We bought our property in July of 2019. It was quite a disaster, but we knew what we were looking for and knew what we could do with it. After all, we had been searching for nine years for our perfect slice of heaven.

Land. check. Livable house. check. Pond. check. Barn. check, kind of…

One thing we weren’t counting on was the former owners leaving an entire two-car garage (front to back and side to side) filled with junk. They said, and I quote, “We left a few things in the garage that were there when we bought the house.” Ugh. But, that’s a whole-nother-blog…

The next thing we weren’t counting on was the barn being filled with trash. Not just junk like the garage, but plain old, why didn’t you throw this crap out?, TRASH. It took us a year to empty the barn and dispose of it all. Yes, I counted the empty chicken feed bags. 169! …along with buckets of rat droppings, dried snake skins, and more than a few hornet nests.

Here’s the before photo on the day we moved in. I know what you’re thinking. Why would you even buy that?? Well, you think the outside was bad? You can’t even imagine the junk that was piled up on the inside. Notice the nice plastic skeletons hanging in the windows? They were probably there for twenty years. I’m not kidding!

But hey, I can work with this. A few runs to the dump, a little weed wacking, a little elbow grease… maybe one or two new roof panels.

Once we got settled, we started looking for a roofer. Wow! People just don’t want to work. At least a half dozen roofers never even called us back. One showed up and never called back with an estimate. But, he did better than the one who made an appointment and never showed up. We even got so far with one, he actually showed up, called us with an estimate that we accepted, scheduled to start the following week, and…. wait for it… nothing… three months later, we still haven’t heard from him.

Finally, we found a really nice kid who showed up on time, gave us an estimate, pulled up to the barn with a crew, and put on a beautiful roof! These kids rocked! (I say kids, but they were actually grown ups who knew exactly what they were doing.)

After the roof was finished, we stared at it for a month before deciding we definitely needed to paint it to match the house (the house is green). The paint job only took a weekend and has made all the difference.

Next, we will be staining the new wooden posts, buying a bronze goose-neck light fixture, and putting up stained shutters that match the house. And, next summer we’ll tackle the electric and build stalls inside.

I’m just tickled that we’re this far along! So, which do you like better, the before picture or the after picture? LOL

P.S. I have a couple dusty, grimy (antique?) plastic skeletons, if you want them.