This Old Barn

[bindian]

Awesome thread. Keep the photos coming, please.
hugs, Brandi

 

[EddieWalker]

Really enjoy seeing your pictures and what you are having to deal with in how it was built. Very impressive!!!

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I’ve always known those as cut nails. We have a lot in old buildings.

 

[two_bit_score]

I’ve always known those as cut nails. We have a lot in old buildings.

It’s what I’ve always heard them called also.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I’ve always known those as cut nails. We have a lot in old buildings.

Here's an interesting* article about the history of nails and how to date a building based on how the nails were made:
Antique Nails: History & Photo Examples of Old Nails Help Determine Age of a Structure, Old Cut Nails

They're called cut nails because they were cut off of a flat bar by a shear. They are made from wrought iron, which has a grain. The grain runs the length of the nail, which means they were made after 1830 when a new process was invented for cutting nails; prior to that they cut across the grain. The heads appear to be hand forged because they are irregular, which means they probably aren't much older than that, because head-shaping machines came a few years later. It's a little-known fact that Rhode Island was the most industrialized state in the country in the 19th century so they were likely to be using the latest technology. All of this supports a construction date of around 1850.

Where the barn uses metal fasteners they are cut nails. The framing either uses no fasteners, or trenails -- "tree nails" -- wooden pegs. Cut nails are used for the siding and flooring. What is remarkable about these nails is just how big they are, they're like spikes. The flooring in the loft is 1x and uses nails that look like what we'd use today, as does the siding.

*(sentences like this really make my kids roll their eyes.)

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Interesting article, thanks.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I got a little more time today to work on the floor. I'm working on the section that has the trap door, which I talked about way back in post #30. I had done all the repairs to the framing with the floorboards on because otherwise I would have had no place to stand. This is what it looks like with the flooring off.

Since the cellar is just fieldstone it can be a bit damp at certain times of year, so I'm treating all of the old framing with a borate solution to inhibit rot and insects. But the inside of the barn is so dirty I can't get it to stick unless I wash the wood first. This picture was after I had washed the beams and applied the borate solution which is why everything is so shiny.

I decided to keep the trap door operable, so I made a frame out of 2x4's and cut a hole in the Advantech. I doubt I will ever open it but I do feel an obligation to preserve as many historic details as I can. Using the Advantech was a big compromise for me. I actually looked into getting rough cut 2x lumber, and at the time it was only slighly more than the Advantech, about $1.30 per square foot compared to a dollar. But rough lumber just doesn't make a very good floor, cracks will open up with time, it's hard to sweep and it's not going to be level. Advantech is really good stuff, with the tongue and groove edges it joins together into a solid sheet that is a nice solid floor. I believe that the best way to preserve historic buildings is to make them useful, and I intend to use this building.

The trap door isn't much to look at from the top, it's just a square cut out of the flooring. If you look carefully you can see the pencil marks I made where the 2x4 frame goes under it to guide my nailing. It's a conversation piece, I guess.

 

[MossRoad]

Seems every horror/suspense movie ever made that features a barn, someone uses a trap door sooner or later. Glad you kept it. :laughing:

Outstanding job of descriptions by the way. Thanks. :thumbsup:

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Seems every horror/suspense movie ever made that features a barn, someone uses a trap door sooner or later. Glad you kept it. :laughing:

Outstanding job of descriptions by the way. Thanks. :thumbsup:

Thanks. I compose the posts in my head as I work as a way of passing the time.

 

[two_bit_score]

Seems every horror/suspense movie ever made that features a barn, someone uses a trap door sooner or later. Glad you kept it. :laughing:

Outstanding job of descriptions by the way. Thanks. :thumbsup:

And the vast majority of suspense/ horror movies, I suspect, have an old barn in them.

 

[EddieWalker]

Just need a good place to hide behind some chainsaws and sickles!!!

 

[MossRoad]

Just need a good place to hide behind some chainsaws and sickles!!!

:laughing:

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Just need a good place to hide behind some chainsaws and sickles!!!

I have so much junk there's plenty of places to hide. My pencil, tape measure, extension cord and hammer hide on me all the time.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

So far I've been taking off sections of the old floor and replacing them. I'm at the point where I'm about to work in the doorway so I thought I'd write a bit about the doors.

This barn is of a style known as a "bank barn." It has a cellar, and the floor of the cellar is at the original grade. When the foundation was built a stone wall was built and then dirt was piled around it to make a ramp to the first floor. The first floor has a door on each side, my understanding is that hay would be brought into the barn in wagons, unloaded into the lofts and then driven out through the opposite door. Here's a picture:

When I got the barn the sills were even with the ground, the previous owner used to drive tractors in. On the south side the sill was quite rotten. One of the things I did, years ago, was to use the tractor and box blade to take almost a foot of soil off of the ramp on each side so that the sills are now up off the ground.

The picture above is of the north door, looking south. I built these doors five years ago. They look just like the doors that were there which were badly rotten. The doors on the south side are vertical cedar tongue and groove, which is probably more historically accurate. When I built these doors I wanted them to last so the bodies are made of a sheet of MDO and the trim is Azek.

Each door is 8'8" high and 4'8" wide -- bigger than a sheet of MDO. To make up the extra space I added 4" strips along each side and an 8" strip along the bottom. Across the top is a 1x8 piece of Azek, along the sides are 1x6 pieces and the bottom is 1x12. A piece of 1x4 is attached to the left door to cover the gap where they meet.

I beveled the top of the bottom edge to prevent water from pooling:

On the back the joints are covered with a layer of 1/4" plywood. The whole sandwich is 1-1/2" thick and held together with glue and 1-1/4" deck screws from the back. The Azek is glued together with Azek glue. Along the outside edges and the top there is a piece of 1x2 Azek to cover the seam.

There is a wooden box that covers the track. I have replaced both the north and south sides. On the north side I used Azek and on the south side I used pressure-treated trim boards, an experiment in which is more durable. We'll see.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Nice job on the doors

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Nice job on the doors

Thanks.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

So I finally got back to work on the barn this week after about two years off. The barn consists of three bays, and I've been working on one bay at a time, fixing the framing, taking off the flooring and putting down new flooring. In my last update I was finishing up the center bay, I was putting down the flooring. After that I took up the flooring on the west bay, and burned it, but then I stopped. Due to the pandemic the price of lumber had gone sky-high and I decided it was better to wait. Well, I was in Lowes last week and saw that Advantech was back to the same $34 a sheet I had paid when I started this project, so I decided to get back at it.

The west bay was where the horse stalls were. They had some sort of manure management system where the center of the bay was raised two inches above the rest of the floor. In the middle there was a round hold with a steel cap, about a foot in diameter.

At the bottom of the picture is the toe of my work boot for scale.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Here's a shot of the raised section of floor, with the floorboards removed. You can see that they laid 2x6's on their sides to get the lift. But at the right of the picture there is a joist running perpendicular to the other joists that marked the edge of the raised area. To put that in they notched it, but they also notched the tops of the joists it ran across. Those joists continue about another two feet past the notch, the beam they are resting on is under where you can see the foot of my son at the far right of the picture.

Those joists were all iffy, they had been weakened by years of manure. But the notches were the deciding factor, they had to come out, six in all. The rest of the joists in the bay were OK and I left them in.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Once the joists were gone, the next issue I had to deal with was the sill along the west wall of the barn. If you remember the picture I posted in the very first post in this thread, there is a drive-in door to the basement in that wall. There are also two windows in the wall. At one point one of those windows had leaked, and water dripping down had caused the sill to rot where it went over the door.

In this picture, the sill is the piece with the notches in it, that's where I took out the joists. A previous owner had put a 6x6 Douglas fir beam under the sill and set the ends onto the stone foundation. That beam had sagged about an inch in the middle, so I put the jack post in that you see to try and take some of the sag out. Unsuccessfully, it turned out. But there was no way that old sill was going to hold new joists.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Well, I was in Lowes last week and saw that Advantech was back to the same $34 a sheet I had paid when I started this project, so I decided to get back at it.

.

I saw $38 here. Was thinking of using it to make cellar doors for dad’s house.