We've Moved to The Farmstead!

Yikes! Do you wonder where we went? We're now at www.olyfarmstead.org where we're living our farming dreams! You can follow our new blog (and still read all these old posts too) at www.olyfarmstead.org/blog We won't be back to TNT Builds so won't you join us over there?

Barn door shenanigans

Apologies for the ridiculous break in posting but we have good reasons! 1. We went on a mini vacation with Mr. Nick's family to Utah, 2. We're still hanging T-111. It's just not that interesting.

But, I finally found time to wrap up Part 1 of the barn door segment. Part 2 of how we actually hung it to come (once we finish, we're going to go back to T-111 and install the bottom part later).

We thought it was a great idea to build the barn door inside the barn because our surface is so flat (if you missed us pouring our concrete floor, check it out here) but what we didn't count on was the door being so heavy we couldn't just muscle it out the opening (the door is 12.6' wide x 13' high and the opening is 12' wide and 12'6 high). What follows is nothing more than shenanigans. If you're unable to view the video, click here.

Here's Mr. Nick hanging our door a couple nights before we went on vacation ... I'll tell you how he did it next!

Looking for a contractor?

For those of you who follow us you know that we decided to contract out the installation of our roof tar paper and shingles ... and I feel good about it for all the reasons I have already listed.

We did our homework and got 4 quotes from 4 different roofers (all licensed and bonded) and found what we think was a really great deal using a neat little site called ServiceMagic.com. I had never heard of the site before but after doing some research learned that they are kind of like a "gate keeper" for subcontractors. The companies actually pay a weekly fee for Service Magic to refer to them. However, it's not a good ol' boys club. They check backgrounds, company history, liscense, etc. etc. etc. And from what we can tell they check in constantly with their "Quality Pros" to make sure that the company dynamics haven't changed and they are still the same company they advertised themselves as.

After getting the name from Service Magic we went with Islander Roofing, LLC and couldn't be happier. They were professional, quick and overall really nice to work with. Plus, they were also the cheapest. This was a surprise for us since we figured they would pass on the "Service Magic" fee to us but I guess they went with the mentality of a small profit on lots of jobs. Either way, we will definitely be calling on them to bid on the house.