Barn Framing Begins

It has been 8 weeks and counting since we submitted all the paperwork to the town for the dome building permit. It turns out that they have supposedly been emailing me with questions from both building and zoning for about a month. Mr. Dometastic accidentally found this out when he called the building department to ask a barn related question. I didn't get any of the emails and they didn't try to contact me any other way that I am aware of.

And NO they are not in my Junk/Spam folder. The weird part is I do get some emails from them just not any of they ones that are holding up the process! I got one from zoning about 2 weeks ago letting me know they were going to visit the site. If we hadn't called with a question about the barn I wonder how long would it have been before they called me?!

Eversource has FINALLY put our pole in! The one we paid for last October. It only took them 7 months and more phone calls than I want to count to find out what needed to happen for them to schedule it.

The power trench is finally done on the barn end. No thanks to Eversources brand new 2018 handbook that incorrectly informs people of what is required.

It was rough but we managed to get the two 8ft grounding rods pounded all the way into the ground. This isn't a big deal if you live somewhere without a lot of rocks. Over and over we had to pull out the grounding rod after getting it almost all the way in. Thankfully we were able to pull them out with the skid steer each time we hit a rock. Without it there was no way we were getting them out of the ground to try again.

Once again our geriatric excavator has made our lives much easier! Every time we decide we really should try to sell it.... we end up using it for something. It is working quite nicely as a crane again. We have been using it to lift 16ft sections of barn walls into place AFTER we build them flat on the ground. This method is so much easier! I know this because I had to lift and hold up a few full sheets of plywood while Mr. Dometastic nailed them in place. Not the easiest thing to do while using a ladder.

It sounds and looks in the pictures much easier than it was a first. We decided to use it as a crane and just assumed we could lift the wall into place and the machine would just hold it there while we braced the wall. We didn't even think about how we would need ladders to reach the top of the wall to attach the bracing. We did at least have the ground stakes in and the bracing lumber ready. The first wall went up and we got it approximately in place. Then Mr. Dometastic tried to let go of the controls. The excavator would slowly swing taking the wall with it! I didn't know this was happening at first. Out of no where he just starts yelling "You need to do it NOW!" Ummm, do what? He wanted me to figure out how to do the bracing while he played with the controls on the excavator to try to keep the wall in the right place. We did not talk about what or how we were going to do things before lifting the wall. So pure chaos begins with me running to the shed to find ladders that were underneath tons of other tools, fence posts, hoses and who knows what else I just threw aside. I will leave the rest to your imagination.
After the first attempt we thought about things a bit more and the other walls went up pretty easy. Still more to go but we have made good progress.

Click here for a video on the new Dometastic YouTube channel. It is a little over 5 min and is a combo of drone flyover shots and time lapse showing the beginning stages of barn construction.