One of the many projects on my list for the weekend was cleaning out the larger grainery so that I can use it for storage. It was a good weekend for doing it as the weather was clement and C&C were out of town so I could borrow tools without inconveniencing them.

I did not bother doing the smaller grainery that will be a shed because it’s much too open. I won’t touch it until Charles has time to help me block the existing entrance, put in a new door, and we get a roof on it. The larger grainery has some access points, but is reasonably weather tight.

Before I started cleaning, I had to be able to walk around the grainery safely, which was hard to do as there were lots of wires holding heavy pieces of metal hanging from the walls and ceiling (which is where I confess that I have a nice bruise on my forehead from walking into one…). The wires were to keep the walls straight and true against the pressure of all the grain being stored.

Charles had thought to offer me bolt cutters, so I was able to deal with wires, a job that wasn’t too difficult on the ground where I had leverage, but was a little more perilous up a ladder. His bolt cutters are sharp!

Once the grainery was safe, the fun began.

Cleaning was tedious and had many steps. The first was dousing the entire structure in a bleach solution. This is because there was mouse poop everywhere and mouse poop carries the deadly hantavirus. I was advised by Charles, our local pest control officer, to wear a mask and gloves and to get rid of as much of the poop while it was wet as possible, seeing as the virus gets released into the when the waste is disturbed. The wetness holds it down.

Once the bleach was applied, using a handheld sprayer (picture below), I swept as much as I could and then I used my shop vac. I kicked myself at every stage for having forgotten to borrow C&C’s much larger one, but my one-gallon model was good for doing the top of the walls since I could lift it.

During this stage, I found two dead mice and at least two live ones. Needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to put down mouse poison as it would be stupid to do all this work only to have mice move back in!

Next step was pressure washing, twice. Both times, I wound up with more huge piles of mouse poop on the floor, blasted from every nook and cranny! I knew that I was never going to get the place 100% clean, so after the second pressure washing, I did another pass with bleach on the ceiling, rafters, and walls.

Then, I shop vacced the floor, gave it a final pressure wash, and let it dry. Once dry, I swept and shop vacced again, then did a final pass with the bleach.

That done, I moved in some pallets on which to rest stuff, moved all the crap out of my yard into the building, draped a tarp over what I didn’t want to get wet as there was rain in the forecast for Saturday night, and added a lock to the door for show.

Whew!

When I went in the grainery this morning, it was nice and dry despite the overnight rain, and while I can’t say it smelled nice, it was definitely fresher in there!

It’s been a day and a half, but Haven has buildings! Again, they are fir-framed storage sheds once used to store grain. They are normally constructed on skids to make them easy to move.

The guy who moves graineries, J, has done hundreds of these. In a best case scenario, which is about 95% of the time, he just winches the graineries up, slides a dolly onto the rear of the side skids, attaches a hitch to the middle skid, hooks the hitch up to his truck, and away he goes. Average time from arrival on site to departure: 20 minutes.

My graineries were in the 5% that do not go smoothly.

The smaller one, which will be a shed, was not attached to its skids. J and Charles were shocked since they had come out recently to scout out the buildings and this completely escaped them.

Followed hours of trying to get the building attached securely to the skids, including a run back to Charles’ place for parts. We had arrived on site around 9:30 and didn’t get on the road with the first grainery till almost 1:30. I had complete faith in J by this point. He’s a bit of a loud mouth, but there was no cockiness here, just expertise.

It was slow going through a pasture and up a rutty private road to a gravel road, and then it was smooth going all the way to Haven.

When we got on site in the morning, I expected the buildings to be smaller than I remembered. They were bigger! I had this vision of Haven being completely crowded so I was relieved when the smaller building rolled into Haven and I saw that both would fit comfortably and still leave room for a clothesline, garden, guest RV parking spot, and Moya parking spot.

I had originally planned to stick both buildings together, but tree stumps and overhead lines nixed that plan. The shed wound up at the southwest corner of the property, near the street. Right now, its opening is right on the street, but Charles will make me a door on the side and the existing hole will be covered.

Having the first building in place, I could see where the other one would go and I hope it would be far enough south to clear my office window. My clothesline plans changed when I realised that instead of putting in posts, I could just string the clothesline between the two buildings!

It took a bit of time to get the first grainery settled and reasonably parallel to the curb. We had something to drink and set off to get the other one.

The larger grainery was on skids, but the middle skid, the one the hitch is supposed to attach to, was too wide! J got under there with a chainsaw and shaved the extra width off! After that, it was fairly quick going to get it loaded. I could tell that J and Charles fading fast.

It was much slower going bringing the larger grainery back to Haven as it is much heavier. It was a bit of work to back it in because the ground is so soft. I was really disappointed when J dropped it the first time as it was right between the RV and the neighbour’s shed, meaning a very closed in view from the office window. But after repositioning his truck, he was able to get it back just far enough for me to be happy with the positioning.

I don’t deserve any credit for all the hard work today. I documented the whole event and occasionally fetched parts, but mostly stayed out of the way. Charles and J are my heroes! I can’t believe how hard they worked today.

J originally quoted me $500, but because of the extra time, he asked for another $200. He hadn’t expected me to have the $500 today, so he said the extra can wait until I see him on the wagon train in a couple of months. $700 to get these two buildings on site is a bargain! Remember, the buildings themselves cost me nothing!

Charles and I started to work out a plan of attack for the buildings, but that will be the subject of a future post. They’re on site now and the rest can wait for a bit. The only thing I am going to try really hard for is to scrape the money to put a tin roof on them this year. We shall see.

There is short video after the pictures.

This video is worth watching for the last couple of seconds. Listen to what I say and see if you can catch it.

I said, “Is it supposed to be baloting like that?” I meant wobbling or teetering, but I apparently lose my English and resort to French when I’m excited and tired and hungry. 🙂