While the upstairs of the barn was being spray insulated the downstairs was fast coming along. One of those things was the staircase that mister man felt the need to change in the design, something else that cost more money! Even though mister man was building the stonewalls and he was using leftover granite blocks it still cost extra to have half the lower barn dug out as seen here.
While these pictures don't look like much yet it will. The staircase is 42' wide and goes up and takes a 90-degree angle.
Here you can start to see the walls coming together with cement and granite blocks. The cement blocks will be hidden under the treads so no sense in wasting expensive antique granite blocks.
The brick you see in the middle of the wall won't show either but since mister man had cement blocks and granite blocks in that one pass he had to make the granite as wide as the cement to keep things even. All kinds of tricks! You can see here that as you start up the stairs they face out the back of the French doors.
Mister man allowing a rare picture of himself but he worked his tail off to finish the walls in two days time. This picture was snapped after spending a fourteen-hour day up to his knickers in cement and stone. He usually looks so much better but someone was tired!
The next morning after having an acid bath to wash all the stone dust off the walls. The cement block area under the stairs will be storage.
The stairs are actually going to be wood since building the rises and treads out of stone would have meant building the underneath as a solid structure. It would have been heavy and not cost efficient. See how the treads will hide the cement block and you'll be left with just the pretty antique block showing'love it!
Above view looking down the staircase.
While the staircase walls were being built our contractors were busy finishing up the rest of the downstairs that included mister man's workshop and the main barn area. This is a view of mister man's workshop, remember how dark and dank the place was, look below'.
Not a very welcoming room huh?
Here's a view of the barn floor where we decided to make it pretty. Since the back wall is stone boulders, one sidewall was granite block, we decided the floor should reflect all the stone. Very easy to do by tossing small stones in on the wet cement to give it texture.
If you look at the top of the picture you see what looks like two small rooms. The one on the left is storage under the staircase, the other holds all the heating units for the radiant floor heat upstairs.
Close up of what the finished floor looks like....
That raised back cement step just in front of the boulder wall is actually a French drain since water could still tickle down through the ground and out the boulder wall but so far no water so our contractors have done their job! As you can see the whole barn is really starting to take shape.
Up next, buttoning her up!