Barn deconstruction and reconstrucction

[Ron]

How I spent the 4th of July. On one of my bowhunting leases, The farmer’s Barn collapsed under last year's heavy snows. The barn is 125 years old and built from virgin timber harvested on that land. The goal for the weekend is to take down the remaining roof and build short walls for trusses that should be here in about a week. The new roof will be a steel roof. Here is what it looked like on this morning. Day one. The far side roof is what came down last winter.





Here is a view of the far side that has since been cleaned up of all the debris last winter.



There was just no way to delicately take down the barn to reclaim all those old beams except climbing up with a sawzall and removing the decking I don’t really mind safe heights. This was anything but.



We moved right along tearing away the decking and hauling it out so more could come down. (thank God for a dump wagon.)







There were a lot of scary heights and moments up high with a running chainsaw cutting main support beams and hoping to not have to dive off. We were gentile and took it down beam by beam. No injuries and no damage to the existing barn or beams.




Some of the boards are 2 feet wide. The main beams are 32 feet long and in good shape but heavy as hell. I would have love to seen this barn being built in 1889 with no nails in the entire construction of the frame.

Some more tear down to do and then reconstruction with a steel roof. The plan is to build short walls and then put up trusses with a steel roof that I think will look like when finished.



Day two was a bit easier. A little more deconstruction and then we got into construction. Today I had some good helpers. Here they are before we set the first new (repurposed) beam to support the trusses. You can see the beam in front of them, laying on my hammer. That beam section is 8 inches by 8 inches and 168 inches long and about all two men could do to lift and place it. How the original builders raised 32 foot long beams impresses me.



I told them after the beam was set to sign it so in a 125 years the next crew would know they were her.



One new beam set and another to go.



After we set the 2nd new beam I as down to one helper.



With all the beams set and existing beams reinforced we turned out attention to an unsupported wall. It was a windy day today and several gusts looked like they were about to push the wall in so we stopped to build in a temporary reinforcement. After that, the wind didn’t matter. We even had the local Holstein building inspector checking our work



Tomorrow I will make the final preparations for the trusses which should be delivered by next weekend.

[Ron]

Weekend #2 working on the reconstruction of the collapsed barn.

The Trusses have arrived.



I got the first one up myself since it couldn’t flop over with a wall to support it. Each truss weighs 256 pounds.



The second one took me much longer. I nailed on a couple long braces and worked slow. I prenail the purlin hangers so I drop them in and nail them in place.



Not bad for 5 hours alone. Saturday I will have helpers.

Things go a lot faster with helpers.



I had to extend the roof out to account for the barn beam







Local building inspectors were on hand.



The front side is ready for steel.



Which arrived right on schedule.



The farmer bought used steel so we will have to caulk all the old nail holes but at less than half the price of new steel it fit his budget. Its already cut to the correct length and the guy threw in an extra sheet.



One side up and tacked in a half hour.







While another helper nails all the steel in place I can fill in the corner wall so we can raise the steel on the back side.

Before



After



That beam between the hip roof and the new roof poses a challenge to fill it in.



All the steel is up.



Then all is left is to deal with the beam area and to get enough ridge cap.









Then the other local inspector showed up.



In two weeks I head back for more reconstruction..

[Ron]

With phase one complete it was time to start working on the hay barn. The farmer had already begun putting up hay under the new steel roof.



It was originally thought we could shorten the outer wall of the old barn, cut some trees on the farm to make the rafters and build the hay barn but after careful examination it was clear the foundation was just too far gone. Also some of the beams were too rotten to build upon. That meant we had to tear down the existing structure. The plan is to reuse as much as we can (including the outer barn boards.)









I made a video of the walls coming down.







Once the concrete tubes are poured it will be barn building time. In the meantime the new construction is getting filled with hay.