Above 1200 Sq/FT Monitor-style Barndominium

Graham08 · Jul 17, 2023

Now that I'm over a year into this project and have something that resembles the drawings, it's time to start a build thread. Since my last garage build (link in my signature) I've moved south and had a lot of other changes happen. Part of that is building a barndominium that I'll be moving into with my fiancé once it's complete...

We're in the process of constructing a monitor-style barn with an overall footprint of 48' x 48'. A third of it will be apartment space with the remaining space being shop, a loft for my office with laundry and a second bathroom under the loft.

First...the drawings...

These were the result of many hours of head scratching while sitting at my drafting table. Pencil and paper here. My day job is very computer-centric and this was a good way to unplug while I was sorting things out.

And...where we're at right now:

A very long way to go before it's ready to move into, but like the drawings, only bigger!

metalhead140 · Jul 17, 2023

Looking good!

Cdubu52 · Jul 18, 2023

Welcome, and we look forward to your progress.

Graham08 · Jul 18, 2023

This has been a long process, starting with getting a special use permit from zoning to have a second residence on one property. Ultimately it took about 9 months to get a building permit...mostly waiting on approval for the septic system. We're in a huge building boom in my area, and the county is overwhelmed with requests for perc tests.

I took a risk and had the area cleared before having the permit. It was a pretty low penalty if anything was ever said...and it wasn't. Here I'm showing my older son the laser transit:

Batter boards and strings set:

The slab in the photo was initially meant for a 16' x 24' storage building. Plans changed, but I incorporated the existing slab into the foundation of the barndominium.

Once we finally got the go-ahead from the county, excavation started:

I should have sprung for the bigger machine with a 24" bucket to start with. Lesson learned.

Making progress...and trying to make my buddy George proud of my operating skills. I had not done this before, but I had been in the trench cleaning out the loose stuff and running the laser while George operated, so I tried emulating what I had watched for several days. Unfortunately we live 8 hours apart now, so he can't just run over and play operator for me.

I thought this was going to get knocked out in a weekend, but disaster struck. About halfway through the last section of footing, I found a present the loggers left for me. Buried logging debris. I'm guessing there was a low area that needed filled and they had a bunch of limbs, stumps and junk to do it with. Then covered it over with dirt so nobody was the wiser. Ultimately I had about 2 feet worth of stuff to dig through to get to undisturbed soil.

The machine had to go back to the rental yard and I was left thinking about how to move forward...

captain14 · Jul 18, 2023

Do you live in the residence on the property or are you going to subdivide the property after construction is completed

Graham08 · Jul 18, 2023

Knowing I had to get to the bottom of the situation...literally...I was able to get another machine out and figure out how much of a problem I really had. There was no way I could place footings or a concrete slab on top of buried logging debris, so I had to figure out what I was dealing with.

Bigger machine...with 24" bucket:

It's good to have friends!

No real photos of the first weekend of digging. All I can say is the more I dug, the more I found. Once I got the area I had intended for footings and the shop floor clear of buried "treasure" I was standing over it, surveying the situation with beer in hand. My neighbor came over and said, "It's not my money to spend...but what would you think of having a basement?"

I thought that over, ran some numbers, and decided it was a pretty good idea.

I got ahold of a mason and whipped up another drawing for the county:

And then I ended up digging another weekend...or maybe two making a bigger hole in the ground.

Graham08 · Jul 18, 2023

captain14 said:
Do you live in the residence on the property or are you going to subdivide the property after construction is completed

It's sort of a long story that isn't all mine to tell. The short version is my first wife and I are divorced, but still get along really well. We lucked into building a house in a fantastic neighborhood that we want our boys to stay in. So rather than sell, ship our sons back and forth between homes, and have everyone generally worse off, we've decided to build the second residence on our 5.5 acre lot and keep our boys in their home. It hasn't been the easiest process at times, but worth it. Yes, a lawyer was involved and everyone is protected by agreements we've signed. It's not for everyone, but it's working for us.

ovscrider · Jul 18, 2023

nice build.

dma88 · Jul 18, 2023

Your monitor style barn plans reminded me of a garage/shop/guest quarters that we had built several years ago. Here's a couple of pics. It is 44x44 with an 8x44 shed porch off the side with the apartment. Sadly, we sold the property in early 2021 and relocated from outside ATL to AZ. I really, really miss having the storage space and need to get something built out here in AZ for protection from the sun. Unfortunately, the monitor style will not work well with the other buildings on the AZ property.

Best of luck and looking forward to following your progress...

Rc_Guy · Jul 18, 2023

Nice, my brother has the same style. He had it built a couple years after we had ours built.

LXCam · Jul 18, 2023

That’s going to be very nice graham, I’ll be following along.

Boostingaz · Jul 18, 2023

@dma88

That building is gorgeous. I'd build that on my AZ property in a heartbeat! Who gives two shoots if it doesn't match.

hewey · Jul 18, 2023

Stunning build! Nice work.

Graham08 · Jul 19, 2023

@dma88 and @Rc_Guy those are some great looking buildings! Thank you for sharing.

Graham08 · Jul 22, 2023

The plan all along had been to have a crawlspace under the apartment to avoid having massive amounts of fill to account for the slope of my property. After finding all of the junk that had been buried, I made the decision to dig out the entire area that had been planned for crawlspace and raise the foundation two courses of block to make a usable basement space under the apartment. This got me a bit over 6' of height in the basement...not deep enough to fully finish, but over 700 square feet of usable storage for minimal extra cost.

To fully remove all the organic material, I ended up at the bottom of what I had planned for footing depth, which meant I had to form the footings in the basement area:

After getting all the rebar placed, my masonry crew handled pouring the concrete:

Then my golden retriever managed to put her mark on it...

Then masonry started...the grouted cores and rebar every 4' are visible here:

Finished masonry work!

At this point I was extremely relieved to be finally be going up instead of down. It had been a long process of digging and moving dirt to get to solid ground.

Graham08 · Jul 31, 2023

Once the masonry was done, I got to work sealing the outside of the block and applying a membrane to keep the water out of the basement.

I also did perforated PVC around the outside for drainage, which got back filled with gravel to give water a path around the building.

Then began the tedious process of back filling. I was able to use a lot of the dirt that had been removed for the footings, being careful to remove all the buried organic material. A few inches at a time...compacting between each lift.

Some #57's to make up the last foot or so before vapor barrier:

Vapor barrier and wire mesh...the mesh got placed on chairs before the concrete was poured.

Then the wait to find a concrete contractor that would actually show up and do the work...

Graham08 · Apr 3, 2024

Skipping way ahead…finished up the apartment front doors this past weekend. Something I’ve wanted for a very long time has been carriage style doors instead of an overhead door for my shop. I’m a big fan of the Real Carriage Door company, but their stuff is way outside my budget. The only way I would ever be able to afford something like what they do is to build them myself…

I’m a much better welder than woodworker, so I’ve been down the rabbit hole of making carriage doors with steel frames and wood panels. There are tons of details involved but I’m getting it figured out…I did a single door at the back corner of the building, and now this pair to fill a 6’ wide by 7’ high opening. I’m working my way up to the 10’ x 10’ opening for the large doors in the front.

Graham08 · Apr 3, 2024

Working backwards…some photos I took after we finished getting all the windows installed. 45’ boom lift is an awesome platform to shoot some pics with your iPhone!

zmotorsports · Apr 4, 2024

Looking very nice Graham. Glad to see things worked out and happy to see the new building coming along.

I've been silently following along on Instagram and have been impressed with the build. Thanks for posting updates.

Graham08 · Jul 25, 2024

I've been continuing down the door rabbit hole. Got another set built and installed, and working on a pair for my 10' x 10' opening.

Mockup on the previous set before paint. I adjusted the design of the frame to allow shimming the width of the opening to get the correct gap in between the doors.

Pretty complete picture of them installed, minus glass at this point. I got the glass in not long after this was taken.

Zoomed out...

More on the process of building these things in a bit...

Graham08 · Jul 29, 2024

A little about the door build as I'm working through building the set for the 10' x 10' opening...

First problem is my welding table is only 4' x 4'...so it's a little tough to build a 5' wide object on it. I had rescued a couple of pieces of 1" plate from the scrap at work a few years ago and decide to repurpose them as table extensions. The tricky part is providing a way to level them to the existing table surface so things come out flat.

First thing was to come up with some arms to support the plates off the existing table frame using materials left over from other projects. These are 1-1/2" x 3" rectangular tube, with the pads on the top made from 1" x 1-1/2" bar. They're tapped 1/2"-13 in two places...one for a jack bolt to set the height, and a second for a hold down bolt to keep the plates in place:

I ended up making a drill fixture with hardened bushings so the holes in the frame lined up with the mounting plates...trying to improve my success rate with a hand-held drill going through 1/4" wall tube:

Eventually I'll probably do some more locations on the frame to allow moving my extension plates around to suit other projects, but I was trying to keep moving on the door build.

Extension plates in place...they're 15" x 15". I drilled them with 1/2"-13 holes on a 2" grid for future use with other tooling, there were 8 holes drilled and tapped in them when I got them...not an issue considering the price!

The main table surface has 1/2"-13 holes on a 4" grid...I think I'll eventually add holes to get to a 2" grid. I've looked at 5/8" or 3/4" through holes to work with Siegmund or Fireball tooling, but the plate is an odd thickness (Blanchard ground 1-1/4") so it doesn't work with the expanding bolts they use to hold things down.

I also made some extensions for one of my heavy-duty horses that I built for another project years ago:

The plates are 1/2" x 8" so I have enough room to support 2" x 6" tube with room around it to land the diagonal tube and other stuff. The horses themselves have 3" channel tops with 1-1/2" square legs and leveling feet. I had enough adjustment to drop it down an extra 1/2" to level the extension plates to the top of my table.

More to come later...

zmotorsports · Jul 29, 2024

Awesome job expanding the capabilities of the table Graham. The doors sure turned out nice as well.

Graham08 · Jul 30, 2024

Moving along a little bit. The hardest part of building these doors with steel tube is having to add plates to the relatively thin wall tube for hinges and other pieces of hardware. In order to make things sit flush with the outside of the tube, I wind up pocketing the tubes and plug welding plates to the inside of the tube wall.

If I had it all figured out from the beginning, I would have drawn stuff up and found a shop with a tube laser to do this. Since I was learning as I went, I cut the pockets on my mill, which can be a bit of an adventure to work with 10' long material on a mill with a 28" table.

I got a set of tall jaws for my vise to keep chatter under control a little better. My first attempt with 0.120" wall tube was fine, but dropping to 0.083" to get weight down a bit made them sing while cutting the hinge pockets.

A day's work on the mill:

I don't have pics of welding the hinge plates in...it's pretty straightforward to plug weld them in place. Not so straightforward is the flame straightening that happens after welding to make sure the hinges will all line up with the frame later.

Next was to get them squared up and check for flat by running strings across the diagonals.

For all of my expensive tools, sometimes a roll of mason's string is the best thing available.

After tacking the perimeter pieces, the next step was to fit the diagonal 1" x 3" tube:

The pair of basic 5' x 10' frames welded up:

More to come later...

driftpin · Jul 30, 2024

Congratulations on your willingness to share with us your work. It's coming along very well. I'm envious of your space. The steel fabrication is machine-intensive, besides having the room.

I didn't notice, did you have knock-outs at the bottom of the block walls' cells to show that your grout had penetrated?

Please inform me about the left-side 6' X 7' (I think) entry, how is that going to be finished? Is it getting a raised platform and stairs?

Graham08 · Jul 30, 2024

Yes, that’s the plan for the apartment front entry…small porch and stairs. Initially I had drawn it as masonry, but I’m leaning toward deck framing on piers to simplify the foundation. I’m investigating a steel deck framing system…looks super clean.

As far as knockouts in the masonry, I don’t think my contractor did that. I didn’t realize it was a good idea and the inspector never said anything.

zmotorsports · Jul 31, 2024

Thanks for showing the detail on the doors Graham. Very impressive workmanship.

Graham08 · Jul 31, 2024

zmotorsports said:
Thanks for showing the detail on the doors Graham. Very impressive workmanship.

Thanks, Mike! I finally got it figured out enough that I'm remembering to take pictures as I go. I totally forgot to document the process on the first couple sets.

Graham08 · Aug 23, 2024

A few more details as these things come together...

I'm making the stops/mullions for the glass out of 3/4" angle. The glass ends up being one pane of 1/4" laminated behind the mullions. I do the outer stop out of one piece of angle, notched and bent on my Hossfeld. I notch the ends of the mullions about 1/8" so they sit flush with the outer stop, which puts them about 1/32" away from the glass after it's installed with foam tape...a nice little gap to caulk.

I leave a gap at the bottom so any condensation can run out. The frame gets TIG brazed in place with silicon bronze.

Something I've picked up that is super handy is a set of Fireball Tool's magnetic setup blocks. The set has 4 pieces each of varying thickness from 1/32" to 2"...way better than finding random pieces of stuff to come up with shims of the right thickness.

The stops for the wood panel are made from 1/2" angle, also TIG brazed in place.

The brazing is about 1" every 12" or so. I seam seal the rest of the seam after they're in primer.

The wood panel gets retained from the back with clips that attach with #10-32 screws. I finally got smart and made a drill jig to expedite drilling them accurately.

I've been using flush bolts on the left door of each set, but with the 10' height of these, I can't reach a normal flush bolt from the floor. I got a different bolt from McMaster with a chain, but I wound up making a longer rod from stainless to reach it.

First attempt at forging something to make an eye on the end:

Then bent a loop on the end and an offset with the Hossfeld to make a handle:

Also got these super cool doorstops from McMaster to hold them open:

SilverJimmy · Aug 24, 2024

Just wondering why TIG Brazing? Expansion? Crack resistance? Looking very good, wish I had the discipline to learn this level of skill.

Graham08 · Aug 24, 2024

SilverJimmy said:
Just wondering why TIG Brazing? Expansion? Crack resistance? Looking very good, wish I had the discipline to learn this level of skill.

Thanks! The TIG brazing is to minimize the heat input to keep things as straight as possible. That’s probably the most difficult thing with doing these in steel…controlling distortion so the hinges line up and the gaps are all consistent.

It’s amazing how far a small TIG weld can bend a length of tubing. Silicon bronze cuts the amperage required roughly in half vs. welding with steel rod.

zmotorsports · Aug 26, 2024

Amazing work Graham.

I have that exact same set of Fireball magnetic blocks. I don't use them as often as I thought I would, but they sure are handy and nice to grab when needed.

Mr onetwo · Dec 12, 2024

Any more progress on the exterior?

zanyad · Mar 27, 2025

Graham, do you have any updates you can share?

Graham08 · Mar 27, 2025

zanyad said:
Graham, do you have any updates you can share?

Yes, some. I feel like things are moving at a snail's pace since I started a new job in December, which has been awesome, but also very demanding on my time and energy. I'll try to get this thread updated with photos. The big front doors being built in the posts above are complete and installed. I also was able to get the main water line installed as well as the electric meter base and panel.

zanyad · Mar 28, 2025

Graham08 said:
I'll try to get this thread updated with photos.

Excellent! Looking forward to seeing the doors in!

Graham08 · Mar 30, 2025

Catching this thread up a bit. After getting the big doors and frames painted, I got them installed. I’ve been putting the steel parts in first, then adding panels and glass to make them easier to handle.

Panel construction. These are just 1x8 pine with the edges routed at 45 degrees and glued/biscuited together. No, you can’t own enough clamps.

Panels installed!

I did have something strange happen. Apparently the wood I got was extremely dry because they swelled appropriately 1/2” in width after they were put in…enough to push the steel frame out and close up the clearance between the doors. I had to carefully pull them out, trim, repaint the edges and reinstall.

Limit chains courtesy of McMaster-Carr.