Todays Project - What did you do today?

[TomG]

I not only worked with wood today, but really old wood.

This retirement thing is turning out to be a lot of work. I spent the day at my son's farm today helping him raise the barn (literally). The rock wall foundation is failing after 130 years and since he's having a new roof put on in a few weeks, we thought it would be a good time to do some repairs. We built cribbing in three areas out of railroad ties and raised the entire North side and part of the East (front) side to get it level and take the weight off the foundation. We figure some of the sections weigh around 20 tons, since a single 20 ton jack would barely lift them. Thursday, we deconstruct the front stone foundation, and if we have the time and energy after that, start pouring a concrete footing. The plan is to build a block wall on the footing to replace the stone wall, possibly adding a thin stone wall for appearance on the outside. We also stabilized a corner column that had rotted out. Eventually we will replace the rotted out part, but at least for now it's stable for the roofers.

Tom