Carpe Datum

Barn

Well, we're mostly done with the barn, and as I feared, it has some flaws. We had to undo some things and cover over some other mistakes we made due to the very poor instruction manual, and the end result is about a two-inch irregularly shaped gap in the roof near its peak in the front. I figure some thick and very tasteful plastic can be attached to cover that over, and then we'll figure out a way to attach the central third of the outer roof cap (I am still not sure how the hell we're supposed to do that since it is 4-5 feet from any edge of the building and couldn't possibly be done before the end) and cover over any unused screw holes in the roof.

I figure as long as it doesn't leak and the door works (which we'll see tomorrow night when we finish that step) and it closes up tight, then it will work just fine. Oh, and I think we'll end up doubling up the plywood on the floor. We started with 6 pieces of 3/4 inch thick plywood as the manual suggested, but the way they suggested we lay it out, there are some parts that naturally wobble when we step on them because they aren't fully supported by the floor kit.

An easy fix is to double up the plywood and lay the 2nd floor layer in a different pattern for a sturdy, double-thick floor. It makes the barn 3/4 inches shorter, but it is already a little too short for me to stand upright inside anyway. I'll have to go to the store tomorrow to get whatever square footage of that we still need, then we'll nail the two layers together. Makes the barn heavier, too, which will be useful since we don't have an anchoring kit.

Maybe a tornado will just blow the whole thing away and then we'll be able to get that nice plastic pre-fab barn that looks like a giant Little Tikes toy at Costco.