Barn Stable Ag Lime Floor and New Windows

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Hello there!

I’m so excited for you to see the transformation of this stable in the barn! Like the rest of the buildings the barn was left a mess by the previous owner. And as you can see from the ‘Before’ picture below this stable was no exception.

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Cleanup

The first order of business was to get it cleaned up!

Flooring and Windows

It’s amazing what a good cleaning will do! And after it was cleaned up it was time to think about flooring and windows.

Ag Lime Flooring

After some research, speaking with several of our farmer friends, and some consideration we decided to go with Agricultural Lime flooring. Some of our reasoning includes:

• tamps down to a hard surface, which makes it easy to clean/muck
• doesn’t get as cold as concrete in the winter
• absorbs moisture but feels dry on the surface
• helps with odor
• it’s fairly inexpensive – we got 7 tons delivered for less that $100

Ag Lime Floor

Shew it was a ton of work! 7 tons to be exact! Lol! We started out moving it by the truck full, but it wasted time because we were shoveling it twice. So the next I just used this yard cart with a tarp and brought it in a cart full at a time! The side comes off so I could dump it over. I moved the remaining 5ish tons that way by myself! Yep I’m dang proud of that! Ladies if I can do it anyone can! You are stronger and more capable than you think!

Oh and btw literally the very next day Ed bought a skid steer lol!

Compacting the Ag Lime Floor

After the ag lime was in it was time to tamp it or compact it until it was hard. I rented a plate compactor from our local hardware store for this. It was $50 for 4 hours.

Before compacting we raked the Ag Lime until it was even and smooth. We added some Ag lime to unlevel places. Then we wet that ag lime until it was pretty saturated, but not puddling. Basically you just walk the compactor up and down from one side to the other back and forth until it’s pretty smooth and hard. It will finish hardening when it dries.

We love how it turned out and will be using Ag lime in some other places here at the farm!

Windows

The other big issue in this room, and well the whole barn, are the windows. The windows that are left (not many) aren’t in great shape. At first I thought we’d have to try and make them or special order them. But it turns out that by some miracle Menards carries a “barn window” that’s almost the exact size we need for $27 each!

You can find the windows we used here!

I say almost because these windows don’t have to be exact. They aren’t even anchored in place like typical windows. The windows actually just slide and sit in place. You can push them forward to close them or let them recline back against the wooden frames you see pictured for ventilation.

Barn Stable Windows

The windows were just about an inch and a half too wide so we just cut them to size. They’re vinyl so it was a pretty easy job. Then we made a couple new window brackets that were missing and firmed up the others.

Barn Stable Ag Lime Floor and New Windows

We’ll be wrapping up the barn stable this week, but it’s amazing to see how far it’s come! I can’t wait to share the “After” photo with y’all next week when there are farm babies here!!

Have an amazing day!