existing tee we put in when we had the house water service redone a few years back. It ended up being a 200’ run to the barn and despite renting a little machine, I used two work vacation days on raking and shoveling. Also on a 100 year old house there are many old pipes in the ground and we may have initially dug up and identified the wrong tee ;) But I have water! At the barn!
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Hydrant at the fence line and one at the barn. No more garden hoses required! |
- Barn interior renos. Remove all the nasty chicken coop mess and garbage a tenant I’ll now hate forever installed in the barn (so gross! So many truckloads of wire and old junk to the dump) New gravel base installed, new plywood on bottom of walls, barn is pony safe once more.
- Barn exterior upgrades. Built and installed a gate on back of barn so I can leave the doors open in nice weather. Installed a new post supporting the front roof. The old one was compromised and someone’s fat itchy bum *cough Bridget cough* really did a number on it. Replacing posts is going to be ongoing, but for now I can check the urgent ones off as done.
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Back of the barn. I really like how this turned out, now I can slide the big doors open in the morning and ponies can have a room with a view. |
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Front of barn featuring a new centre post :) |
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Front of barn. Stall doors on left, feed/tack straight ahead. It used to be two 10x10 stalls, but now it’s just one big one with the two doors and I’m liking it that way. |
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To make myself feel better re: my progress, here’s a back of barn before pic May 2021. Things have definitely changed! |
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Front of barn before |
- Yard cleanup. All the old construction waste from demolishing tenants old creations over the winter finally went to the dump and the whole place is rider lawnmower/Bridget friendly at last.
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Perfect for napping and eating now |
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This was maybe 1/4 of the brush and construction waste we took away. |
- Poles painted, jump standards ready. What can I say, this was so low priority, but I needed something easy to do when I was feeling like garbage. I now have a set of jumps ready and waiting.
Upcoming:
- Rubber mats installed in barn (soon). Person bought a house locally and found them in the backyard and didn’t know what they were for but they’re actually the proper stall mats and they’re new! So of course I bought them :)
- Manure bin (soon)
- Drainage for ring installed. Existing ditches piped and filled (Sept)
- Shelter/tractor storage build in spare paddock (Oct/Nov)
- Continued perimeter fencing (Ongoing)
- Extend roof on barn for grooming area (Oct/Nov)
- Arena base added (October -ish)
I feel like this is the cheapest and slowest barn reno ever, but I suspect there are more than a few of us out there not wanting to spend a fortune and trying to fit such projects in around a real job. I can’t be alone in this!