I (Adam) am working my tail off tearing down barns. The business is starting to grow a little and we are developing quite nicely. We are moving to sell our wood retail instead of wholesale. It is fun to write a check out to yourself and your business partner from money your business has earned. We are finishing 2 good projects right now. We will finish our Holden project Friday and Tremonton next week. The Tremonton project has been huge. So much work in the hot sun. Now that we have the thing down, we have to work on getting the roof torn apart, which means working next to or on a giant metal heat reflector all day. We are getting quite good at tearing these things down. We had 3 feet between the barn and a vinyl fence to play with and pulled the huge thing down with a foot to spare - not even a scratch on the fence. We camp on site and work 12-16 hour days. It keeps me out of town 3-4 days a week sometimes. It's always nice to come home. Here is a picture of the Tremonton barn...
It's up...
Still up (there is the fence we had to miss)
And now it's down.
Lots of fun. Here are a couple of pictures of us after a long day of work.
Can you see the Malt-O-Meal plant in the background (to the left)? We can smell good things from that place all day - smells like pancakes. So tortuous. Also, the Laz-y-Boy factory is about a mile from us.
We both have sore bodies and deep brown tans (with their accompanying tan lines). Amazingly enough, no major injuries and no one has stepped on a nail yet.
Amy is keeping busy with Henry and a number of fun wood projects in the house. She is learning how to do different paint finishes. Sometimes she is more frustrated than excited, but I think overall she enjoys it. Amy does a great job of keeping things in order around the house and is a great Mom to Henry. She is also getting good at playing with pictures on the computer. She prints them out and puts them in nice frames - they look great!
We are doing well and trust me, all you heat complainers, I know what the heat is these days! Come join me on a barn site for a day!
Oh yeah, I will be graduating with a Master's degree this next month - all professors have signed off on it!! Finally!
Well, be good all. Adam
8 comments:
CONGRATULATIONS ADAM!!! YOU DID IT!!!
So where are you selling the wood? I thought the wholesale buyer was someone outside of Utah. So are they not buying the stuff?
So you just trade the demolition of the barn for the wood? Where do you store it in the interam period, before it is sold?
Congratulations on the degree. When will it be awarded?
Dad
We have been selling the wood to an in-state buyer up to this point. We sold iot to them wholesale because we understood that they had to kiln dry it and do other prep work on the wood. We found out that our wood is dry enough and nice enough that they don't do anything but store it and sell it at more than 2x what they paid us.
We also found out that a large part of their business is driven to them through the internet.
So we decided to sell retail ourselves for cheaper than they are selling. This makes us the cheapest and highest quality barnwood in the business right now. We just have smaller quantities. If we can find more barns here in the west, we will do really well. Our wood is very high quality and sells really quick. We are going to work on selling the wood through the internet, contractors, designers, and other sources. We have already had some inquiries. If only we had about 5 more barns on the slate right now...Got to get out there and find them.
We are looking at doing a road trip in August or more likely in September, back to the east to remove a few barns in states that are not being well covered such as Oklahoma,Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas.
We don't have to store the barnwood very long. Till now we have been able to sell the day we take it down if we want. Now we will store it at Matt's house till we find a place to store our wood (all of it, which is quite a bit of beams, lumber and barnwood). We have to find a place very soon cause we are almost done with 2 big projects and have to remove the wood from the site.
Each barn site is different in terms of arrangements with the owner. In Holden, it was an exchange. In Tremonton, we are paying a percentage of the profit from the barnwood only. The terms of clean up and such are worked out in our contract as well.
Graduation is August 17th - Amy's parents will be here as well. Let's have a PARTY!
Congratulations Adam. Sounds like the barn business is going well. Anytime you want to come to Oklahoma we would love it. You can stay with us! You can bring Amy and Henry and they can hang out with us while you work. It will be perfect. Anyway, we are very proud of you and hope all continues to go well.
Congratulations, Adam. By the way, I saw another barn for you the other day just a couple of miles outside of town. It looked perfect for you, nice wide planks, no paint, and leaning to one side. Anytime you want to come out, you have a place to stay and some extra hands to help.
Way to go on demo of that huge barn. That's quite an undertaking with only two people and no other mechanized equipment.
Another Master, eh? Master Brent, Master Jason, Master Adam (Aug. 06) and Master Jess (April 07). If only our wives saw it that way.
Congratulations on the degree Adam! I know it's been hard to finish. It's a real accomplishment to certainly be proud of!
I don't envy you in the heat at all! Good luck with the business. Some of those barns look too pretty to tear down. Be careful with the hard labor though. Don't hurt yourself. I'm sure Amy worries about you -- as do we all. It sounds like you're all doing well though.
Congrats on your masters! That is so awesome!
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