Barn Progress

The first thing we did was tear off the planter box that was under the front window. It was completely rotted. So much so that there were actually worms living inside the wood. Then we primed and painted the barn.

We chose Valspar's La Fonda Antique Red for the paint color. I guess it is named after the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, NM, but we chose it because it is such a barn red color. It really makes the barn stand out while the beige made it kind of recede into the background.

The second major project we tackled was rehanging the barn doors. We didn't stop to take any pictures of that, but it was a major undertaking. We bought new much larger hinges. The old hinges were only screwed into the trim a lot of which was pretty rotten and causing the whole thing to sag about two inches. Eventually the bottom hinge for the bottom door just came off completely. We replaced some of the rotten trim and got much longer screws so that the door is attached to the wall and not just the trim. People say that hanging a door is one of the few home improvement things you should never DIY. They may be right. It didn't turn out perfect, but it is a vast improvement to the sagging/falling off mess it was before.

The last project was the cork wall. Nate is a writer and part of his process is listing out plot points on index cards, pinning them up and rearranging them. Since the barn was going to be his writing shed he wanted lots of space to pin up his index cards. Large framed cork boards are surprisingly expensive so he decided he wanted to just cork one entire wall of the barn. You can buy peel and stick cork squares, but those are also surprisingly expensive. I found a blog (which I can't find right now) where someone used cork underlayment which is usually used to go underneath wood floors to create a cork board wall in their kitchen. The underlayment is much cheeper and comes in either rolls or tiles and in different thicknesses. I found 1/4" tiles at widgetco.com.

We attached it to the wall with floor adhesive.

The walls were exactly 6' high so two 2' by 3' tiles fit perfectly. We did have to cut out a hole for the electrical outlet and cut the last two tiles to fit.