The before pics at Highlands are fun to look at at - if for nothing else than 'look how far we've come' moments. Below is the inside of the Barn after we added a screen doors, a fridge, and a few tables to serve as a kitchen.
You can see the indoor plumbing Hubby added, a table with sink that "drains" into a Homer bucket, the tabletop oven, fridge, coffee pot, TV, storage, and water buffalo. It was highly functioning camping.
Nowadays!
Under the TV is a storage stand. Next to it is our vacuum cleaner and broom. There are mini blinds on the window, too. This table is home to the microwave (from Dutch!), a coffee pot, and water buffalo. A skirt made of vintage flour sacks is attached with a tension rod under the table. Out-of-sight storage includes our snake boots, the liquor cabinet, a first aid kit, and the pizza stone.
Pegboard helps us organize a tiny kitchen. To the right is dry goods storage, plus a sink with cutting board cover. Under the skirt on this side is that Homer bucket, the squatty pee potty, and the mats for the camp cots. It doesn't look like it, but there is plennnnty of space here to open the fridge. The benches slide under the kitchen table neatly.
Against the wall directly across from the kitchen we used to keep the fridge and a ton of camping items. All of that went into the shed after we built it. So the space was freed up for camp cots. But eventually, those got stored, too. And we removed the LOUD window unit A/C and installed a portable one. We already had a heater in here. It is comfy in here, no matter the season.
We murdered all of the mice. Hubby insulated everything. We installed beadboard and gave a one foot perimeter of the floor a coat of white paint. Then we laid down RV carpet. That lamp is also a smart speaker for listening to music. Extra linens are stored in the trunk behind the folding chairs. We will one day have a futon in here. The doorstops are big and beautiful chunks of quartz. We might paint the ceilings black - someday, not any time soon.
Above is the A/C unit. That oil heater will probably go live in the storage shed until December. We built a window sill on this side so there would be a spot to charge/hold a cell phone.
We brought these old metal lockers up from Camp Rustown. They had been in my MIL's Galveston garage for years before that. They got two sloppy coats of oil-based paint and some chalkboard labels and they are now our dry storage. Command hooks organize caps. Vintage Tupperware on top has microwave popcorn, nuts and crackers, marshmallows for the campfire, iced tea packets. That axe helped us kill the third rattlesnake - its staying right there.
The floors are some kind of wood sub flooring that we have no plans to cover, other than that RV fabric. Paint did a fine job of disguising it. And we have plans to add quarter round to the base of the walls to "finish" it.
Mabel is just outside - see her?
We added many pavers out there where there was once just gravel. And there are tables out there, too.
The inside of the barn overhang was filthy - we powerwashed the heck out of it and hung tiny white lights all around the inside. Originally, the Barn walls were just bare composite wood, so we painted those. You can see where Hubby extended the plumbing so that we could have a sink out here, too. {I need to figure out a space and system for hanging our clothes!}
There is a sink table (with a bussing tub for dishes) and a cook's table. We repurposed one of the giant barrels we found as a trash can. Looks huge but it regularly gets filled up. Behind the trash can is our shower mat for outdoor showers and a bench ladder to set things, or yourself, on. Above it, just out of sight, is a plastic tote with shampoo, soap, and toothbrushes.
We use the cook stove almost every weekend, but there is also a gas grill, too. This was a table that was left here, and I power-stapled a plastic tablecloth all around the top of it.
Every weekend it seems like I find more trash at Highlands - and every time I say some thing about how the man that owned it was an idiot to trash it up so badly. Can you believe what a mess it was? At closing, we made it a condition of sale that the big trash had to be cleared off. But we have filled TWO construction-sized dumpsters since then.
And we still have more trash to collect, along with about 500 tires to dispose of.
There was trash everywhere. BIG trash. Like a dump.
Hubby always saw the potential.
It took a while before we had it all tweaked the way we like it. We decided to hang solar fabric to protect Mabel from the harsh UV rays. The tiny white lights help us see all the way around her at night. Mabel now had a safe spot to live, out of the sun.
The Barn has come a long way and is now a sweet place to spend weekends.
Gina
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