the junk house - outbuilding edition

It has been a week since the lovely and well loved Farm Chick, Serena, featured this little blog as her link of the week. How stinkin fun for me. I have so enjoyed meeting all of you and can't thank Serena enough! I'll try though....Serena, you are the best and the original. Thanks for introducing me to your wonderful Farm Chick following!

So, after that little bit of sweetness, are you ready for some ugly?

It's been a while since we visited the Junk House, so perhaps a recap is in order.

Ten years ago, back when I was regularly taking hallucinogenic drugs (there's no other logical explanation) we bought the Junk House. The house was in bad shape, but it really wasn't that hard to see it had potential.

The outbuildings had potential too.

Potential to induce nightmares.

Individually, and aside from the extreme neglect they had suffered, the buildings are not the worst thing we could have dealt with. While there wasn't a lot of charm there, they could have been spruced up and made to work. However, they were grouped too close together, and had structural damage issues from a former resident who really, really liked fire. They needed to go.

Front....


Side....


Other side....


And back....


360 degrees of architecture gone bad.

Our farm actually used to be a dairy back in the day. Not far enough back for the buildings to have been really cool and old. Just far enough back for them to be really ugly and old.

This is what was left of the milking parlor, and I suppose I should be quite happy that all we had to deal with was four hundred million yards of concrete. I think it's safe to assume the buildings that used to be there probably made your eyes bleed as well.


It's hard to see, but there is another pad of concrete beyond this one. Lots and lots of concrete.

Here is the far end of that second concrete pad.


I suppose now would be the appropriate time to tell you that our pond started out as a manure pit for the dairy. Yum.

After all the concrete was broken up and disposed of, we planted grass in it's place. Lots and lots of grass. And my last resident mower only has a couple years left at home.


Eventually, that group of buildings was demolished and a new barn was built.


Much better.

We still have two more buildings to deal with. One has major cute potential - it's a hexagon shape and when it's done it will be very cool.
The other one, while not as bad as those showcased above, still needs to pretty much go to the great metal siding scrapyard in the sky and be reborn of barn wood. As the new barn totally blocks it from daily sight, it's not a super high priority.

I have to say that while I certainly err on the drama/whining side of Junk House story telling, going back through the pictures from those early days reminds me of how glad I am we took our sad little farm and helped it become the happy place it is today. Hallucinogenic drugs or not, and while I might not choose to do it all again, I'm so glad we saw a glimpse of what this little patch of country land could be, and dove in.