When I bought the barn the siding on two sides was failing, and I hired real carpenters to replace it. They discovered that the sill on one side had rotted out, and they jacked it up and replaced it. That was expensive enough that I decided that from now on whatever gets done has to be done by me! The work that I'm doing now isn't that expensive, just a few pieces of treated 2x8's. The biggest expense of this phase was the dumpster to take away the concrete that I broke up. But it's incredibly time-consuming. To the extent possible I'm trying to recreate the original wood work, which means that each piece of wood has to be shaped and fitted, sometimes I'll spend a couple of hours on a single piece. What I'm detailing here is the compression of about five years of intermittent work.
I have been very careful not to do anything that I considered dangerous. Once I got the loft supported from above it was all working down. Despite everything looking crazy, I knew it had some strength. When I bought it tractors were still being parked in it and several tons of hay was going into the loft each summer. When the carpenters replaced the sill they had jacked up the wall from the floor. I think about that now and I mutter "holy ***!" to myself.
