Barn Hay Fever

[Kevin54]

That would make a super getaway place, or a great space to hold a hell of a party.

What do you plan on doing as far as the peeling paint downstairs? Scrape it and repaint it, cover it up? There was a barn not too farm from us that had a craft shop in it and the woman told me that her husband had most of the wood sandblasted. It looked great inside, but I would imagine that could be pretty costly.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Hopefully you can save the grainery (corn crib) I think those have so much character. I always thought the upper section where the elevator is would be a great sitting spot, just being able to look out over the farmland.

How many squares were there in the roof ?

 

[HAY YOU]

The barn & milk house had a total of 42 squares.

Next on our agenda was to replace the floor section inside the big door. As can be seen some busted floor joist & old wooden ladder was our only access to hay mound floor. More sill plate to be replaced along with the corner post.

 

[HAY YOU]

Here's a pic from the cattle shed going into the barn & our new stair way to the hay mound. This section was completely opened to start with.

Pic going up to the hay mound. It's alot easier for a old man like me to walk up stairs then climb a ladder.

 

[Stuart in MN]

That's a great looking barn. It's interesting to see differences in design from one part of the country to another - for instance, your corn crib with that cupola on top would be very unusual in Minnesota. I assume the small one story structure on the side is the milkroom?

 

[HAY YOU]

Stuart in MN
Yes that is the milk house, I do travel and enjoy looking at all the different barn styles in many different states.

In this section of the barn it will be for an office 13' x 34' the large roll door we be removed , the opening will be blocked up 4 courses high & framed in with 3 windows installed, door way frame is for future expansion if needed. Now with the stairs being in (hand rails are only temporary) the old wooden ladder finally made the journey to the fire pit. Since we now have safe access upstairs we have been resuming our annual Halloween parties for our sons & their friends.

 

[HAY YOU]

Before we could install the front door we had to clean up this headache.

Poured a new threshold. Removed 2 layers of old sidewalk, & repaired milk house trusses.

 

[HAY YOU]

Well we're finally getting to the before & after pics. Thanks for your patience. Although we're not done the pics are caught up to our progress.

 

[HAY YOU]

Back side. Well now it's back to work for us. And now I can go back to checking out all the other garage build threads.

 

[JimVonBaden]

Very impressive work!

Jim

 

[Neighbor]

Congrats Dave. Job well done. I also have an old barn waiting to remodel. I did rework an old corn crib.

You mention several feet of hay left in the barn. was it in bales or put up loose? How did you get the hay out?

I have a 5 feet of hay 20 feet deep to remove that was put up loose.

 

[Chaz]

Thats an amazing amount of work. Nothing but admiration from me! We wanted to live in a barn, but after looking at the amount of work it would take to rehab one we chickened out and built a new barn with a tip of the hat to earlier times.

Your barn is freaking amazing! The sheer amount of work you performed dumbfounds me.

 

[HAY YOU]

Congrats Dave. Job well done. I also have an old barn waiting to remodel. I did rework an old corn crib.

You mention several feet of hay left in the barn. was it in bales or put up loose? How did you get the hay out?

I have a 5 feet of hay 20 feet deep to remove that was put up loose.

They were bales at one time but fell apart & compacted into a 3 ft. floor of hay. We loosen it with pitch forks. There were boards missing on the siding faces the cattle shed so we got snow shovels & just pushed it to the cattle shed, one pic shows a pile of hay in cattle shed. After that we spread it out in the field. I'd like to see pics of your corn crib, I'm always looking for ideas.
Dave

 

[mdkingsley]

Dave what a great barn and admiration for you restoring it. Not many like that in the Southeast since the cows could stay out all year and a stantion tie stall barn wasn't needed. There was one old barn simular to that close to me but deterioration led to it collapse so now it is gone. I have a great appreciation for old barns since I grew up on a farm and yours is great!
Mitchell

 

[jeffmoss26]

What an awesome space you have there! great work!

 

[Scotty72SS]

That is one awesome looking barn, I think its bigger than my entire lot here in the burbs... I cant wait to get out of here. Keep taking pictures!
ds

 

[colt zantop]

Man.....you are living MY dream. I want to restore an old barn some day.....and I would love to live in one!

AWESOME WORK SO FAR!!! keep those updates coming...

 

[Kevin54]

Back side. Well now it's back to work for us. And now I can go back to checking out all the other garage build threads.

What a fantastic transformation. I absolutely dig it!!!

I'm really glad to see people today restoring and upgrading the old barns. There's just something about an old barn and the atmosphere of one that todays barns cannot capture. And that's not counting the times with a girlfriend and a hay mow.

 

[HAY YOU]

Thats an amazing amount of work. Nothing but admiration from me! We wanted to live in a barn, but after looking at the amount of work it would take to rehab one we chickened out and built a new barn with a tip of the hat to earlier times.

Your barn is freaking amazing! The sheer amount of work you performed dumbfounds me.

Thanks for all the encouragement guys.

Chaz
Your Barn is Magnificent, if I look at yours too long I'll want to go burn my down & start over.

 

[ODIS]

Great project and clearly shows that you have no fear in tackling any project with pride.

Looking forward to seeing your other progress pictures and how you decide to finish off the interior.

Wonderful thread.

Ody.

 

[Jay_mc1]

I can't wait to see the finished product, keep up the great work!

 

[CNGsaves]

Great effort to save historic barn. Just realizing what little tools and equipment the men who originally built this barn had, is inspiring to think HOW they raised those massive side walls, not to mention the roof!!

Curious whether there was any cost effective way to save the vertical barn boards for siding? Cost surely was an issue but I love the look of vertical siding along with detail of the routered splice board.

What are plans for large end of barn? Considering a large roll-up door so you could get big vehicles into the barn?

Finally, corrugated steel roof of that lower section can be sanded and repainted. I did that for a barn back when I was in high school, but it was the upper section of a medium-sized barn and yeah it's pretty scary being on roof 40 ft off the ground! At least yours is the lower section so no problem.

Keep the pics a coming. Great work!

P.S. Do whatever is necessary to SAVE that cool corn crib way up there in air . . . even if that building has to wait for Phase II of rebuild.

 

[NUTTSGT]

The saving of your barn is coming along nicely, great job and pictures.

 

[Tarnished]

Hay You, Just found your thread. What a great barn. You have done some amazing work. Realy looks good. Any further progress?
You should post your progress on the "Just Barns" forum. Everyone there would love to see what your doing.
Could you show us some pics of the grain barn. Would like to see how that worked. Do you know how many head were milked each day?
Keep up the good work, and let us see some more.
John

 

[ishiboo]

Definitely an awesome project, I missed it the first time. When I bought my property, they had to clear out hay used for chicken bedding from the 3 upstairs floors of my barn... on the top floor it was up to 3' thick. Took 2 weeks with a bunch of laborers.

That barn is nothing like I've ever seen for being 100 years old. My barn is only about 90-100 years old and is a conventional post barn as most are, I didn't think those dimensional roof trusses/construction came about that long ago. (I'm lucky as my barn also is straight as an arrow structurally, though the floors inside sag from placing the post for the next floor not above the post supporting the lower floor!)

We definitely need some updates on this project!

 

[LShee778]

I'm loving this. I'm in for more updates

 

[Lippyp]

Wow, amazing building. The peeling paint is likely to be whitewash which should come off with a good hot pressure washer. My much more humble old cowshed is whitewashed and thats a job I have for the summer.

 

[NASMAN]

Agree with all the posts from today, need an update. Both here and on the Just Barns Forum.
Great thread.

 

[Rigpig]

I'll just add to what everyone else said... WOW, great barn, amazing transformation and i like the addtional windows on the upper floor.
Keep the pics coming.
Cheers!

 

[PERFORMANCE-RED]

That looks great!

I just repainted my barn, did the singles about 3 years ago. I hate seeing old barns just fall. They have so much space potential.

 

[STINEY]

I reread everything and didn't see what the new siding is made of? Tongue-n-groove or some sheeting material? Its hard to tell in the pictures, it looks so crisp and fresh!

Having a few barns that we are slowly rehabbing, I congratulate you on the hard work already accomplished. Its truly a labor of love, the results are good for the soul.

My herd.

 

[HAY YOU]

Stiney I like your homestead. The siding is 4x8 sheets of G-P smart siding, the dividing boards are 1”x6” routed at bottom to overlap siding & beveled at top to shed water, everything is caulked. Folks have asked what the building to the right of the barn is. It’s the corn crib & here are some pics.

Inside views; corn storage on left, drive way down the middle, storage on right. Ladder goes up to bins.

 

[hemifalcon]

man.... My next house will have a barn... a barn that is "functional'. Great job on yours!

 

[Graham08]

Good on you for saving this barn. Too many of these are falling down...I can think of at least three that I drive by on the way to my parents house that have fallen down in the last couple years.

Great work!

 

[druids62]

I must say. This renovation is absolutely awesome!! Like my own, these new maintainence free steel structures are nice but they lack the character that your barn has. I applaude your and your wifes ambition and skills! Please keep the photos coming as I am somewhat envious. Cheers.

 

[HAY YOU]

Thanks Guys
This year the Barn will be 100 yrs old we’ll be making the final push to finish the outside. Here’s a few more details on the corn crib. After the corn dried it was shucked & sent up the bucket conveyor to the Hopper with directional shoot to distribute the corn in the storage rooms. When corn prices went up the farmer would pull his grain truck in, slide the hatch open & gravity fill his truck.

 

[JPorkins]

AWESOME! I have to shut my jaw. Don't know how I haven't seen this thread before.

 

[BJ70]

Thanks Guys
This year the Barn will be 100 yrs old we’ll be making the final push to finish the outside. Here’s a few more details on the corn crib. After the corn dried it was shucked & sent up the bucket conveyor to the Hopper with directional shoot to distribute the corn in the storage rooms. When corn prices went up the farmer would pull his grain truck in, slide the hatch open & gravity fill his truck.

Thanks for the posts and I love your work. I grew up on a farm in north central Illinois and we have lost too many barns like this.

Regarding the corn crib, the upper bins that you describe would usually hold oats (lighter grains). The side bins with slated siding is where the corn on the cob would be stored in the fall. The air flow through the gaps in the siding and the voids between the ears of corn would allow the corn to slowly dry. Months later (frequently in the late winter/early spring and timed to pay bills associated with spring planting), the bins would be opened along the base. The ears of corn would be racked out into small conveyors positioned on the ground and the ears would be fed to a portable corn sheller. The corn sheller was usually mounted on a truck and was an outside custom service that the farmer hired. Pulling all the corn out of the crib was work intensive. As the corn dried through the winter, it settled and it tended to jam together so it just did not flow out of the crib. Also, the floor of the crib was flat so there was a good deal of raking and shoveling of the ears when the level was down to the bottom few feet.

As corn was shelled off the ears, there were two feeds out of the sheller. One fed corn to waiting trucks that transported the corn to the elevator for sale (or storage because dry corn was cheaper to store at the elevator since there were no drying fees). The other fed corn cobs to another truck. There used to be a market for corn cobs so this second truck would haul the cobs away for sale. It was my understanding that one use for the cobs was the perfume and makeup industry, but that is just what I was told. I never researched the details.

Our corn crib did not have the built in elevator like yours does. However, I did get to see a few in operation at wealthier farms. The elevator was designed for rear dump wagons. The wagons would bring the grain [corn on the cob in the fall from the corn picker or small grain (oats, wheat, barley, ...) from the combine in the summer] from the fields. The wagon would be pulled through the corn crib driveway to the point where the hopper could be lowered to the floor at the rear of the wagon. The rear door of the wagon would be opened to allow the grain to drop into the hopper and in turn feed the elevator. [A side detail on the wagon, the rear door slid up and down so the rate that the grain came out could be controlled so the hopper was not over loaded.] The wagons were flat bottomed so they had to be tilted to get all the grain out. Late model wagons had hydraulic hoists (like a current dump truck) to lift the front of the wagon so gravity would push the grain to the rear. Many corn cribs with elevators built before hydraulics on tractors were common would have a wagon lift in the corn crib drive way. The ones I saw could be described as an A-frame hoist positioned so it would be centered on the wagon's front axle. The hoist would lift a plate on the floor which the front wagon wheels were parked on. This would allow the hoist to pick up the front of the wagon and the grain would flow out.

Sorry to ramble. This may have been obvious to you before, but it was an opportunity to think about those days again.

In my case, I got to help shelling a fair number of cribs. For extra income, my dad would work for a custom sheller through the winters. The customer sheller had the specialized equipment to quickly shell all the corn from a corn crib in a few hours and haul the grain to town as a paid service to farmer. My dad would drive one of the trucks hauling the grain. Frequently, the remaining farmers in the 1970's still using corn cribs were older so they needed help with the labor to get the corn out the crib and feed the shelling equipment. This is where I came in. If the farmer identified the need for help, I would be brought along to spend the morning with a grain shovel in my hands feeding the equipment. It was good work for a kid because it was hard and paid premium wages ($2/hr as I recall, and occasionally more when the farmer liked how hard you worked; baling hay in the summer was another big opportunity).

Finally, good work and best wishes in restoring these building. They are a vanishing treasure.

 

[BD1]

Awesome project. Are you keeping track of expenses ?? Maybe check with historical society for a grant or donation towards the preservation and restoration of it. You gotta claim a farm business for some kind of tax break.

 

[Modifieddriver]

This barn restoration is IMPRESSIVE.

I grew up in the country, but not on a farm. Highlights from those times is when I'd go visit school mates that lived on a farm. Always cool stuff to do. This was in upstate NY and they had BIG barns, but as tall as yours.

It's a shame to see the older barn roofs cave in and building collapse. All I can imagine is the hard working folks that built those barns and ran the farms. Where are they now?