Several years ago I had a storage building built in my backyard for the purpose of starting and running a photo lab from my home. That worked for a while, but eventually I gave up the lab and was left with this building in my yard that was really nice, but I was unsure of what to do with it. It became commonly known as “the barn” because that is what it looks like; a smaller version of a ranch barn.
A few months ago I decided that, rather than let it be used for storage of junk that I didn’t need, I would turn it into a man-cave of sorts. This would be an involved process because I would have to insulate it, clean it up, remove all the junk from inside, and get some furnishings for it. My plan also involved running cable-TV and internet to it.
The first job was to get most of the extra stuff and trash moved out of the barn. I spent a day handling this a couple of months ago. I didn’t post about that part because it was rather boring. The second part was painting it, something which I never did in the 8 years I’ve owned it. There wasn’t any rotten wood or broken pieces on it, but after a good power-washing I could definitely see that the weather had beat it down a bit. This was easily fixed with power-washing, priming and painting.
After the primer was done, my job was to pick a color for it and put a real coat of paint on it. At first I was thinking red, being barn-red, but I decided against that. I wanted something darker, so I thought about a deep shade of blood-red, but then decided that the entire “red concept” wasn’t what I wanted at all. Instead, I went with a darker slate-blue color, and instead of the white trim and door which I was originally thinking, I am going with black on those parts. 
This is the first coat of paint you see in the photo to the left. This week I will be applying the 2nd and final coat, and painting the black on the door. I’ll have to wait to paint the trim until the 2nd coat is dry on the walls, but in this Texas sun I don’t expect that to take lone.
More to come and it evolves…
I hope you’ll be putting at least a window AC unit in it at some point, or that man cave will be a man roasting oven.
Actually, I had a window unit installed when the building was built. You can’t see it in this photo, it is on the back side of the building, but it is there. I does a moderate job for now, but that is because the building isn’t insulated. Once I get insulation and sheetrock up, I should be able to keep it nice and cool in there.
I have some rolls of insulation.
Here at the house i can see if i can get u some pics.
Thanks Robert, that’d be awesome. Let me know what you want for them. If you find pics, email them to me at jason@aints.net
I can probably provide you some pics of insulation too if it helps.
@Bag, an even better step would be for you to come over and install it for me.
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