It has been said that if you do something you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. While that is partly true, sometimes you just have to pay the bills too.

When we moved to this property 3 years ago, all we had was hopes and dreams and not much else. After years of looking for the right property for the rest of our story, we stumbled upon this hidden gem in the Vermilion River County of Alberta.

It had been quietly uninhabited for a few years. The older folks had passed on and the half section of farmland had sold.

Much like the time capsule homes you see on Instagram or HGTV, this home had not had many updates in its 50 year existence. But that was quite all right with us- it was liveable.

What we really wanted to see was what was underneath all that tin on the barn. Incidentally, we didn’t even know there was a barn at first! The front of it faces away into the fields- no one ever sees it. The backside looked like any other quonset on the prairie.

So the initial impressions were ones of shock, a little bit of wonder and a lot of dreaming up the potential of a walk out barn loft.

It took us two years before we threw open the door, dragged out all the leftover construction materials and started to clean up what is now my antique barn loft shop. It’s really hard to imagine how far we have come in just the past 10 months!

But in spite of dreams, there’s bills to pay. The barn needs a new roof desperately. We need to insulate the two end walls and get some proper windows in. There’s hopes and plans but the reality is that we cannot do it without making some money. And that’s were reality smacks us in the face and we know that with all the pretty things we could do, sometimes you have to just put on work clothes, get out in the real world and make a living. And so it goes– the dreams we dream continue and the working to pay for the dreams will also continue.