October | 2014 | A Blog about Old Barns ~ from Green Mountain Timber Frames

We finished work on this beautiful barn in Manchester, VT back in 2013. Since then the owners sourced particular stone for the finish landscaping and the final results are evident in the following pictures.

The barn is from Middle Granville, NY and was originally built around 1800. The current family wanted a timber frame barn to match their Green Mountain Timber Frames barn style home. In the pictures below, you can see the process and transformation that this barn went through.

Another aspect of this frame was working with and restoring the truss girt system. Not typical of a frame from this time period, this type of truss girt system means that two large timbers are joined together in the middle with a small connecting post and braces. This allows there to be no post in the middle of the frame thus having a clear 31 foot wide space to use with no posts to bump into. Below, you can see the process we used to restore this truss girt system.

Part of this restoration project entailed finding “new” siding for the barn. I love doing this kind of work! It’s so much fun to put together the siding – a sort of puzzle.

This first picture shows the source of siding, another barn in NY state. The siding was for sale and we seized the opportunity.

The next step was to sort through the siding and try to find the best – most attractive – way to apply it in its new location, factoring in the existing lengths of boards.

When applying the siding on the restored barn, we blended the colors together. We varied the use of different boards and different colors to give the best final look.

The siding had this light to dark shading effect that we were able to capture again. The cutout with the hole is sized to invite in a kestrel hawk. The remainder are decorative.

In the sorting process, we discovered this star emblem. We saved it for interior use as a piece of folk art. Anyone know the significance of a star?

Below – the finished project! The look of an 1800s barn, but now the barn is restored and in beautiful condition for another 200+ years.

This is a rare frame to have no mid-span support posts on the 31 foot width. I was told it was a German style. Anyone know more about that?

I am always looking for new projects! Do you have a barn you want restored? Do you want to live in a historic timber frame?

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Thank you for your response. ✨

We spent a few days at the end of this summer putting up a reclaimed barn at the back of my property for my daughter and her husband. We enjoyed beautiful late summer days and with a small crew of 7 people, we were able to re-erect the restored barn in a day.

Many hands make light work!

It’s nice to be able to use my skill to help my family out – and of course there is nothing like having my grown kids nearby! On this project, I was also able to use some of the leftover timber and reclaimed wood from other projects. A great recycling project all and all, and one that makes for an eclectic, one-of-a-kind, beauty of a barn.

This barn comes from a two part structure from a farm in New York state. The oldest section was from the 1840s and has been sold to a customer. The barn in this blog was probably added on to the 1840 barn in the 1900s and was not finished with traditional joinery. As a historic piece it has little value, but the timbers are strong and sturdy and I knew it would make a fine shelter for the kids’ farm equipment and hay.

The original barn under black plastic, circa 1840s. Addition probably 1900, being dismantled.

We dismantled the newer barn first and restored it with traditional joinery. (That means that we let in the bracing and tie timbers with mortise and tenon joinery, instead of just nailing things together.) While this takes a bit more time than using a hammer and nails, it gives the barn a much more authentic, historical and structural look.

Here we are putting up a bent (or side wall).

Here the 2×4 roof purlins are being applied. post and beam barn

The recycled metal roof was screwed to the 2x4s.

Restored barn with roof boards

The next step was to build a second floor which you can see (from below) in the next picture.

We used a mixture of common 2x6s doubled up and half round timbers to create the floor joist system. The flooring is 2 inch planking.

We’ve started the siding by using some newer recycled boards. We will have to cut three feet off the top to find the second floor, but it is doing the job for now. The remainder will be finished with older boards.

We will also be attaching a shed roof to this wall in time. In the picture above, notice the future shed wall sill and top plate timbers in front of the tractor.

The ground level of the barn is for storing mowing equipment while the second floor is for storing hay. As you can see below – it’s already in use!

While the barn is highly functional and my son-in-law is pleased, this barn is still a work in progress. As we gather more siding from other jobs, we plan to wrap the frame entirely with siding that doesn’t make the grade for our paying customers.