Lace Crazy: Saving a sheep shed that was built in the 1800's

Monday, March 16, 2015

Saving a sheep shed that was built in the 1800's - Part 1...

We have 2 large sheep sheds at this old homestead. One faces East and runs North & South. That's the one I always refer to as "The Barn." That's where Charlie and the sheep currently live. It's just right behind this one in the pic. This large sheep shed runs East and West and faces South. You can see our little green farmhouse there in the middle left of the pic...

The Barn sheep shed is old, but in fabulous condition. It has had a lot of care over the years and the way it faces and sits on the property protects it from the hard elements. This one however gets all the brunt of everything and the wind blowing and lack of maintenance has torn the metal roofing off the North side causing even more damage. This one is 20' wide and about 120' in length. It's a HUGE shed.

The Man-Child was out walking around one day and realized this beauty was starting to fall to the South. It was collapsing from the center and blowing out sideways due to corrosion from the missing roof. We have always wanted to rebuild this shed, but lets face it - there's not a lack of stuff to rebuild around here and this wasn't necessarily a priority until it was discovered that we were losing it fast...

A couple weeks ago, we spent a Saturday messing with the aluminum shingles we salvaged from off a home demo we done last year. They were easy to put on the North side of this shed. They're light weight and they look like wood shake shingles. We have about 25 stacks of them. Plenty to roof the North side of this shed with lots of excess left over.

My job was to cut open the bundles, pull out all of the old staples and put them in that blue bucket and hand the shingles up to the Man-Child on the roof.

We spent about 4 hours and got about 1/3 of the roof finished. They were so simple and quick to put up.

Of course, the 'Man-Child' is freakishly tall at 6'7" - roofing is hard on him and his knees, but anything done standing on the ground he makes it look easy, unlike my 5'2" frame which requires a step ladder, a tall ladder, or a turned over bucket to do nearly anything around here...

We got a ton of the roofing done on our first day goofing with it. From the ladder over to the West side about 2/3's the way up the roof.

They sit nice on all the ripples and dips of the rafters and they're very aesthetically pleasing to look at. In fact, they don't stick out, or stand out at all. They just look like they've always been there.