Life in Maine

Because it was part of "The Plan." About five years back, when I first came across the land, I had a vision of what it could become. Apparently I was the only one with this vision, because the land had sat unsold for nearly eight years. Somewhere, buried within the tall oaks and dense underbrush, I could see a house, and a pond, and a barn. The house would sit up high on the sloping land, so as to capture the ocean view in the distance. The pond would lie near the bottom of the acreage, fed by a small brook. The barn would sit on the southeast border of the land, tucked neatly among the towering oaks.

That was the vision. And to be honest, I never had a clear sense that I would actually bring that vision to reality. A whole lot has changed in my life in those five years, and there were more than a few times that "the vision" took a back seat to the reality of day-to-day living. And while there were many times I was ready to walk away, in the end, it turned out that "the vision" was one of the few things that lent a bit of consistency to my life. It gave me something to focus on when it was very difficult to keep focus. It gave me a goal when other aspects of my life seemed rather pointless. It gave me a sense of accomplishment when I was questioning my capability to accomplish anything. It gave me a lot of upset stomachs and sleepless nights.

Having fulfilled the house and pond part of the vision, the barn suddenly took center stage. Business has been good, interest rates are low, low, low, and the lawn and landscaping have gotten to the point of looking how they should look -- so it was clearly time to tear up the lawn and embark on another frustration-wraught building project.

Actually, I was hoping for a frustration-free building project this time. After all, I'd been through it once before, I knew who I wanted to hire to do the various building tasks, and I had a home-equity loan in place that would allow me to finance it without so much as even glancing at a credit card. Everything was in place.

And then the rains came.

Originally, I was hoping to get the site work done last fall, so things would be ready to start building this spring. But due to my lack of initiative, I didn't settle on a barn design until November, when it was already too late to do site work. So, the new plan was to get everything going as soon as possible in the spring. Given the fickleness of Mother Nature in these parts, I was shooting for May 1 as the "soon as possible" date. This was also significant because the carpenters estimated that the project would take them a month to complete, and since we were having our wedding at the house at the beginning of July, that would leave plenty of time for the carpenters to finish, the site to get cleaned up, and new grass to grow where the construction took place.

April was very cool and rainy (when it wasn't snowing, of course). When may 1st came around, we were still experiencing an abundance of rain. The excavator, who was the same person who did the excavation for the house and the pond, recommended waiting a couple of weeks in the hopes that things would dry up a bit. This was not only for the sake of letting the groundwater table sink down a bit, but also because the barn site was located down a rather steep incline and he was afraid that once he got his heavy equipment down there, he wouldn't be able to get it back up.

And so we waited a couple of weeks. And it rained some more. And then things started to get a bit more reasonable in the rain department. And then things started to get a bit more unreasonable in the "availability" department - the excavator was booked solid and trying to juggle numerous jobs that had been postponed by the weather.

Finally, all the planets lined up and work commenced. It was the last week in May, so the prospects of completing the barn by the wedding were looking dim. But, hey, we'd just have to live with that - at least the ball was rolling.

The plan for the foundation was to use a series of pre-cast concrete posts, sunk four feet into the ground. Dean, the excavator, would dig four trenches for the four rows of concrete posts - backfilling each trench as the posts were set in place.

And so it began. As I worked up in my office, Dean and the two carpenters started the digging procedure. Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on my front door. "Greg, we have a problem you might want to come out and look at," Dave, one of the carpenters, said.

The "problem" was water. Lots of water. In the time between digging the first trench and bringing one of the concrete posts down to stick in the trench, three inches of water had filled the trench. And it was continuing to flow in.

Nothing a little change of plans couldn't resolve. Of course, this change of plans would require a lot more work, and a lot more money. Instead of the "simple" trench plan, we were now going to require a complete drainage system. Costly, yes, but in the long run it would ensure that the foundation posts wouldn't shift with the spring freezing and thawing.

So, the one day excavation project ended up taking 3 1/2 days, and 16 dump truck loads of gravel. The only good news out of all of this was that none of the dump trucks ended up getting stuck in the yard.

And since we were running electricity and water to the barn, we also needed a trench running up to the house, a distance of a little over 200 feet. Fortunately, this trench ran on a downhill slope, so the water that flowed through it ran into the newly created drainage system.

The electric/water trench also ran perpendicular to the sewer system, a fact I had forgotten about. When I returned home from an errand, Dean and his crew were crouched over the portion of the trench where the sewer system intersected it.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you," Dean said somberly. "I had forgotten about the sewer line running down here."

My jaw dropped. How stupid could I be? What was this going to cost me?

A smirk came across Dean's face. He was merely playing with my mind. Some day, some where, I will get him back.

The specs on the barn are as follows:

The main section is 16 ft. x 24 ft., with a 12/14 roof and a loft.
The one-story "shed" attached to the left side is 8 ft. x 14 ft.

The plans called for 4x4 support posts and 2x4 construction everywhere else. Too skimpy. Why not use 6x6 support posts and 2x6 construction, the carpenters reasoned. When it comes to advice from carpenters, I'm an easy mark. The simple "pole" barn was becoming a post and beam barn.

Once the carpentry got started, things progressed smoothly. There were a few new decisions to be made along the way, like using boards, rather than plywood, to sheath the first floor walls so that it would fit in better with the look of the posts and beams.

But, alas, as the wedding day approached, it became apparent that the barn would not be finished. And believe it or not, that was not sufficient reason for postponing the wedding.

In the end, the barn was completed a week and a half after the wedding, which is pretty darn good considering the size of the project. But, of course, like any building project, it's never really "done." We're still working on applying bleaching oil on the cedar shingles, after which I'm sure I'll find something else that needs to be done.

And now there's the matter of what to put in the lovely new barn. Donkeys? Goats? Alpacas? The jury is still out on that one, but whatever it ends up being, I'll be envious of it's home.

To Build a Barn