Well, it's afternoon, actually, and I am still sitting here in my robe with my coffee in front of me. Lovely! I'm trying to convince myself that I should get busy and finish up our tax return.
Trying.
Maybe later.
Mark and Jerry are out installing the interior walls of the barn. The stall liner that was SUPPOSED to be delivered the Tuesday before last finally got here this week. (Delays due to those storms in the north.) When Mark had to go to school, I phoned FarmTek and changed the delivery address to the hardware store down the street. That's one good thing about spending a fortune on building supplies at a local store -- they're more than willing to receive things for us when Mark isn't home. Then when Mark does show up, if the stuff is extremely heavy, they will deliver it to us and pile it up wherever he wants it with their forklift. Nice.
Today Mark and Jerry are putting insulation in the barn walls (around here that's more to keep it cool in summer than warm in winter but over these last couple weeks, keeping it warm would be good, too), then they will begin putting up the 3/4" plywood interior walls that will then be topped with that stall liner stuff. The liner will extend up 6 feet, then the plywood above it will just be painted.
There is plywood on the outside of the barn already, covered by that house wrap moisture barrier stuff, then cementboard over that. Inside, once the 2 X 6 walls are insulated, the walls will be made of still more 3/4" plywood under that stall liner -- that barn is going to be sturdier than the house! Mark says he built it like that because he knew that if there were another hurricane once the horses were home I would no doubt be out there in the barn with all the animals, and not in the house, so he wanted to make it completely hurricane proof! And I'm positive it is. Just the main structure was built before Gustaf and even then without all the walls installed yet, the only damage Gustaf did to the barn was to tear off the roofing felt because we had not yet installed the metal roof. Now, with all those layers on the roof and walls I KNOW the place is hurricane-proof. And I feel a lot better knowing the exterior is cement board and NOT metal, too. Remember that wonderful little eventing horse - I can't remember his name - who got loose at his home and stuck his leg through the outside of their metal barn and severed his artery? That WON'T happen here.
I'm hoping there's a little of that stall liner stuff left over. If so, I'm going to put it on the side walls of the window seat in our bedroom! Got up this morning to find that Joey had eaten yet ANOTHER hole in the sheet rock there.
Look at that face - he OBVIOUSLY knows he wasn't supposed to be doing that! (Note that he has "nibbled" on the window frame as well.)
AND the wall and window frame on the other side of the window seat, as well . . .
So I'm thinking that if there's any stall liner left over, I'll line those walls with that indestructible polyethylene, put those polyethylene corner protectors on the window frames, and move the curtains out of the window seat and onto the bedroom wall outside the window seat. That way, when he jumps up there he won't be able to do damage to much of anything - I hope. (Still nose prints on the glass, of course - but THAT I can deal with.) I'd like to think he will eventually grow out of all this, but if he doesn't . . .
But right now, I'm just trying to figure out where to put the waterers, feeders, and hay grazers inside the horse stalls. Bug's stall is the easiest -- she definitely needs her feed to be as far from the other horses as possible since if she even hears another horse in a stall next to hers when she's eating she will kick the crap out of the wall! I guess for that same reason I'll put Lizzie's stuff on the wall furthest from Bug's stall. Guess it doesn't matter much where anything goes in Duke's stall, but I guess I'll put his on a wall away from Lizzie's anyway in case one day someone else's horse is in there who is NOT as laid back as Duke.
But we will be bringing the horses home long before those things have been installed. I've had about all I can take of Al these days. I know he doesn't feel well, but that's no justification for the s.o.b. he's become. I just feel sorry for the other folks over there because when we bring our horses home we'll be collecting up all the stuff that belongs to us - the HayHut, the big shelter in the side paddock, the non-slip rubber mats in the wash rack, etc. etc. I guess we'll leave the t-post tops, though -- I'd hate to see someone else's horse impaled just because I'm pissed at Al.
Okay. Better get going. There's a guy coming out to give us some prices on things that need done to the house (caulking windows, changing out door weather stripping, adding attic insulation, and the major job -- insulating and moisture-proofing the underneath side of the house). Won't be cheap, so let me get to work on those taxes and see if I can figure out whether we're getting anything back before he gets here. It would be nice to know before hearing what all that stuff is going to cost us!
Yuk!
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