Finishing Work for this Trip

When we arrived back from our trip to Minnesota, we went immediately to the new house to see the work that had been done on the planter along the North side.  In these couple of pictures, you can see the first "wall" of the planter (the wall closest to the house) has been completed.  We had a small toast to this progress as it was obvious that this pla nter will become one of the features of the Barndominium and, although not part of the work plan for Phase I, certainly is one of the activities we are most please with.  Here's the pictures:

We've had a very productive 2+ weeks.  It'll be 3 weeks by the time I'm done but the majority of the visible work is done and can be seen in these pictures.  It's hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, we had a bare plot of land here and since, have improved the road to the building site, built a well, created the site for the building, poured the slab and erected the building.  Over the past two weeks, we've enclosed the "house" portion of the Barndominium, put in all the doors and windows, sealed and fixed everything to the metal building and slab and finished the painting.  The functional and decorative part that we didn't plan on doing until we were here and saw the site and what it needed was the very large native stone planter all across the north face of the building as well as 12' down each side.  That work now provides 76' of planter box (it'll take awhile just to fill it with dirt).  That'll enable us to have a wide variety of plants and vines along the east side where the morning sun is strong on the patio and some on the west side where the evening sun is really strong.  Also, there's good protection on the north side in the case of an exceptional storm in terms of providing a wall to prevent water from coming down the hill and getting up on the deck.

Also, electricity has now been pulled through the ground into the building and work is started on wiring the inside so that the next time we arrive, it'll be home sweet home for us, even though there is all the internal construction remaining on the house.  At least we'll have the camper trailer inside the barn, connected to the power, water and septic systems.

you can clearly see the planter box across the front and the west side.  Also, note the sandy color of the HardiPlank and the Periwinkle blue trim around the windows and door.

The size of the planter is more visible as well and the blue trim.  While we won't get it done on this trip, the next trip will involve putting shutters on the edge of the windows.  These shutters will be the same blue color and will add a lot more "blue" to the building - a nice contrast to the color palette of the land, trees and the building.

A good panoramic view of the west and north sides of the house.

A final view looking across from our daughter's house to the Barndominium.