Blue Chips
Well-known member
Hi everyone,
This forum looks like a good place to bounce a few garage/barn ideas back and forth and take advantage of your collective experience.
We live in midcoast Maine, where we are in the process of restoring a ca. 1797 center-chimney cape home. The house still retains many of its original features, but unfortunately the original barn was torn down many years before we bought the house.
After we complete the house restoration work, we plan to build a new barn similar in style to the original, but separate from the house instead of being attached like the original. The new 'barn' will function primarily as a garage and workshop, but would look like an antique barn from the outside, with a steeply pitched roof, divided-lite windows, sliding barn doors, etc. We're planning it as a post-and-beam structure, and hopefully our budget will allow timberframe-type joinery, with pegged mortise-and-tenon joints and other period-correct joint types.
The envisioned footprint size would be about 24 X 48 feet. It would have a high ceiling and a storage loft area. The planned site has a bit of slope to it, which should be enough to add a loading dock and another door at the back of the barn.
We'd like to add a lean-to style equipment shed on one side of the barn, since we have about 46 acres, including 20 acres of hayfields, and a small 'stable' of farm-related equipment, such as a tractor, loader/backhoe, and a bunch of implements and miscellaneous equipment.
We're still debating as to many of the barn construction details, particularly the outside walls. I'd like to insulate the walls and ceiling, to allow the barn to be heated, and we've been going back and forth as to the relative merits of using SIPs (structural insulated panels) versus more traditional construction methods. We also have not yet decided as to the type of siding, but we're leaning towards wood shingles, since it would be historically appropriate and cheaper than the equally appropriate clapboard siding, as used on our house.
If there's still enough left in the barn budget, I'd like to install a vehicle lift with a large enough capacity to handle our loader/backhoe, which weighs roughly 13,000 pounds. It would require some generous ceiling height over the lift area. The rest of the ceiling (the floor of the loft level) could be lower.
I'm also planning to devote half of one bay to a shop area to accommodate my welding and machine-shop stuff, plus some woodworking equipment. I'm also considering creating a separate welding area, but I haven't given that much thought yet.
Anyway, as you can see, the project should probably generate quite a few new threads in the forum as we get closer to our anticipated start date, which is probably still over a year away.
I'm looking forward to a productive relationship with all of you.
Al (Blue Chips) from Alna, ME
This forum looks like a good place to bounce a few garage/barn ideas back and forth and take advantage of your collective experience.
We live in midcoast Maine, where we are in the process of restoring a ca. 1797 center-chimney cape home. The house still retains many of its original features, but unfortunately the original barn was torn down many years before we bought the house.
After we complete the house restoration work, we plan to build a new barn similar in style to the original, but separate from the house instead of being attached like the original. The new 'barn' will function primarily as a garage and workshop, but would look like an antique barn from the outside, with a steeply pitched roof, divided-lite windows, sliding barn doors, etc. We're planning it as a post-and-beam structure, and hopefully our budget will allow timberframe-type joinery, with pegged mortise-and-tenon joints and other period-correct joint types.
The envisioned footprint size would be about 24 X 48 feet. It would have a high ceiling and a storage loft area. The planned site has a bit of slope to it, which should be enough to add a loading dock and another door at the back of the barn.
We'd like to add a lean-to style equipment shed on one side of the barn, since we have about 46 acres, including 20 acres of hayfields, and a small 'stable' of farm-related equipment, such as a tractor, loader/backhoe, and a bunch of implements and miscellaneous equipment.
We're still debating as to many of the barn construction details, particularly the outside walls. I'd like to insulate the walls and ceiling, to allow the barn to be heated, and we've been going back and forth as to the relative merits of using SIPs (structural insulated panels) versus more traditional construction methods. We also have not yet decided as to the type of siding, but we're leaning towards wood shingles, since it would be historically appropriate and cheaper than the equally appropriate clapboard siding, as used on our house.
If there's still enough left in the barn budget, I'd like to install a vehicle lift with a large enough capacity to handle our loader/backhoe, which weighs roughly 13,000 pounds. It would require some generous ceiling height over the lift area. The rest of the ceiling (the floor of the loft level) could be lower.
I'm also planning to devote half of one bay to a shop area to accommodate my welding and machine-shop stuff, plus some woodworking equipment. I'm also considering creating a separate welding area, but I haven't given that much thought yet.
Anyway, as you can see, the project should probably generate quite a few new threads in the forum as we get closer to our anticipated start date, which is probably still over a year away.
I'm looking forward to a productive relationship with all of you.
Al (Blue Chips) from Alna, ME
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