What Was Once Old...

When we first started thinking about a house on the river, we knew we wanted it to look rustic and like it had been there for awhile.  Not too shiny and new looking, if you know what I mean.  The house Jim Belushi built on the Rogue River was sort of a jumping off point for us.  His was just a little too rustic, too barn looking and too expensive for us to build but we really liked his use of reclaimed barn wood.  We decided we'd like to use it on both the house and the barn, the question was how much of it would we use and where exactly would it go?

I spent a few hours with some colored pencils and some little copies of our elevation plans to try out a few options.  



This is what I came up with and although it's still a work in progress, this is basically the vision of how it will look someday. 

Mike looked online for about a month, looking for the right place to get some reclaimed barn wood.  He looked at a place in Utah, one in Idaho and even at the local lumberyard. There is a company that makes a product called Ghostwood, which is new wood that they do a process on to make it look old.  

There have been a few places he found that had barns for sale but you had to come and take them down and remove all of the nails and then transport the lumber.  That takes a lot of time. 

Last week he found a listing on Craigslist of a barn being taken down in Star.  There is a lady who owns a business where she removes old barns. They either take them down or sort and salvage the wood from barns already down and then sell the barn wood.  Arrangements were made to go out to the location and see the wood for ourselves.  

The Star Barn

When we got there we saw that the barn was all smashed and fallen in on itself.  A big pile of old, dirty, barn wood, but with almost all of the nails removed.  Yay!  Just what we were looking for!
There wasn't quite enough and it was not quiet as grey as we were hoping for but the lady who listed it assured us she had more wood that was similar from a barn in Garden Valley.  

The Garden Valley Barn before it was taken down.

After some negotiations, we were the happy owners of some beautiful old barn wood!  
I love that I know exactly where this wood came from and what it looked like in it's first life.  I like that it has a history and that this old wood will not be left to rot or to go to a landfill, but that it gets to have a new life on our house and barn.  That's just so sappy, but those who know me would tell you I really do have a love and appreciation for old things and history.

So once the wood was ours, but now the trick was to get it out to the river house.  Mike was able to get about two thirds of it loaded on his flat bed trailer and then he brought it over to our friend Betsy's house where he pressure washed both sides of each and every board and then grandson, Palmer and I took it off of the trailer and put it on the ground to dry.  Then the two of them went back and got the other third and did the whole process again.


After that we wrangled up some more hands (also known as free labor) and with four generations of family out there helping, we loaded it all into the enclosed trailer in one big load and trailered it out to the new barn and then...you guessed it...UNLOADED it all in to the barn!  

My hard working Dad

My mom, the excellent babysitter!

A full day's work and everyone was sore, tired and dirty by the end of it.

We celebrated a job well done by chowing down on some really good pizza.  

Good times, Great memories.  


Other exciting news (exciting to us anyway):

Mike parked his truck in the barn for the first time. That folks, was an exciting moment, I'm sure!


Heating and AC guys got in and out in record time.


Electricians are doing the rough in today and tomorrow.



Ollie checked out the new digs and came home with a little souvenir..a tick!  I will be making an appointment at the Vet to get him some tick, mosquito and flea meds right away.

A huge thank you to the amazing Galloways and to my parents for your quick response to the SOS call. And to those family members who weren't able to help this weekend because of work etc...just hang on, your turn will come!