Thursday, 8 September 2016

A Reverse Birthday Gift( Tack Room..............to Zen space) or "Beer and Birthday Cake"

As you know from if you have read my previous posts, Francis built me a tack room earlier. Well, it has been embellished! It is such an amazing place now that we often go up there to have our evening tea ( in his case a beer or ice tea) and just commune with the horses. It is such a zen spot...


The inside walls are now all done with beautiful tongue and groove pine lumber. We wanted the pine to stay the lovely fresh sawn lumber colour, so we stained it with white stain. Natural pine and varnish always yellow and we wanted to prevent that.We have an amazingly deep window sill ( plants will go there next year), racks to hang the saddle pads on, horse shoe holders for bridles, halters, lunge equipment ( for all you non-horsey people, including Francis, its just "stuff"), coat hooks for rain jackets and sweaters.


It was quite comical really when the lumber was being installed on the walls and ceiling. We had done a calculation for just the walls initially, and this is what we purchased. We figured the door and window areas would be almost the same area as the ceiling and so we would have enough-- well not quite. We were about " 3-4 boards short" or so we thought. So off we went to get the boards and we brought home  6 boards. More than enough say we...... but sure enough we ran short by one board... so off we went again the next day to get the one we needed to finish everything 

The cement floor was painted to help keep down the dust, and to make it easier to sweep, but most importantly so  it matched the lumber(hehe).

 Francis decided all the walls needed to be insulated "just in case" we ever decide he horses are staying year round. 
If you look closely at the photo above, you can read what Francis wrote in our "time capsule"-- "Built Aug 13,2016 by Francis Belanger for Sue Bow XX little heart and Marina Laliberte"

We have a couple of  plastic shelving units (cheap, nothing fancy) that we use to hold our grooming boxes, tack cleaning supplies and horsey first aid kit. This will sound terrible considering  my occupation (an Emergency Room nurse), but I don't have a human first aid kit there(oops).

The finishing touches include some old horse pictures which have not been hung yet ( they used to be in my living room) and the two plastic lounge chairs. I went digging in the crawl space and found two old hunt print cushions to complete the seating section. When sitting in the chairs it is possible to see the horses through the doorway...


Birthday cake and Beer!

The work started on a Friday and was finished on Sunday! Amazing feat. Especially as Francis birthday was one of the days. But I did bake him his favourite cake (carrot) and take it up to the tack room along with a beer (it was very hot out and he doesn't really like tea).... it was nearly 5 o'clock so permitted

                     Below is the finished product!
left hand side and outside wall

"The lounge"- right hand side of room

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