Posted By FarmerJ on February 17, 2009

Remember?  It’s all about character here at the barn house.  I bet you think you’re looking at the garage door into the garage, right?  Nope.  You’re looking at the garage door into the lower level of the house!  That’s right.

Three-quarters of the lower level is unfinished.  Remember my reference to the ‘Man Cave’ in an earlier post?  Well, it truly is a man cave for so many reasons ~ but the reasons are deminishing little by little.  Darling Husbie is somewhat saddened because he can no longer park the beloved Ford 8N tractor, Samson in the house.

So, in an attempt to lessen the man cave-ness ~ along with improving the ability to keep the room temperature on the lower level above 40 degrees ~ we decided to replace the garage door with a lovely 60″ x 60″ dual pane energy efficient window that matches the one we recently put in the front entry room.  Oh yeah, in our typical fashion we chose a day when the high temperature was barely above freezing to complete the modification.

The photo above depicts the work Darling Husbie and friend, ‘B’ had already done ~ removing the vinyl siding just over 8′ up the wall.  What you see is the bare OSB which was painted brown by the original owner.

Here, the garage door has been removed.  You can sneak a little peak into the darkness of the man cave.  Okay, boys!  It’s time to get down to business!  [Just so you all know ~ while the boys were out working in the cold, I was busy in the kitchen preparing them homemade Nutri-Grain bars for a morning snack and homemade pizzas for lunch.  Husbie had his insulated cup full of hot coffee, while 'B' was content with his Mountain Dew, so they weren't completely deprived.]

Well, the chef had to remove her apron and run into town to purchase a couple of 10′ 2 x 4s Husbie and I had neglected to include on our shopping list earlier in the week.  Meanwhile, the boys made use of the ‘down time’ to install some of the 3/4″ foil faced foam insulation sheets and seal up the seams with foil tape.  I returned just as they had finished insulating as much as they could without having the window installed.  The boys quickly set about their business and had the framing in place before I even had the pizza crust rolled out!

At this point, I was beyond excited!  Truly, the transformation was amazing ~ there is no way to completely capture the difference in a photo.  But, here’s my best attempt.  The window is snugly in place and the remaining foil insulation has been installed.  Husbie’s favorite part of the entire project was using the nail gun that utilizes a .22 bullet to drive a 4″ nail into the concrete slab.  No surprise there!  Now all that’s left is to reinstall the vinyl siding.  Easy schmeasy!

Yeah, right.  I will spare you most of the gory details, but just know that it was a somewhat brutal process ~ including having to wait for our order of additional siding.  I helped Husbie with all but a couple rows, and I now know much more about vinyl siding than I ever wanted to.  I’ll admit, though, the experience will come in handy later in life.

Husbie worked really hard and tried to install the last two rows by himself ~ it’s a three-handed job to say the least.  You can see in the photo that the last little section didn’t quite line up and needs to be taken down and realigned.  I was sick with the stomach flu while Husbie tried to finish it up, so I wasn’t able to help him then.  I am feeling much better and am functioning once again ~ but now it seems like there’s been one thing after another that calls for our attention.  That’s okay.  We’ll get it done.  And in the meantime, it’s about 30 degrees warmer on the lower level of the barn house than before.

Woohoo!  The garage door is no more!

Categories: OSB Palace Projects
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