Nothing like an old fashioned shed raising to bring family and friends together!

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy. Since we’ve decided to take Irish into our home (and hearts), we’ve been preparing a room for him just as we would if we were expecting. He’s got a little lameness in his right front leg that requires him to be on stall rest, which for where he is currently living is not a problem. However, for Irish to remain on stall rest, it required of us, to build him a space to live in until he heals.

So, to that end, we researched, planned and ultimately decided it would be more cost-effective to build something ourselves. (Portable stalls range from 2000-4000 for the quality built ones…. ouch.) My friend, Kaite is loaning us her pen panels which will make the walls, so all we had to do was build a roof. One thing that came into play was that if we were going to spend the money, why not do it right and perhaps we can either extend it and make it a bigger barn later or transform it into a new storage shed… we’d like to rid ourselves of the rusty one that you can see next to it in the photos.

Andy’s family and one of the riders that Kaite teaches came over and we all pitched in to build. The structure is definitely strong. We don’t yet have the roof on it yet. We’re planning to put the last three rafters on this Saturday and then put a tarp on 2 on it for now, since Irish will be arriving this coming weekend. We figure that once he’s here we can research to find the best cost for roofing materials, save up and purchase them later.

It’s very satisfying to build something buy hand and with the help of others. These days, so many things come in a box, ready to assemble or we simply hire someone else to assemble it for us. When it comes down to cost – often we decide to do it ourselves and benefit from it more in the long run. Thank you to everyone who came out to help us – we are forever grateful!

You can see more photos of the building by going to our Photos page.