This Old Barn

[quicksandfarmer]

Since I'm opening up the wall from the outside, I'll probably reshingle that side too. It's time. The shingles are white cedar, and over time they literally burn away in the sunlight. Here's a picture from another wall showing how the exposed part has lost a lot of material:

The shingles on this wall have gotten really thin, maybe 1/8", and quite a few of them have broken off.

I don't know how old these shingles are, but they were put on with hand-cut nails, here's a close-up with a quarter for scale:

 

[EddieWalker]

That's impressive that they have lasted so long!!!!

 

[quicksandfarmer]

That's impressive that they have lasted so long!!!!

Cedar shingles last a long, long time around here -- if they're well installed. Usually when they fail it's because water gets behind them and rots the sheathing and they fall off.

I don't know how old this wall is. It's always been a different color from the others, more of a chocolate brown. I don't know if it's because the shingles are different or if it was stained at one point. Every wall is different because the sun affects how they weather but this one is more different than usual.

It's a very New England thing to be only house-proud on the side of the house that faces the road.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

This is a picture of the wall I'm going to be working on. This is where the horses were kept, the studs were all chewed up by the horses. At some point 2" thick boards were nailed to the wall to protect it. I was worried that those boards are now contributing to holding up the wall, so I wanted to brace the wall before taking them away.

There is a hay loft above this section. There is a ledger board let into these studs, and that supports the loft. My first thought was to brace the joists of the hay loft. That would allow me to put the bracing far enough away from the wall that I could get in there to work. But it turned out the joists were just sitting on the ledger, so bracing them didn't brace the wall. So I had to brace the ledger, which meant working close to the wall.

First step was to bolt a 2x4 to the ledger, up against the joists. Then I screwed two other 2x4's to it, and put a 2x6 along the bottom:

Before putting up the 2x6, I laid out marks for studs on 16" centers. I put down a doubled 2x4 for a bottom plate, and measured the distance to the floor at each stud. My plan was to cut the studs the same distance longer than the measured distance, jack the top plate up and put the studs in. By measuring all the distances before doing any jacking I made sure the top plate would be lifted by the same amount across its length.

This is a shot of jacking up. Usually in an old building there's a fair amount of play, so I cut the first stud 1/4" longer than the measurement. I was quite surprised when I tightened the jack as much as I could and couldn't get it in. I cut it back to 1/8" over and that's what I did for all of them. That was encouraging to me, it meant the wall was stronger than it looks.

OK, the finished wall. I added a couple of diagonal braces. I wanted to use duplex nails for the diagonal braces to make it easier when I have to take it down, but I couldn't find them at the store. They did have #9 screws that were labeled "structural," so I used those instead. Perhaps that's why they don't sell duplex nails any more.

With the bracing in place I could take the boards off and get a look at the wall. I mostly used a sawzall to cut through the nails. It's not too bad. Every one of the studs looks like it will need to be sistered but otherwise the wall looks in OK shape.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Whoever put those boards up was not a good carpenter, this is an example of their handiwork:

I found these behind the boards, which may explain the craftsmanship:

 

[quicksandfarmer]

This is an example of where I've repaired a stud with a damaged section, I think I'll have to do all of the studs on this wall.

The original stud is 3x4. I cut out the damaged section and put in a piece of 3x4 that I got from a local sawmill. Then I fastened a new 2x4 of rough lumber alongside.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

The framing around the window looks like it was done by the vodka and Kahlua guy. If you look over the left top corner you can see where a stud was cut and left unsupported. That stud was 16' long and supports the second floor wall.

I'm thinking the stud to the right of the window needs to be sistered, then add a new one to the left and frame out an opening for the window.

 

[IH3444]

Fantastic documentation of rebuilding and reinforcing a great old barn. Thanks for your time invested in showing how well you have done the work. I was looking at your photos and noticed that the roof rafters were just butted up against each other and was wondering if two triangle pieces of 1/2 plywood on either side would aid in their structural stability during snow loading in the winter. I also noticed the absent of collar beams between the roof rafters. I'm sure Eddie Walker has some good input to this.

 

[ning]

Just found this thread and binged it.
Fantastic work and great write-up!

 

[wolc123]

It’s nice that you were able to save that old barn. There were a couple old timber framed barns on our farm that my great great grandfather had built in the 1880’s. Unfortunately, they were too far gone for me to save, with the foundations and roofs failing at the same time.

While I wasn’t able to save them, I was able to carefully recover much of the original material, and use it to make a loft and workshops inside my new metal pole barn, as well as a woodshed across the back.

Most of the wood that my old barns were made from (in western upstate NY), was American chestnut. I like the color of that, after I power washed and varnished it.

Here’s a pictures of the last one before I pulled it down, the new barn interior shops and loft, and the woodshed (24 face cord capacity) across the back.

The green tin woodshed roof was included with the metal Stockade building, as cover sheets to protect the gray roofing and siding tin during shipment. I didn’t need to spend a penny on materials to make that woodshed.

Part of the reason the old barns were in such bad shape was that the hay lofts were never intended for baled hay. I remember them being nice and straight when I was a little kid and we drew in loose hay. By the time I was a teen, grandpa had a baler and I got the fun job of stacking those bales up in the lofts.

The beams supporting the loft floors were spaced at 4 ft. It didn’t take long for them to start bending and breaking. I learned that lesson well, and spaced them at 2 ft under my new barn loft.

Repurposing that old material in the new barn let me keep the feel of the old barns, with the added benefits of reduced maintenance and greatly reduced cost, compared to what it would have taken to restore the originals.

You can see all of the leftover, hand-hewn chestnut and oak posts and beams, that remain from the old barns, stacked under the woodshed overhang. I’ll be hauling most of those up to my father in laws neighbors place up in the mountains.

He was going to cut pine timber’s for an addition to his vacation home up there, but he fell in love with the chestnut, when I brought a few pieces up for my father in law to work with.

 

[yanmars]

Just a note about the chestnuts, I just planted 5 American Chestnuts, Duncans I think. Hope they make it, certainly the deer like to chew on the leaves. Grand trees.

 

[wolc123]

Here are both of my great great grandfathers old barns (made mostly from American chestnut). I used lots of that inside my new barn (built on the site of the first old one that I dismantled)

These pictures were taken from about the same point, about 50 years apart. I planted that maple tree that you can see in each when I was a little kid. Both old barn frames fell on it when they came down.

 

[EddieWalker]

Nice looking barn!!!

 

[m7040]

Amazing work on the barn.


Our barn dates back to 1840's according to records and the milk parlor was added in the first part of the 1900's. The milking parlor is the West part of the barn with the windows. The original barn was shorter but when the milking parlor was added they extended the whole barn It is built with post and beam construction using American Chestnut and no nails were used except for floors and siding.
The new siding was added over the original siding consisting of wide hardwood boards. New roof was added as well screwed to 1 by 6 oak boards
Agree the plank floors are not very level. It is double layers 2 by 12 oak floor planks. It has the trolley running under the roof ridge high up that was pulled by ropes for placing hay on the two lofts and there are several trap doors in the floor for dumping down hay to the lower floor. Two 16 ft by 16 ft doors are on the upstairs part for access for the hay wagons
The East end has a large area with full length hay feeding rack and several smaller stalls. The milking parlor has room for a dozen cows with stanchions and racks and sloped floors for run off and clean out. A pond was close by for the run off.

Our neighbor was born on the farm in the 1930's and she has told us a lot about life on the farm that originally was 200 acres. Original home stead deed was around 1800 although the log spring cabin dates earlier that that. The log cabin is 3 stories with a spring running through the lower floor that was used to cool the milk. Alway runs about 50 degrees or so.

Attaching a picture of the barn and the original log cabin

 

[quicksandfarmer]

m7040, very nicely kept. I hope to someday get there.

 

[vikingbarns]

Great work on the barn. Have you encountered any unexpected challenges during the repairs? Any tips for someone starting a similar project?

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Great work on the barn. Have you encountered any unexpected challenges during the repairs? Any tips for someone starting a similar project?

Thanks.
Basically the whole project has been unexpected challenges, you take a piece of the barn apart and you never know what it's going to look like inside. The hardest part has always been deciding when to stop and say, "OK, that's enough."

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Just a quick update, I haven't been doing much lately. I decided it would be easier to reframe the window from the outside so I've set up scaffolding and I'm stripping the shingles. As I noted earlier, the wood literally gets burned way by the sun, I tried to capture in this photo that in places you can literally see through the part of the shingle that is exposed to the sun:

Removing these shingles, I noticed that they're actually newer than other places where I've removed them. They're put on with machine-made nails, not hand cut, and the nails are galvanized. And there's roofing felt behind them. So they were put on some time in the 20th century probably.

I found this sticker on the back of one shingle:

Aha! Western red cedar. The shingles everywhere else are eastern white cedar. Which I've been told is more durable, and I now believe. Some googling tells me that the Stave Lake Cedar Mills opened in 1939. The label doesn't have a postal code, and Canada adopted postal codes in 1974, so that gives a window. That lines up with what I know about the history of the barn. The family that built it owned it until 1950, another family owned it until 1974, and the person that I bought it from bought in 1974. He didn't do much to it so I assume these shingles were put on some time in the 1960's or so. So 60 years give or take.

 

[EddieWalker]

Are you reframing an existing window? The vodka window?

I agree that installing it from the outside would be better. It allows you to properly seal the window.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

Are you reframing an existing window? The vodka window?

I agree that installing it from the outside would be better. It allows you to properly seal the window.

Yes, the notorious vodka window!