New window openings framed.

All of  the siding removed and getting ready to cut in the new window openings.

New window openings complete on South side and East gable end.

North

North wall with garage doors and West gable end.  The tall skinny door on the gable end is 7 ft. tall and will also have a  transom above.  You will step out on to a 7' x 24' steel balcony.  The lift parked in the driveway was incredibly helpful for putting up all of that wall sheathing by myself!

 View to west before framing the new window openings. Notice the new subfloor throughout.  All of the old floor boards were removed and will be cleaned up and reused somewhere in the barn.

View to West with new window openings framed.

Removing the Siding

 Interior looking East

 Interior looking West with siding removed

 The siding on the west and South was not worth saving

Basement framing and LOTS of fill

 I framed and sheathed the basement walls (pretty good for a guy working  alone!) and ran the excavator for a week.  I lucked out as the fire station project just down the road generated something like 3500 yards of fill that they needed to dump nearby and I needed to improve the grading on this difficult site. That is 250 tandem loads of free fill!

Steel complete and slab prep

 Steel work is complete and the building has been lowered on to new beams with large wood (PSL) posts under West gable.  These posts will support a steel balcony and allowed us to lower the building without having to frame all of the walls.  Under slab drain lines will be covered with more stone and insulation installed prior to pouring slab.

Permanent steel beams

 New steel beams that will support the Barn and allow for parking underneath being slid in alongside the temporary beams used to move the barn.

Retaining walls and backfill

 Walls poured (the old foundation wall will remain and be below grade) and water line installed in sand.

 We are building retaining walls with concrete waste blocks now so that we can backfill the foundation and clean up the site before the permanent steel beams are installed.

Foundation walls poured

Foundation walls poured today!

Footings poured

Footings are poured.  Nothing straightforward going on here. A five foot wide footing for the front wall which is a retaining wall.  3 foot square piers to support steel columns and several steps going down the hill.

Footings formed

The footings are formed and full of steel. They step down the hill to provide frost protection. The front wall acts as a retailing wall and is engineered with a five foot footing sticking out from the base of the wall.  The weight of the fill on this keeps the top of the wall from being pushed in. There are 3 steel beams that will run under the building each supported by steel columns. You can see the footings and steel for the piers formed every 12 feet on the eave wall.

Digging for the Foundation

Barn Goes Up Higher and Old Slab is Removed

The beams used to move the barn have come down and it now rests on 6 interior cribs.  Now we can remove the rest of the slab.  You can see where we (Dave!) cut out the slab before the interior cribs were built so they wouldn't be disturbed when the excavator started ripping out the slab.  It broke up easily and will be used as fill in front of the barn.

Moved to the North

The lower beams (the tracks) are now shown installed running north south and the Barn has been moved along them to the North.  All of the cribbing that sits outside the Barn will be taken down and the barn will rest on six interior cribs and the steel beams.  This will allow us to dig for the new foundation.  The next step is to raise the Barn another two feet and then the digging begins.