Barn Renovation

The Vision:

The 83 acres in northern Illinois were acquired in different parcels in 1989, 1990 and 1991.  There was never any intention then to live on the property, much less renovate the existing barn.  It wasn't until spending many weekends over a period of several years that the idea of converting the barn to our home came to mind.  When I first suggested the idea to Sally, she said something like "That's about the craziest idea you've ever had!"  After one of Sally's friends made a similar remark about restoring the barn, She thought, well, maybe it's not so crazy.   Naturally, I conceded that, if SHE wanted to make the barn into our home, it would be OK by me.  So the work began...

Lesson 1 - Always, always let your wife, mother, mother-in-law, daughter, or daughter-in-law (though not necessarily your sister) make the decision.

Initial Project Appraisal:

A close look around the barn was quite revealing. There were "wings" on both the East and West sides of the main structure; these were for cattle shade and for putting some machinery under roof. In front of the barn was a 40 foot house trailer that appeared to be rooted in place and was nearly blocking entry. Under the wing to the west were several round bales of hay. The roof on the east wing was nearly touching the ground on the SE corner; several vertical posts on it’s outer wall were broken or missing. The lower 4 feet of the battens and boards on the north side had rotted and been replaced with 4X8 plywood to keep the drafts down inside the barn. There were hardly any windows panes in place. In the mow were many long (and short) pieces of lumber. In addition, about ¼ of the mow was filled with straw almost to the roof. Other obstacles included several vehicles strewn around the barnyard, usually up on blocks—I think there were six total non-working cars/trucks/jeeps. Inside the first floor, there were six or eight sheep pens built into the cattle stantions. Across from them were four horse stalls with manger; two of the stalls had built-up wooden floors. The haymow ladder was decrepit but you could still climb up into the mow if you were inspired.

Those are some of the scenes that come to mind when I try to remember just how uninviting it was and why Sally really questioned my sanity regarding its conversion.

Lesson 2 - Keep good records when involved in any project; trying to remember all the details at a later date is certain to result in missing some of the really challenging initial aspects.

Renovation fundamentals:

Of course, it must be recognized that renovation of a barn is never complete. There are some fundamentals though that are probably true for any barn (or any building, for that matter!).  These are pretty straight forward:
1. The roof must be water tight before any final inside work is initiated; and,
2. The foundation must be in good shape or put into good shape.
Without these two fundamental conditions being met, the rest of the renovation project will, undoubtedly, be less than satisfactory.  For our project, we were very fortunate. The roof was covered with galvanized steel corrugated sheeting and the foundation was almost totally intact. There were some small leaks in the roof, however. We really wanted to keep the metal roof for at least two reasons.
1. It looked nice; it looked like a barn roof and we wanted it to remain looking like a barn roof; and,
2. A metal roof gives us a great barrier to airborne fires that could be experienced during the prairie burning season.
Therefore, to make the roof as water tight as possible, all the sheets were loosened at their edges and silicon sealing compound was forced between sheet overlaps. The sheets were then secured with coated metal screws at about six(6) inch intervals. After the sheets were all sealed and secured, two coats of an aluminum paint containing fibers was used to cover the entire surface. New roof facia boards were required on both sides of the barn. It was noted by the installers that this roof configuration would probably require maintenance at a three to five year time interval (and, sorry to say; it was!).  As for the foundation, no work was necessary! Only one sill plate (on the north side of the barn where snow piles up and the melts) had rotted and needed to be replaced. This was done by jacking up (at about 1/2 inch!) the north end of the barn and removing the rotted sill and installing new doubled 2X6 treated lumber as its replacement. This done, both the roof and the foundation were now ready to support the next steps.

Added Renovation fundamentals (and they're ALL fundamentals!):

The floor. Guess what! In a barn, the first level floor is not always level. In our barn, we had cattle stanchions on one side of a walk through center passage way; on the other side was horse stalls and manger. There were 5 stalls approximately 6 feet wide with grain bins at the north end of the barn. Several of the horse stalls were built up to have wooden floors (apparently, this is much more comfortable for the horses.) There were four to six inch deep channels behind each cattle stanchion for waste removal purposes.   The wooden floors were removed and a new level layer of concrete (about 4 inches thick) was poured over the entire 36 X 48 floor. To get the concrete spread over the floor, the ready mix truck backed up to the center entry door and "chuted" the mix into wheelbarrows which were then wheeled to all areas of the floor. This, therefore, required that 27 yards of concrete (that's a lot of tons!) had to be hand wheeled.

Lesson 3 - Make sure you have several strong-backed young men available to do the wheeling when you work on the first level floor!

This is the fourth one:

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