Update on the Grainery project

[Windpower]

A month ago we cleaned the grainery for storage



We have a roofer scheduled to repair the roof -- overall it is pretty good but there are a few holes and some loose tin

I decided to make a new door since the original was falling apart (not too unexpected I would guess the building is about 70 or 80 years old)







original door



I guess nails were cheaper than screws....



I greased up the original rollers and they work just fine






Trial fit




I managed to get one coat of paint on --- it dried very slowly in the near record heat and humidity

96 degrees with a 78 degree dew point ---- I was sweated through at 9 AM

Looks like I will have to paint the rest of the building now

[glenn kangiser]

Cool - the old rollers were good quality unlike the pressed tin and plastic ones now.

[Windpower]

We drove to the Baraboo Farm and Fleet to buy new rollers but they had nothing even close and the quality was very poor by comparison

I figure the old rollers have at least another 20 years in them -- good enough for us

[Native_NM]

That door looks fantastic!  Nice work.

[Native_NM]

Seeing the door just got me wondering ...is there any significance to the red color?  In NM blue doors had a real significance.  How about in old farm country ...why are barns and outbuildings frequently red?

[Windpower]

Thank you

The most likely explaination of red barns is that red paint used to be the cheapest, at least I have heard that story a couple times.

[MountainDon]

I had read that the originally barns were painted with a linseed oil mixture. That worked fine but in some cases mold and mildew still grew on the barn wood. Ferric oxide, rust, was added as it kills those things. That resulted in a darker red than what is common today.

Back home I was told that many barns were painted red as they stole the paint from the railway which used it on all their freight cars.

Both could be true I suppose.

[Squirl]

I was told it was the cheapest pigment to make many years ago.  So in a low margin highly competative business like farming, all barns were painted red.

[HoustonDave]

Here's an interesting article about it from Grit magazine.

http://www.grit.com/Community/Why-Are-Barns-Red.aspx

[glenn kangiser]

Now I wonder what the significance of blue doors in NM was.....

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

That door looks great! 

I painted our picnic table and chicken house red because it looks pretty when everything is dead and gray in winter, it doesn't clash with our red dirt, and simply because I like it.

[Tickhill]

Kinda left us hanging on the blue color in NM...

[Native_NM]

It's superstition.  Blue is associated with the Virgin Mary, and is supposed to ward off evil spirits.  There are also blue doors in Spain and many Muslim countries.  Side note:  Some historians have suggested that the city name Albuqueque is actually of Arab origin, dating back to Moor's occupation in Spain.