The Barn..................................

The barn is FINALLY finished!  They started construction in October and they finished this week.  We decided to go with a Kentucky black barn and fence.  When they were putting the roof on we changed the plan - lifted up the center and added the clearstory windows. 

It looks soooo cute from the house.  Jim and I made the bench in front of the fence.  When the contractor picked up the wood for the fence from the mill, they threw on a half log - so we made a bench.  We put it by the fence so the little kids could stand on it to pet the horses without having to climb on the fence.

We still have a little dirt work to do - and a lot of grass to replace.  The lights on the front are from Ebay (of course).  Jim really wanted vintage lights.  These lights are a green color - we didn't want the door color to compete so we went with a gray and white color scheme...

and painted the shutters to match.  But when we went around to the back...............

it looks like a party barn (kinda like a mullet - business in the front and party in the back).

The 3 dutch doors under the porch go right into 3 stalls.

The stall doors are from out neighbor, Toni.  She wanted to turn her barn into a garage so she gave us the doors, hardware and bars. 

There is a center aisle with the tack room shown on the left and the stalls on the right.  The big windows in the front doors and the clearstory windows make it pretty bright even without the lights on. 

The door for the tack room was our laundry room door (remember the barn door project?)  Beyond the tack room is the wash bay.

Jim came up with a brilliant idea for the lights and basically married 2 light fixtures together to make these "designer" lights.  (I painted everything black)

These fans may not look that big in this picture - but they are each 72" - and remote controlled (also a Jim thing). 

And..............there's indoor plumbing!



Now for the livestock.................

These little guys were all that Karryn wanted for her birthday.  Their names are Snuffles (on the left) and Captain Davy Jones.  So far they're living in the bathroom - but I'm hoping to promote them to the barn soon!   

The Hallway in Progress..............

As you all have seen in past posts, El built a closet in the hallway, taking a small corner of the family room, which we access from the hallway.  We then used the laundry room door for the tack room in the barn so we built a "barn door" for the house (to hide the mess and non-painted laundry room).

  The opening on the left is the laundry room and the unfinished opening is the new closet.

Again, the door on the right is the new closet and the barn door hides the laundry room.

The barn door was distressed during the "family beating" (of the door, not the kids) and a good time was had by all!  Maybe it was wrong to give Brennan the heaviest hammer...............  We stained it black then put a walnut stain over top to "warm it up".  2 coats of sand sealer then 2 coats of poly.  The door hangars are from Ebay, the rail is from the farm store, the handle is from Hobby Lobby and the corner braces are from Home Depot.  All hardware except the handle was painted black.