A Barn Surprise

I have so many projects to tell you about but today's surprise puts that news to the head of the line.

Our barn needs a new paint job in the worse way.  The previous owner hired a company to spray paint the house and barn with very little prep work before hand AND it shows.  The barn has severe peeling on the clapboards, so much so that on the south side of the barn the scraping will be a breeze. No really...I think a breeze would blow the remaining paint right off the wood.

Our plan this year is to do the back of the barn and the south side before winter.  These two sides face our neighbors and we would prefer to make their view as nice as possible.  Taking care of these two sides also allows us to expand our bee hives and add more flowering plants for the bees and for purely aesthetic reasons.

The plants will consist of tall flowering phlox that are already growing ALL over the yard.  They transplant fairly easy but I have found that fall is the best time.  I have white, dark pink, and purple varieties.

The barn is original to the house but was moved from it's original location to it's current location by the former owner.  It appears that the moving process damaged the lower clapboards so I have been looking at a lot of barn photos to see how old barns used to look.

Since the house has a lot of white trim, I will continue that theme by adding a band of 1X6 around the bottom and also keeping the 1x4 corner boards.  The corner boards are in very bad condition so they will be replaced with new 1X4's.

Today we removed the bottom damaged clapboards which will be replaced with the 1X6's.  The corner boards were removed and also one piece of trim next to the garage door because it was loose and needs to be reattached properly.  I popped that puppy off and lo and behold there it was right before my eyes.......the original paint color of the barn.  It was as clear as day.

We always assumed the barn was originally white but because of the excessive peeling it was difficult to find an area where the original paint was still intact.  I never felt the need to really investigate because the barn will be painted in the same color scheme as the house.  Dark grey body and bright white trim.

That's the shadow of my hair blowing in the wind.

And what color did I find?  Medium grey.  I knew that the original color of the house was medium grey but I never imagined the barn was also grey.  It's nice to know that the barn will return to it's former color as did the exterior of the house and soon the interior will return to it's original color, too.

We also have a plan to add a large sun dial to the south side of the barn.  It will be white with black numbers and some sort of saying in latin.  Of course there is the commonly used tempus fugit  which translates to 'time flies' but I prefer something a little different.  Maybe Quis custodiet ipsoscustodes?
Which translates loosely to Who watches the watchman?

But how about something even more unusual like Semper ubi sub ubi.  I'm sure your mother gave you this sage advice when you were young.  I think Lindsey Lohan's mother forgot the Semper ubi sub ubi lecture when she was a young lass.  Always wear underwear.

I have some time (no pun intended) before I need to choose but what do you think?

Traditional....tempus fugit

Thought provoking.......Quis custodiet ipsiscuatodes?

Or something that will leave people scratching their heads and saying 'huh?' Semper ubi sub ubi