November Barn Update

I said I'd keep you posted on the barn project so BOOM...consider yourn'self updated!

With completion of one side wall yesterday afternoon, I'm at the halfway point if you don't take the ceiling into consideration. The ceiling is going to be the most labor intensive part of the project (up and down and up and down the scaffolding etc), but should really make the place look nice. I may have to stop calling it a barn at some point, but for now, barn will do.

By the way, that old muzzle loading shotgun hanging on the wall sat up in my Uncle Pat and Aunt Katherine's attic for at least 25 or 30 years--maybe longer-before being discovered a few years ago. My Dad made the fireplace mantel in 1984 for my bride and my first house in Houston, Texas (needless to say the fireplace in that house didn't get used too much). The boot and horse shoe thing-a-ma-jig hung in my Mom and Dad's house in Rolla (my former home) for a number of years before they retired and moved to Florida to go yard sailing and Manatee watching. My brother Ace gave me the bar as a 50th birthday present. He procured it about 30 years ago while living in Denver and working for the CIA (without their knowledge I'm guessing). And the old axes sitting in the corner were acquired from my "Almost Uncle Tom" 4 or 5 years ago as part of the offerings at my Mom's last fully sanctioned yard sale. Fully sanctioned as in, "Lorraine, for Pete's sake; this is the last time we're gonna have a yard sale at our house, as long as I'm alive!" I'm guessing the time Dad came inside from one of Mom's yard sales and found some Ol' boy rifling through his underwear drawer might have had something to do with that. As if that weren't bad enough in and of itself, when Dad told the guy the yard-sale was actually outside in the yard and not inside the house, the guy responded, "I'll give ya 75 cents for the whole drawer and that's as high as I'll go."

Danged yard salers...you just got-ta, got-ta, got-ta keep one eye on them ALL THE TIME!
I'll keep you posted....
PS. I might have embellished the yard sale story a little bit---maybe.