In With the New

I haven't updated about Sonny's Sanctuary for a long time, so this post is going to cover a week or two worths of work. (If you need a refresher of what his place looked like in the beginning, you can go here.)

So after chopping up all the concrete, we had to remove it from his stall. We piled most of it out front, but had to have a Bobcat come get it to put it in a dump truck. There was also a HUGE solid piece that we just had the Bobcat take out instead of trying to break it up.

Outside wall. 

Standing in the door to the outside, you can see the
door from his tall to the inside (it's on an angle).

The next piece of the puzzle was to start filling it (hence in with the new). From where we took that big chunk out, there was a giant hole, almost 2 feet deep. We filled it with a sand/gravel mix. We actually over filled it and had to take some out.

Next in line was to start putting sandings where his stall mats are going to go. The sandings will help keep the ground under the mats solid, but still allow draining of urine. We decided to keep the first  8' of the stall for mats, then the back 5' for pea gravel. Therefore we just filled basically the front half.

That area will be filled with pea gravel. 

Just for reference, here is an rough view of his new home.

The black outline with Sonny's head in it will be his 15x16 stall. The white lines whee his door will open. The purple lines will be the fence. For a size reference, you can see the driveway at the bottome and the road off to the right.

In between filling and leveling, we started killing weeds around the edges of the barn. Surprisingly, that has made it look better already (not so trashy!).

Dead weeds. (and future pedestals!) 

Here are some 'before' photos of the area around his barn.

The largest part of the fenced in area. 

Now standing in the area, looking towards the road. 

His door :)

Stay turned, there should be more updates after Saturday!