WIIFM Monitor Barn

[barnee]

Finally starting construction on my 28' by 38' Monitor barn that will be used for a variety of needs (demands) by my family.

When I first joined this site in 2011 I thought that I would have the barn built by the end of the year and it would be my haven, but life has a way of delaying your plans. At that time my wife and young kids didn't have any requirements for the barn so it was going to be my space and some storage. Fast forward 6 years and they all now want their own spaces in the barn. Hence the "What's in it for me" title.

The barn will be a typical hobby garage for me with a lift, an art studio for my Wife and a Teen hangout for the kids.

Here's my sketch up model of the barn exterior and how it sits on our 1 acre property. I haven't fully modeled my house yet but wanted to see how it all looked together.


Due to the cost of things around here I had to bid directly to subs and I will be doing most of the unskilled labor work and material purchases. Foundations start in two weeks.

 

[barnee]

I had to clear the area for the new barn and had to remove my shed which housed my 1986 Westy and lawn tools. First I had to construct a makeshift shelter for the tractor and tools:



The shed was 16 by 20 and stored my Westy. Did a lot of renovations to that vehicle using jacks and jack stands. The original shed was twice as large and was constructed from a 1900's era house. It will be nice to have a proper place to store and work on it.



I disassembled the shed to save some wood for use in the new barn. Need to decide how to best use the siding and other materials:



I still have to remove one of my wife's favorite trees, install the sediment controls and grade down the building pad two feet to place 24" of #57 stone to meet the geotechnical engineers requirements since I have bad soils.

Its been quite a journey so far trying to get approvals to build in an expensive, historic and ecologically sensitive area with bad soils. I probably have close to two years and $20k in design fees and permit costs and haven't stuck a shovel in the ground yet.

 

[mwbailey]

Good luck with the project. Looks like you might have a greenhouse and garden in the "demands", also. Be sure to allow for some of your own needs -- although making a place for the teens could fit that bill, as well.

 

[barnee]

Finished demolishing the shed by hand and it tightly fit into a 30 CY dumpster. From there I rented a trencher and installed my 200' of silt fence required by my County:



I rented a track loader and broke up the slab and foundation that the shed was sitting on and placed it into a 20 cy dumpster which I could only fill to about 8 CY which was just enough:


While I had the machine I graded down my building pad roughly 18" to allow for the geotextile fabric and crushed stone to bridge my old fill and unsuitable soil issue. Geotechnical engineer wanted 24" deep but that was based on one boring which was not typical of the area:



Day after I finished the rains came and its rained for a week straight. Foundations are now over a week away. Gave me time to finalize my contracts with the framing, siding and roofing companies and get my materials on order.

Still fighting with the POCO over power for the garage. I either need to increase my house service from 200 amp to 320 amp (which requires a new street transformer and overhead conductor to the house at my cost), or put a new service direct to the garage (only have to put in a conduit). New service is going to be much cheaper.

 

[sawduststeve]

Hi Barnee,

That's goning to be a beautiful looking barn, may be not big enough though with all the WIIFM requests.

Great work so far, looking forward to seeing your progress.

Regards
Steve.

 

[barnee]

Thanks Steve, were pretty excited to get this built.

I've liked the monitor style for a while and designed the barn on sketchup and then gave it to an architect to produce the permit drawings. Final design was only a couple inches different than my design so at least my concept was pretty close.

Original design was a 30' by 40' and had to reduce it to 28' by 38' to a avoid a series of regulatory triggers that would have added $30K and a year onto the permit process. This leaves me with a 26' by 28' garage (single door with lift), a 12' by 20' studio for the wife, a 14' by 28' upstairs room for the teens, and a full bath in case I want to convert the studio and upstairs into an apartment.

Ill post the floorplans soon.

 

[barnee]

Here are the floor plans and sections through the building.

First floor has my garage on the left and my wife's studio/bathroom on the right (called the rec room). There is a patio outside the double slider that connects to the house, so the studio also doubles as a patio support room with a pantry.



The upstairs is a teen hangout. XBOX and comfy seating. I could also turn the studio and upstairs into an apartment/guest house/nanny suite but it only has a pantry.



This is a section through the front of the building. The garage steps down one step from the studio:



This section is toward the back. Note how close the stair head room tolerance is. This is as small as you can make the building and have it still work. I am keeping the space under the stairs open for more room/storage.



First floor has 13' 6" ceilings for the lift in the center, tapering down to 9' at the sides. Second floor has cathedral ceilings (scissor truss) at about 10' at the peak.

A very compact design

 

[Deezler]

wow, great design. Looks like you put a lot of thought into this and are going about it very professionally.

I saw your location under your user name before I even started reading the thread, and my first thought was "wow, someone must be nuts to try a barn build in fairfax", haha. But at least it will probably quintuple your property value or so. Nice that you have the space in the yard, too. I'm afraid for your annual taxes tho! eek.

 

[readhead]

Good looking place but why do you have a post in the middle of the garage? That is not a long span for a steel beam.

 

[barnee]

I did it to save money, but by time you add in the cost of the column and the footer, its likely equal dollars.

Its actually in a great spot to use as a power, comp. air and portable lighting pole and not really in the way of anything. Ill probably put a 30 and 50 amp circuit in it for general purpose use.

 

[sawduststeve]

Evening Barnee.

Your plans look great, I think it's going to be plenty big enough.
It looks well thought out and properly designed, and i'm sure the finished product is going to be fantastic.
Keep us updated.

Regards.
Steve.

 

[barnee]

I saw your location under your user name before I even started reading the thread, and my first thought was "wow, someone must be nuts to try a barn build in fairfax", haha. But at least it will probably quintuple your property value or so. Nice that you have the space in the yard, too. I'm afraid for your annual taxes tho! eek.

If it quadruples my property value I will need to sell immediately since as you state the taxes would be a killer. As far as I can tell I will probably only get about an 80% return on my cost since this thing is expensive to build.

 

[barnee]

Todays the day.

After being delayed by spring rainstorms and foundation contractor backlog the crew is expected to start footers today and have the stem walls complete by the end of the week. After that my plumber needs to rough in the full bath and the slabs get poured next week.

Framing then starts on July 6th which gives me a few days to get the foundation backfilled and graded. I'm hoping for some dry weather in the next couple of weeks.

 

[jimgood]

I love that design. Good luck!

 

[LB-1911]

Todays the day.

Best of luck as you move forward on your project.

 

[1wook]

Looks like a great design!

My initial thought is that I'd line up the side door with your stair way. I'd also make your center post solid enough to mount a jib hoist off of it, here's a reference.

 

[barnee]

Looks like a great design!

My initial thought is that I'd line up the side door with your stair way. I'd also make your center post solid enough to mount a jib hoist off of it, here's a reference.

Cant have the door there since to get the staircase to work I needed to have two steps in the corner where the door would be, so I had to move it down the hall.

Ill check into the jib hoist, thanks

 

[n20junkie]

That pole is going to be in the way. Every shop that has a column or two, it always seems like they are in the way.

Air compressors and the like can be moved it needed, but poles are forever in the way. Just my honest opinion.

 

[barnee]

Successful week. Got the footers and stem walls completed just in time for some light showers over the next couple of days. Crew should be back today to strip the forms and then it will sit for a week to cure prior to backfilling and slab placement.

Calm before the storm:


Footers and Rebar:


Complete Footers:


For the stem walls I did detailed sketchup plans for the block outs, utilities and slab details so that no errors were made. I highly suggest doing this if you a picky about exactly where you want things and more than likely the concrete crew wont speak English very well. Concrete foreman greatly appreciated it.





The benefit of being your own GC is that you can make sure that all the fine details are followed. Even though I have a detailed set of plans there are numerous times where the subcontractor had to interpret what the design intent was and half the time they were incorrect.

 

[barnee]

Stem walls finished and forms stripped. I'm going to take some measurements today to see how square the foundation is and if the block outs are correct.



Moving onto under slab plumbing for the bathroom. The water, sewer and low voltage all enter the back of the house about 25 feet away. Spent most of yesterday digging a trench to the house and uncovering the connection points since the plumber starts tomorrow. Code allows water and sewer in same trench depending on sewer pipe materials (which I meet) but I've heard that they typically don't like this arrangement. To help I plan to put the water line in conduit. If they don't allow this I have a second pipe sleeve further up in the foundation as a backup.



Walls came out nice and smooth. Being in a Historic district I cant use brick face forms. I have a continuous slab bench all around the inside of the stem wall.



My garage side:



My wife's studio and bathroom side:



The inside of the foundation gets geotextile fabric and #57 stone up to bottom of slab, and I have enough dirt left over to backfill the outside of the foundation to leave about 1' to 1.5' of stem wall exposed. Grading and slabs mid next week after plumbing inspection and the walls cure 7 days.

 

[sawduststeve]

Great work Barnee
It often feels that it takes great expense and ages to get out of the ground up to damp course. Hopefully it'll move quickly along now.

Good luck
Steve

 

[sean Buick 76]

Solid foundation for a super cool build!

 

[barnee]

Under slab plumbing and house connection complete. Sewer line sleeve from the garage had to be chiseled out and raised 1" since I just missed having the proper slope to get to my house sewer. Also had to core 2 - 3" holes into my house foundation to run the water line and sump pump line.



Plumbing inspection set for today. I'm going to at least try to get approval to cover the pipes leading to the house and the pipes leading up to the bathroom plumbing so that I can backfill the foundation and prep for the slab. I doubt that he will give me complete approval since the bathroom plumbing is suspended in the air until the under slab gravel is placed. Hopefully the inspector will see that I cant get gravel under the bathroom plumbing without buying the lines to do it.

Due to code here I have to remove a bathroom from my house to be able to have a bathroom in the garage (I'm at my maximum fixture unit count for this property). I have a full bath in my basement that I never use so its not that big of a deal.

 

[barnee]

Plumbing inspection passed which allowed me to prep for the slab. Inspector wanted to stop by again after backfilling to make sure everything was supported. Another benefit of handling the permit and inspections as a homeowner is that the inspectors let you temporarily get by with items that contractors cant.

Backfilled the entire excavation with #57 stone which was required by the Geotech. I had to also place geotextile fabric between any of the stone placed on soil which was the area not excavated for the footers.



After that the slab area was fine graded and the vapor barrier, insulation board and wire mesh was placed.



Took 100 tons of stone to fill the area which was plate compacted every 6". Due to this slab prep I didn't feel that rebar was needed, but not crazy about wire mesh and how it gets stomped down to the bottom of the slab so Ill have to monitor this closely. They did have some #3 bar left over and will build a grid and place it in the car bay which is the only critical area. I have a 5" slab in the garage and a 4" slab in the studio.

Slab pour on Monday.

 

[barnee]

Slab pour still tomorrow but some of the garage decorative items showed up this weekend.

36" cupola and wind sculpture weather vane.

 

[sawduststeve]

36" cupola and wind sculpture weather vane.

Wow, I like that ALOT, the OH is after me to buy or make one, to park on top of our garage, ideally with a clock on one face, the problem being that they are not common here and difficult to source. I'll not be showing her yours.
Its going to look great, keep us posted.

Regards
Steve.

 

[barnee]

We spent a lot of time on this cupola and fortunately there are a lot of barns around here that have them to look at. Trouble is most are rotted out, so we went with one made entirely of PVC so it should be maintenance free. Its just decorative so there are no roof penetrations. its made by "Good Directions".

Also couldn't find a weather vane we like so we went with a wind sculpture since we have others in the garden.

 

[barnee]

Slab pour went well last Monday and is now complete. One of the cement trucks showed up with 3000 psi concrete (spec is 3500) and had to be rejected. I'm glad I checked these since I plan on putting a lift in the garage and this would have been a big mistake. I let them use part of the load in the studio side and the rest they filled the deep footer trenches with.



My trusty dog surveying the slab



I kept the slab watered for the first day and graded and seeded the disturbed area around the garage. It then rained for three days which kept the slab wet and helped get the seeds going. Unfortunately we then got a 2" downpour which completely washed away my seed and crushed my sediment controls.



My weekend plans have now been changed to digging and repairing all of this.

Went with hand troweled relief joints since I wanted them installed at the time of the pour. The garage ended up with a 13' by 14' grid but the studio side I only put one a third of the way down where all the bathroom pipes come out of the slab. I didn't want any joints in the studio.



Framing starts Monday.

 

[barnee]

Materials dropped Monday and framers started yesterday. This is one days worth of work.

Right now they are framed up to the second floor. The pop up shown is the garage bay with almost 14' ceilings for the car lift. They still need to stand the second floor walls up.







Heres the patio side with the double slider and man door:





Good thing I cleaned up my sediment controls. I got a surprise inspection from the county yesterday and while they had a few suggestions I had no violations.



I got lucky with the framers. They are building a 12,000 SF custom home up the street and the framing plan was badly designed so they are on hold. I had three framing crews, two foreman, and they drove their material lift down. They should be fully framed today except for the upper roof since the trusses don't arrive until Friday.

 

[barnee]

Framing Day #2. Didn't have the multiple crews but they got a lot done. Starting to look like a monitor barn.









Only one truck of scrap wood for all this framing:



Truss got moved up to today. Should have the roofs on today or tomorrow at the latest.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Subscribed!! Love monitor barns.

 

[Deezler]

Great progress! Very lucky on the framing crew availability. Where.... did you take all that wood scrap?

 

[barnee]

Great progress! Very lucky on the framing crew availability. Where.... did you take all that wood scrap?

I took it to a transfer station that sends it to a waste to energy incinerator. I kept a few pieces that were long enough for blocking, etc. but 99% was under 6" long and basically useless.

 

[sawduststeve]

Wow, that went up quick, it's gonna be great, it's a lovely shape.


There's a lot of timber used, it's an impressive build. Were the offcuts no good for a wood burner? some free heat.
Your house in the background? Beautiful

Regards
Steve.

 

[barnee]

Wow, that went up quick, it's gonna be great, it's a lovely shape.


There's a lot of timber used, it's an impressive build. Were the offcuts no good for a wood burner? some free heat.
Your house in the background? Beautiful

Regards
Steve.

Hard to think about burning and heat now since todays temp was 96 degrees with oppressive humidity. Maybe if I built this over the winter I could have kept the offcuts for my fire pit but not now.

Thanks for the comment about the house. It was built in 1907 but has been highly modified.

 

[madoc1]

very nice design and i love how you have everything thought out so far. a lot of work went into this as is evident by the progress you are making. good luck with the finish out.

jim

 

[barnee]

very nice design and i love how you have everything thought out so far. a lot of work went into this as is evident by the progress you are making. good luck with the finish out.

jim

Have to give credit to this forum. Due to various delays in getting this built I was able to take advantage of the excellent content and guidance from other members that this board provides.

If I would have built this right away it wouldn't have been half as nice as I think it will come out.

Roofs and sheathing completing today, wall inspection Monday and then house wrap, doors and windows on Tuesday.

 

[barnee]

Framing and Sheathing complete.

Need to pick building color. Probably going with a dark blue:





Patio side with double slider:



Interiors complete.

Garage with 14' ceilings:




Upstairs 14' by 27' kids room:



Studio:



Sheathing inspection set up for Monday, followed by building wrap, doors and windows on Tuesday. My roofer shows up on Wednesday to paper the roof but cant install the standing seam roof and cupola until the following Monday. After the roof goes on the Hardie Board and Batten siding will be installed.

Staircase and the eyebrow roof over the overhead door are sometime next week. Decided to go with an all cedar structure for the eyebrow roof (brackets and beams) and may stain it to add some wood features to the front.

 

[colt zantop]

Love....love...love! Keep us updated!

 

[barnee]

Garage is wrapped and windows installed:









Double slider in the studio:



14' tall 5.5" diameter main column:



The roofer is coming by tomorrow to put tar paper on the roofs and it should be fairly weather tight.

Ordered the overhead door today which is a Hass 10' by 8' carriage house style door with a LF8500 high lift system. Also looked at Amarr but the Hass door was better for less money.

Still need to install the eyebrow roof over the overhead door (waiting on cedar brackets) and the one man door arrives tomorrow. Staircase is being made and should be here next week.

I originally has AZEC trim for the rake and fascia boards, but decided to switch to Boral since I want to paint the barn a dark color.

Hoping to have the exterior complete by the end of next week, with the roofers putting on the standing seam roof the following. I'm also starting to get bids for drywall, insulation and HVAC.