Starting Up Again

By the third week in June, we had quit working on the barndominium.  The temperatures had reached the high 90's and with abundant spring rains, the humidity was higher than normal.  Plus, we had worked long hours every weekend and every evening until we had reached the breaking point.  I guess you could say we were stressed out, burned out, and tapped out.

I printed this quote from The Cabinet Guy at rvforum.net: 

Now get out there and have FUN! If tempers start getting short and it stops being fun STOP!!!!! That is a good time to go get wings and a beer and walk away until next weekend. Also...Take breaks from the project for a day or a week now and then. A Project of fun and love can turn into a ball and chain if you try too hard too fast.

Of course, he was talking about building a trailer, not a house, but if tempers flare (and ours were), it's good advice no matter how it was intended.

Also, with that abundant rain, which continued through late July, we had to work on our hay field.  This land hadn't been worked in a number of years; the hay was poor and the weeds were taking over.  So from mid-June until late August, we spent every evening mowing.  Our hay mentor told us to keep the fields cut short for a year or more and the hay will come back.  Easier said than done, but I can tell now that it has made a difference.  Already, our field looks better than the one next door that hasn't been cut since last fall.

By September, we knew that we were going to be living in a trailer for quite a while, so we traded our small trailer for a larger one.  A few of our new neighbors told us that we'd probably be living in our trailer for a year or more if our build took as long as theirs.  It took until September for us to believe them.  Of course, having a bigger trailer meant we had to have a bigger truck and it wasn't until October that we found the one that fit our requirements and budget.

Usually, the high temperatures begin to break by mid-September, but this year the heat hung in there until the end of the month.  When it did, I we decided that we needed to organize our tools before starting work again.  My Our first priority was to get unneeded items off the floor and out of our way.  We lined half of the west wall of the garage with a layer of foam insulation topped with 5/8 inch plywood.  On the upper level, we put some shelves for lightweight items and a bigger platform for heavier things.  Eventually, a ladder will attach to a rail on the platform.

Last week, I started building cabinets to hold the tools and provide more workbench space.  It's pretty sad when the bumper of the trailer is used as a counter.