Future Shop?

[Steve Frazier]

My area is seeing a housing boom, all the former farms arebeing developed for new homes. I was offered a dairy barn built in the late 40s, just take it down and haul it away. A friend is helping, he wants the siding and roof boards, I'm taking the structural timbers and rafters.

Here it is in raw form:

[Steve Frazier]

It's currently 60' x 32'. I pland to extend it to 70' and narrow it to 30'

[Steve Frazier]

It's not in bad shape overall, a few bad spots where the roof leaked, but pretty sound otherwise.

[Steve Frazier]

Here's a shot of the loft. It's 18' to the center ridge!

My plans are to raise the ceiling on the first floor to 12', the use one end and 35' for a 3 car garage, then the other end will be a 35' x 30' shop.

The loft ceiling will still be at 15', I plan to put a workshop up there for carpentry project during the off season.

The whole thing will get heated with and outdoor boiler.

[Steve Frazier]

The gambrel roof offers plenty of work area, I might add dormers for natural lighting and ventilation in the summer. Note the tram rail for loading hay!

[Steve Frazier]

Here we've got the roof stripped and have started lowering trusses by hand. Very slow process!

We started working in March when it was in the high 30s and low 40s. We had a warm spell into the 70s late in the month and discovered......

[Steve Frazier]

Honey Bees to be exact! They weren't too happy with us hammering and shaking their home. We had a bee keeper come, there were two hives. He estimated one to bee (pun!) about 200,000 strong, the other was a bit smaller.

We had to wait about 3 weeks for the temps to rise steady so the bees could be moved.

[Steve Frazier]

After the delay, I wanted to speed things up and hired a bucket truck to lower the rest of the trusses. The operator tied on to the peak, I cut them free at the bottom while my buddy cut the few boards we left intact for support.

[Steve Frazier]

We averaged about 5 minutes per truss!

[Steve Frazier]

This was much quicker and safer than manually lowering them with a rope and pulley.

[Steve Frazier]

Look at all the room! Maybe I'll open a dance hall instead!

[Steve Frazier]

They're almost all down here. I forgot to take a picture of the barn with no roof left, I'll be posting more as I go along.

[Steve Frazier]

Well the barn's all down and here at the house, I've got some more pics to post but my computer's down again! All the shots are stored there, so when it's back on line, I'll show the progress....

Stay tuned!

[cat320]

Now that it's down Steve I figure that being the easy part. now comes the hard putting all the peices back together at your place and you know there will be modifcations to the old blue print LOL .:D

[Steve Frazier]

Yeah, I'm working on prints now to take to the Town, there will be more doors, fewer windows, etc. 10 years ago you could have just gone in and told them what you were going to do and get a nod of approval, today there's a mountain of paperwork to file.....:Banghead

[Steve Frazier]

My rig is back, a couple programs just couldn't get along.

Here's a shot with all the 2 x 12 cieling joists removed:

[cat320]

I know what your talking about with all the B.S. you have to go thru today.Like you said in the old days you would go down say I'm putting up a ? x ? and there would be no problem.I don't know if I saw it but what size is this old barn and how big will your new shop be? are you going to enlarge the bottom and use the old barn trusses for the roof or will you keep the bottom in the same foot print as the top?

[Steve Frazier]

I'm going to narrow the barn by 18" and extend the length by 10', giving me a 31 1/2' x 70' final dimension. I'm sawing off 3" of the loft joist to get back to solid wood (nail holes) which adds to the 18" deficit.

The shop end will be 35' long, leaving enough room for a 3 car garage at the other end. On the second floor I'll be able to put in a wood shop for winter work.

[cat320]

I have to say Steve that sounds so good , nothing like having a good size shop I can't wait to see the finished shop .

[dumptruck]

Sounds like its going to be great shop.

Steve Frazier are you pelican on ********?

[cat320]

So Steve how goes the shop? Will you be getting it in before winter or is this just a fill in project when you have the time to work on it?

[Steve Frazier]

Cat, the dismantling of the barn took me away from my business for a while and as a result quite a few equipment maintenance jobs got sidelined. I'm trying to get a few of those done before starting the barn.

Ideally I'd like to have it up and closed in for winter so I can finish it off while I'm off season plus have a place to work on trucks. I'll keep you posted.

[JCurtis]

I havent been here in awhile, and just noticed this thread about your future shop.

I think its great, I always wanted to do something like that , maybe on a smaller scale as an addition to my house.

I cant wait to see pics of the progress, keep us posted !:notworthy

[littledenny]

Steve:

Was reading your old post - How's progress coming?

If you have some tips, please pass them on - I'm contermplating doing something similar, but not on so large a scale.

Inlaws have a horse establishment in Ky, I'm looking at taking out an old house and rebuilding their barn. House is nothing to speak of, but I'll try to salvage some of the interior paneling and a few other things, than bulldoze the rest into a hole and burn it. Rest is pretty well trashed from neglect while the folks were off the property for a few years.

Barn's probably about 20 x 28 feet, built on a hill, so that one side's one story, the back side is two. Think the basic structure is salvageable as timber, but the foundation is heading downhill fast, so there's no real chance of repair. Hence, I need to consider the problems of dismantling it.

I'm pretty experienced in most aspects of the job, but if you have some tips on dealing with heavy timbers, I'd appreciate the input.

[Steve Frazier]

I've been stalled here for a while now due to family matters and now the weather. I've got the area cleared, the next step is to level the site for the foundation. I'm still working on the permits required too.

These personal projects always seem to take a back seat to your client's needs.

[littledenny]

Steve: Understand, ain't that always the truth?