Of course we can

Our friends had mentioned previously that they wanted to paint their barn doors, which were starting to look a little tired, and were deteriorating quite quickly. When the conversation arose again over dinner I made a mental note to speak to Brian about it. On the drive home I asked him “Do you think we could help them with their barn?”. His reply didn’t surprise me, he said simply “Of course we can”.

Jump forward a couple of weeks and we’re back at our friends, sizing up the work. It’s a bit of a big job: two large barn doors, in pretty fair shape, but they do have a few leaky gaps in the wood; a small side door that isn’t too good, with a broken panel near the hinge and the bottom quarter very rotten; then a loading window above the small barn door, that leaks a lot due to the gaps that have developed between the wood panels. The rain water runs straight onto the stone ledge and then onto the small door below. No wonder it’s rotted.

We discussed what result they would like and what needed to happen, then left them with a couple of preparation tasks, which included removing all the old flaky paint and a short list of things we would need. We pencilled some dates to get started and hoped for a window of good weather.