A day in my life… part 1

I’ve owned my own building firm for 26 years now (I’ve been swinging a hammer for over 40 years). The name of the company is Blue Mountain Builders… you can look us up if you are ever interested.

Our niche has been building new homes, in a traditional style and often using materials, from old homes, or other vintage structures, that are in jeopardy of being lost. Often we have moved entire homes and rebuilt them.

In the process we have done our share of restoring historic homes. It comes with the territory. To me it’s not as much fun as starting from scratch, but we sleep well at night knowing we’ve helped preserve another old gal.

The greatest teacher that I have ever had has been the old homes that I have touched and explored.

As you may know I have been going through boxes of photographs that I have here in my office, my life’s work, and I’ve been sharing a lot of my completed projects with you here on FB, but in the process, I’ve been building up quite a pile of old homes that I have explored over the years… structures that have taught me lessons, that have impacted me, but yet buildings that I had no further involvement with.

For me they were “here today, gone tomorrow”.

Please bear with me over the next few days as I lower the pile of these photos of “a day in my life” buildings. They are just too precious to pass over and not share. I promise I’ll get back to some of my finished work when done.

Maybe, these coming photos will have something to share with you if you look closely.

Keep in mind that I have explored hundreds of these places. They have all impacted me deeply. Maybe, that is why I need the therapy of sharing my career with all of you.

God bless you for listening. 🙂

Originally posted 2015-05-16 15:54:18.

The only thing more attractive than an old barn frame is the Virginia countryside.

So, to finish up the story on this old frame…

We did safely jack the building up and we put proper supports under her. We then went ahead and applied all the stress skin panels and “dried the house in”. We declined the offer to finish the house. Another builder came in and finished the project up and proudly to this day brags of his skills at timber framing.

And the builder who originally put this frame up? He’s still in business, and I still get calls to come fix what he started… but now I decline them all over the phone.

Some may ask how do you find a good builder, and avoid the bad ones?

Well, don’t read any of those articles that start out with… “Ten steps to getting a good contractor”

Do spend time at building supply places and talk to the old guys behind the counter. Most of them know what is going on.

Originally posted 2015-05-16 13:31:47.

The county building inspector had taken a look at this structure (that another builder had put up) and promptly condemned the building site. He recommended that the building be taken down and then rebuilt correctly.

He placed a work stoppage on the house… the builder quit… and the owner fired the builder… I’m not certain of the exact order of these events, but that’s the story.

The building inspector said that he knew of one person who might be able to fix the situation and that would be… me.

Originally posted 2015-05-16 13:11:31.

I could have easily doubled the size of my company over the years just by taking on all the offers of repairing and completing the shoddy workmanship of others.

But, there is little satisfaction to be had from cleaning up messes.

I have also found that folks that have been done wrong can no longer trust a builder. It’s hard enough just restoring a home, without the burden of restoring anothers faith in humanity.

Here’s an antique timber frame barn that was being erected by another builder. That builder put this entire frame up with no structural support underneath it. The entire weight of this structure was bearing on nothing but plywood which was either between floor joists, or suspended beyond any joists.

It was amazing that this beautiful old barn frame was still standing and hadn’t made a quick trip to the basement.

Con’t on next post…

Originally posted 2015-05-16 12:32:18.

I’ve seen some amazing little outbuildings in all my travels. What do you think of this little red beauty?

The attached ladder to the outside, leading up to the attic, adds a lot to it’s charm.

I wonder… do you think the farmer brought in a architectural firm to design this?

And I further ponder what Country Living magazine would have done with the items out front… would they have removed them before taking a photo? or perhaps just rearranged what was there? 😉

Originally posted 2015-05-15 11:56:29.

The owners of this barn had us assemble a couple of picnic tables.

Most curious.

It was then that I fully realized that this barn would likely see more humans as visitors than farm animals.

And, I was ok with that. 🙂

Originally posted 2015-05-15 11:44:06.

And here she is fully restored… within a few years all the fresh new wood would turn grey and then to all the world driving by she would just be another old barn. But this barn, unlike so many others along that road, has been fully renewed and will be around for another hundred years.

Originally posted 2015-05-15 11:37:08.

Here we see that this little barn had reaching the tipping point in it’s restoration. We had removed all that was bad materials, and then, we gave her a good bath… with the aid of a power washer.

You can see the new lumber starting to go on, all of which was cut from a local sawmill using the same species of wood originally found in the barn.

Originally posted 2015-05-15 11:28:52.

How do you tell if a barn is worth saving?

Some would say that financially they are never worth saving… and they have a valid point. Old barns are money pits.

If you ever encounter a land owner who is working on their barn, give them a hug and a word of encouragement and appreciation for saving a treasured part of our landscape. Trust me, they will appreciate it.

For me, the guy doing the work, and not writing the check, the determining factor on saving a barn is… “Can I remove all the parts of the barn that are bad and find that the barn still stands?”

The answer to that question was “yes” for this barn and so that is where we started… removing the damaged and decayed wood.

Originally posted 2015-05-14 13:07:50.

There is a simple elegance to even the most basic of barns.

I’ve stared at them for years trying to figure out why my eye is drawn to them, while at the same time I am so repulsed by most of the new homes being built today.

Is it the simple basic lines? or perhaps, the lack of faux embellishments? or does it have nothing to do with the design, but rather with what these old structures represent?… a simpler time, a time when humans were more in tune with nature, with animals, and with other people.

Originally posted 2015-05-14 12:42:34.