Thar's A Hook Up In That Barn

Yes, the blessed hay hook. At least I think that's what it is. It was a curiosity that turned into a feature in the home along with the rail upon which it slides. Yes, it still slides. The hook was installed so that the barn could literally be filled with hay or whatever else you can use a giant hook to grab things with. As we built, every sub kept implying that we should keep it in place.

So the framer says it, then the electrical and plumbing folks say it, then the sheetrock and painter say it along with everyone that comes by and then somehow, you have a hay hook in your new home.

A few picts along the process for your amusement. The eventual plan will have a light dangling from this massive hook above the main floor steps. Nonetheless, it is an oddity worthy of a glance.

Tongue And Groove

Nice and catchy and an easier entry than "Wood II" might have been.

The main milking parlor, mentioned earlier, had walls and ceilings made out of 7 1/2 inch wide tongue and groove long leaf pine. Beautiful stuff, but somewhat dull in appearance with nails here and there. We wanted to keep that wood in place and we did.

We ran into several problems the first of which was having to insulate from the outside. As we were using spray in foam (for R values of 30+) our vendor did a horrific job of protecting the inside lumber. When they sprayed from the outside, the stuff went all over the inside because they did nothing to prevent it. The insulation worked, but there were problems.

And the wiring also had to be done from the outside because I didn't want to tear off the interior lumber. You can see some of this in the pictures. Over time, we got through the inspection and got the siding and rock put up which left lots of work inside.

We had to order special windows to preserve the look and feel of the original "pull in" types, and these crank outs do a fair job. We also had to cut out the hole for the bar area and used one of the original doors as the cover for it. Then the clean up room was to become a bathroom, so we had to do some painting in there. We also covered up all the bricks with bead board (carpenter - see below.)

Eddie Jacobs (our carpenter) did FANTASTIC work in this room. We'll discuss that more later as well, but he used the milking parlor as his staging area for the rest of the house. Thus the floors, steps, trim, etc. all started in this area.

Once the 2nd and 3rd floors were done, he simply hammered or removed naile, rough sanded the walls and floor (covered with dust from the concrete and wood work.) He also did a great job covering the ductwork which we were forced to put throughout this floor. Covering it with more bead board was genius. Then he simply applied some "poly" as he would say.

So, as this was supposed to be a short post, I've noticed it's run a bit long, but the wood looks fantastic. Old pine, who'd a thunk it? Nothing on the finished product, have to keep you waiting for something. . .

Stained Glass Window

This blog entry will skip around a bit as we're essentially complete and I'm trying to document what's transpired for others who may wish to go down this odd road.









The original barn had an opening that you can see at the top of this first picture. If you look closely, you can see odd shaped aluminum siding at the top of the frame with a bar protruding. That's where the original hook could move hay or tobacco in and out of the barn. (More on the hook later!)
A feature I wanted to add originally was a stained glass window approximately 8 ft. across. We also got quotes on 6 1/2 ft windows from MW and others, but they were kind of plain. As I explored the stain glass option, it became pretty clear that I'd have more of a church look than I wanted. CG&D Studios in Raleigh worked with us and I stumbled (literally) across a sample of dichroic glass which had some rather odd color qualities depending on the angle at which it was viewed.

The glass was originally ordered in early November and supposed to be ready by the end of December. All things in construction are apparently on a Mayan Calendar from the 5th Millennium or something because time has no meaning.

The pictures will reflect the opening left by the framers and how the glass was finally installed. From the outside the glass had a yello/green look (my wife called it Mello-Yellow.) From the road, the glass appears to have a touch of auburn and from the inside it has a Caribbean blue and purple hue. And the amount of light around also affects the color.

Unfortunately the one section of the glass was chipped and had to be repaired. If you clicked on the link above you'll have discovered (as I did late) that Dichroic glass is always unique, so the new replacement did not match.

Long story short, CG&D found the original piece and were able to cut another piece from it, fix it and it looks great! And the Spanish cedar frame actually matches. The other long story was the conversion from 8ft to 6 1/2 ft, but that was simply cost. The new window shows up great and can simply be attributed to my eccentricity.

The final picture is really how the window looks NOW. They'll be more updated photos later in this blog, but essentially the colors are right and the frame is wonderful. We'll see how well we can take care of this glass over time.

The Challenges Of Concrete

Ok, I'll be the first to admit I know little about concrete. You mix the dusty stuff with water, put it somewhere and then you have concrete. Sorta. . .
The barn presented a number of interesting challenges on the concrete front. The first picture here is of the corner of the original barn with the concrete blocks in place.



You can see the first layer is laid perpendicular to the subsequent layers. Essentially the barn is a 50 x 40 rectangle of concrete blocks with a center support wall running between the two 40ft. sides and parallel to the 50 ft walls. The side where the cows ate had dirt floors and the milking side had old river rock concrete and was sloped to deal with cow runoff. The entire barn needed concrete and we poured about 6-8 inches on the dirt side and 4-5 on the other on top of the existing concrete.




On the milking side we had to fill in the trench and level the concrete the sloped. Some of the concrete had to be cut to remove old fixtures and put new plumbing down. Even the cutters were astounded at the hardness of the original river rock stuff and they broke several blades cutting it.

So, as you're looking at these. The first photo is described with the blocks. The second is what the dirt side looked like after the concrete pour looking through the barn. The third and fourth is the milking side just prior (with gravel in the cleaning trench) and after the concrete was poured and the stamping dust was put on the concrete. The fifth is the concrete with the cuts and the stamping somewhat completed.



Yes, we decided to stamp the concrete on the milking side as that was going to become a bar/social area. You have to cut concrete at 12 ft. intervals to prevent it from breaking. To mask the cuts, we put in several decorative lines that you can see more easily in the last photo of the actual bar area (previously a cooler area for milk.)

The entire concrete ordeal was a learning experience and I'll be revisiting both in future blogs as concrete and wood start merging in the eventual design. We will probably be filling in some of the decorative areas as they are tedious to clean as we've gone through the process.

A Word About Wood!

With a project like this, WOOD is king! Obviously, we were trying to preserve the structural wood as mentioned. But we also wanted to ensure that we had other uses for wood from the site. We had the wood that was used as the second floor in the old barn, we had some stored up there that had been drying for 50 years. We had a "false floor" on the first story that I needed to have ripped up. We had taken down an old "stick barn" used in curing tobacco and even had to tear down a corn crib (used to store corn back in the 20s and 30s.

The second picture you see is the flooring used on the first floor. It was rather thick and varied in width. Hard as nails (which I'll talk about later.) The wood became somewhat of a story of its own. We had to get the lumber, build a building to house the lumber, find someone to get the lumber like we wanted it, then re-store the lumber, throw away damaged lumber (pesky termites) and then finally arrive at a finished floor somehow. And do all of this while maintaining some form of sanity.




All of this left us with a pile of lumber, all of which was old long leaf pine from the farm and quite rare nowadays. Consider this, most of the lumber was probably at least thirty to forty years of age when timbered. That means the lumber we were now using was at least 100 years old. This last pict is just one pile of what we had salvaged. As we went through the process we discovered there was a lot more than pine in that stack. There was poplar, cedar, maple and some walnut. 85% was pine, but within the stacks was enough to pull off some rather interesting projects.

Then There's That Framing Thing

So the Fall was beautiful and we took hundreds of pictures of the project. Our framer, Armando, )yes, that's his name) really started putting up lots of new lumber for the framing. We also spent a great deal of time preserving the internal framing. You see, original wood was "actual" with respect to size. Thus a 2x4 was a real 2x4 and our 2x10s were REAL 2x10s and they ran throughout the structure in 20 foot lengths creating the floor for our second story.

You can see the joists in the picture to the right with the original pine bark. Those joists are still there within the floors. In the picture above you can see the additional 2x10s that were put into place to pass inspection and give us a load bearing capability far in excess of the 3000lbs per square inch needed.



The inspectors wanted us to rip them out because you can't span 20ft with 2x10s anymore due to code. So we re-hired the engineer and got him to approve a plan wherein we were able to preserve the original 2x10s by shoring them up with additional 2x10s which are "nominal" meaning they're not quite 2x10s. (We ran into this issue throughout with "nominal" new lumber alongside "actual" lumber.)



Long story short, the new second story joists are original and shored up with new lumber. What a pain in the ass!!

Time To Strip Some Metal

The first big step was to remove the shell of the building. The wood within was timbered on the property and we wanted to preserve it. But we had to add dormers and pull all the aluminum (yes we recycled it) off the building. The building started looking rather odd as the metal came off.



There were many internal issues going on simultaneously. The milking parlor needed additional concrete due to the trench that was in place where the cows were being milked. The trench was used to clean up the area as cows tend to "do their business" also while being milked. The concrete in place was HARD, so hard that several blades were broken trying to get rid of it. The concrete was made with river rocks and VERY thick. As the following pictures show, a lot had to be done just to prep for the new construction. The good news was that the foundation was solid (and passed inspection) and the new concrete went in smoothly.

We also had to clear out the barn as there was TONS of stuff in it and get rid of the feed room area as that would become a garage. Several picts of STUFF.

Background

I guess the best place to start is with a bit of history.

My wife and I decided to turn a 40s era dairy barn into a home. This was when we still retained a bit of sanity, so we went through the iterations of design, planning, regulations, and the myriad of other minutia to get this project up and running.

The barn in question was built by W. T. Sanders (my great-grandfather) and his son-in-law T.R. Adams (my grandfather). In January of 1951 T.R. Adams decided to get out of the dairy business due to a misunderstanding with his father in law. Rather than have hard feelings it was easier to simply get out and the barn simply became a rather large storage building. One thing you learn about storage space is that you WILL find a way to fill it up.



It's a great location adjacent to a pond in Sanford where my wife and I were married. But this was just the beginning of a long and bizarre journey involving all manner of decisions. New construction and renovation are worlds apart. And if you're interested in preservation, be prepared to make some strange decisions.

We started this process in 2005, finished design work in December of 2006, bid things out through the spring of '07 and the first nail went in in August of '07. What a long journey!