This Old Barn

[quicksandfarmer]

I decided that I needed to strip all of the shingles around the window in order to reframe it, and it's easier to strip down than up, and I'm going to have to strip the whole side eventually, so I decided to bite the bullet and set up the scaffolding and strip the whole side.

They say you should do something every day that scares you, setting up that scaffold by myself is about a month's worth.

Most of the work of removing shingles is taking the nails out, the shingles themselves are so old and brittle you can snap them with one finger. I try to collect the nails as I go, it's ultimately easier than picking them off the ground. Nine nails per square foot is the rule of thumb, so about six thousand nails for that wall.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I need to do a bit of repair to the sill where the window leaked and it rotted. So with the siding out of the way I took off a piece of sheathing, it's true 4/4, sixteen inches wide.

The sill isn't structural. In this shot you can see the floor I put in last summer, and along the back of the sill you can see the new rim joist I put in at that time that is actually holding the floor up. You can see how the sill has sagged a bit and the stud stayed put so a gap opened up between the sill and the stud. That's how not-structural it is! Note the mortise and tenon at the bottom of the stud. Behind the stud is a piece that is going to sister that stud, it's just placed and not attached yet.

What I want to do is put something along the top of the sill to give the two studs on the sagging section a solid base. I haven't figure out quite what yet.

When I redid the floor last summer I tried jacking up that section of sill before installing the new rim joist, but I couldn't get it to budge.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I found a few more labels while stripping shingles:

The third one says "Copyright 1949" in very small letters.

The address on the second one says "Seattle 1, Wash." "Seattle 1" is a Postal Zone, they were used in large cities from 1943 to 1963. In 1963 the USPS moved to ZIP codes and introduced two letter state abbreviations. So the labels were probably printed between 1949 and 1963. It's possible that the labels were used for a while after they were printed but I'm thinking they're about 60 years old.

 

[EddieWalker]

From the pictures, it looks like the damage is more from inside then outside. And it doesn't look like it's all that bad either.

What really surprised me in your pictures is how good the tar paper looks after all those years!!!

 

[quicksandfarmer]

From the pictures, it looks like the damage is more from inside then outside. And it doesn't look like it's all that bad either.

What really surprised me in your pictures is how good the tar paper looks after all those years!!!

The old-timers probably dosed the tar paper with arsenic or something to make it last!

Yeah, I don't feel like I have to strengthen the sill. Since I'm going to sister the studs in the wall there and put in cripples for the window I want to give them something flat to rest upon.

 

[Egon]

Tar paper at that time was quite a bit heavier than that of today. Almost like felt.

 

[IH3444]

Two weights of tar paper, 15# and 30#. That looks to be 30#. It is modern tar paper due to the lines on it.

 

[Indian Territory]

At least in my area, the buildings are usually much older than the tax records reflect. Of course that's Oklahoma which wasn't even a state until 1907. Your barn might be even older than you know.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I finished the framing repairs, all the studs have been sistered and I reframed the notorious "vodka" window. I took down the temporary wall that was holding everything up and nothing moved so it looks good. The mess you see on the floor is all the 2x4's from the temporary wall, I decided to send them to the burn pile because they were old to begin with and I cut them all short, the wall was only about 78" high.

So I put up some house wrap on the outside today and started shingling.

I probably won't have much to report for a while, shingling is pretty boring. And I'm pretty slow at it.

 

[EddieWalker]

If a board is two feel long, or longer, it gets stacked in my garage for future use. I can't even count how many times I've used them for something I wasn't planning on.