Beau Jackson

Problem:  It’s winter in Missouri, I have two horses, and they have no shelter from wind, rain, or snow.

Opportunity:  I have a car port.  I park my truck in it.  My truck is 20 years old, and sheltering it from the elements is a bit moot at this point.

Solution:  Transform car port into a horse shelter.

Ok, so I really did want to keep the car port at first, and mostly I didn’t want to move the silly thing.  Our early plans on how to make a horse shelter out of it were less elaborate as well.  They consisted mostly of moving the car port to the pasture and making some temporary walls out of tarps.  This would have worked, but it would have looked like crap.  Then the little lightbulb went off over Allena’s head…”Let’s cut it in half!”  Harebrained?  Maybe.  But it’s working out great.

Here’s me at the beginning of the project.  It’s a lame picture of me - I was moving when the picture was taken, but it’ll let you see what I started with.

I started at about eleven a.m.  By 1:00 p.m., progress had been made.  The carport was staked to the ground and I’d gotten the six pieces of 3-foot long re-bar pulled up.  Also, the upright posts (the five on each side) were all detached from the horizontal base support.  I’d also started taking some of the roofing off.  The cat decided to join me for lunch.

By about 3:00 p.m., the car port was completely disassembled and the cutting was about to begin.

Cutting the trusses apart was slow going.  I tried a hack saw, but that was not working well.  The trusses are steel square tubes, and they’re probably about 1/16th of an inch thick or so.  I switched to the grinder.  This worked a lot better but it was still slow going.  Ultimately, I ended up breaking a chip off of my grind wheel.  Ironically, it cut a lot faster after that, but I was a tad concerned about it coming apart altogether and sending bits of grinder wheel up into my face.  I wear safety goggles, but the rest of my face is unprotected, and the grind wheel get’s really really HOT!

After the cutting was done, I started moving the trusses into the pasture.  The horses were curious, and expressed a bit of skepticism.

After the trusses were moved, it was assembly time.  I ended up taking one of the base pieces that the uprights attach to and bolting it to what was the peak of the car port.

By the time it was dark, the framing was done.  Unfortunately, that’s the last picture we took for the day.  We didn’t thing to take a shot of the tractor holding the framework up with it’s front end loader while we were attaching the posts to the peak.  I’ll start the next photo essay with a shot of the completed framework.

This was a lot of work, but it’s a great idea from an economic perspective.  Even if we had to buy the car port (which we didn’t), car ports cost about $600, and run in shelters for horses cost about $1,500.  Stay tuned for the completion of the project.  Probably won’t happen until next weekend.  It’s just about dark out by the time I get home in the evenings.