Restoring The Old Barn

It looked neat from the back porch. Kinda picturesque. But it really wasn't functional at all. Roughly one hundred and fifty years ago the center section of the barn was an old wooden corn crib. Then at some later date they added on to it. Then even later, the original owners of the current house on the property added on with the metal siding and it seems it then served as run-in shed for livestock.

We really don't have enough of the original farm acreage left for cattle. But it wouldn't be a bad little shack for a few sheep and maybe a goat or two. We also need a place for storage so something with doors to keep the bats and raccoons out would be nice.

So the engineer has been plugging away at making it functional again.


It's an interesting project. Most farms now days just knock down any old structures and throw up the new fancy metal pole barns. It's certainly more cost effective to do it that way. But there's something about this old barn that speaks to us. It's been through several reincarnations already. We would like to give it the respect it deserves. But the budget says it also needs to be within reason. So we're doing what we can in the spirit of the recyclers who came before us and we're even doing it without power tools. Okay, HE is doing it without power tools. I just take the pictures.

If you have sill plates that look like this you have a problem. The south-east corner of the barn had a few issues and was literally disintegrating.

So the engineer fancied a new sill plate and is replacing the old bowed and rotten barn siding that was no longer really attached to it.

Below you can see the new barn siding on the left and the old on the right. Once the new boards cure a little he's going back and adding battens in between. Did you know that's why there is such a thing as a batten, to hide the gaps?

We're saving as much of the old barn siding as we can. I'm sure we'll come up for a use for it someday.

Inside, the old corn cribs are coming down and short walls are going up to make stalls. There will be a subfloor put in over the doorway so we can store hay above the stalls along both sides of the barn.
This small section is ready to be a sick bay. Since we have a sick bay on the back porch for chickens we figured it would just be a matter of time before we needed one for one of the four legged animals. There will be a small door leading out to a separate outdoor pen.


It's a lot slower than putting up a fancy metal pole barn, but I think ours will have more character.