Finally, some visible progress.

When I have the rare opportunity to get out in public and converse with other humans, I usually get asked, "are you done with that barn/guesthouse/Bed & Breakfast thing yet?" Almost embarrassingly (because I've been working on it for a year and a half now), I have to reply "not yet." The other day somebody followed up my usual response with "...well, what's taking so long?!" Around the time of this most recent encounter, my days- and sometime nights- were being occupied with the sawmill and planer, turning the old timbers into useful lumber in below-zero weather. Even though there is a perfectly good lumber yard only 3 miles from home, I prefer to do it the hard, but meaningful way. Since construction has long since gone the route of mass-produced cookie cutter "houses", it is hard for most people to understand why the process should take longer than a few months anymore. I saw a quote once that read something like "houses shelter the body, but architecture shelters the soul." So we are aiming for good architecture, no matter how long it takes. In preparation for the interior trimwork, Lisa put the final coat of paint on the walls. We choose a soft, antique white Bioshield Clay Paint for the lower level of the barn. It's a zero-VOC, odorless finish that's probably safe enough to drink. After re-sawing the old barn timbers into fresh pieces, I trimmed out the milkhouse (the entryway into the barn, which has a coatroom, bathroom and utility closet).

I dropped the roof joists down from the high finished ceiling to give them a nice exposed look. I cut square holes in the drywall to slide the timbers through and attached them to the studs inside.

And the south-facing windows in the main barn are all trimmed out. Now it is time to start on that pile of timbers that we've been stepping around...