The Barn
We began construction on this 4-sided gambrel style barn in 2005. We decided to build this barn for 3 reasons:
1. We wanted to get a horse and other various farm animals
2. Andy needed a larger, quieter office. He works from home and due to our growing family, the house office was no longer a quiet workspace. Occasionally it was necessary for his co-workers to come over and work directly with Andy. The house office was too small to make this practical.
3. We wanted a comfortable place for relatives to stay
Thus the multi-purpose building we call the barn was born! The upstairs uses a combination of rafters and gambrel clear-span trusses. The 32' steel clear-span trusses downstairs means there are no support posts required in the workshop. Keep reading and I'll take you on a tour through each of the three sections of the barn: the apartment, the workshop, and the animal section.
The Apartment
Ready for a tour of the barn apartment? Let's go!
First we've got to head up these stairs:
And as we come up, the first room we'll come into is the eat-in kitchen. It's quite difficult to capture the impressiveness of this room with a camera! The ceilings are very high, with a windowed cupola at the top. This apartment is architecturally amazing!
In the photo above, the door you see leads into Bedroom B. The purpose of that funny-looking hole in the wall is to channel natural light into Bedroom B!
In the photo below, you can see more of the kitchen. The appliances were all purchased new in 2005 and do convey. The door to the immediate right of the cabinets leads into Bedroom A. The next doorway to the right is the entrance to the living room.
The eating area of the kitchen:
A pellet stove stands in the corner; it's a nice supplement to the electric heat. Watch your step-- we've got to go down a few stairs to get into the living room:
From here we can go through the sliding glass door and take a look at the deck:
Hmmm. Not sure why this photo is so small! You get the idea, right?
Let's return to the living room and look back into the kitchen:
Let's check out Bedroom A. It's just to our right when we get to the top of the living room stairs. Off to the left (not visible in the photo below) is a door that leads into the closet/laundry room area.
Here we're standing at the door I just mentioned. You can see the bathroom straight ahead but first we'll investigate the laundry room/closet which is just through this door.
Immediately to your left is a 2002 stackable washer and dryer, which conveys:
And to your right, across from the laundry area, is the clothes closet:
We'll continue on into the bathroom:
The bathroom features a ceramic tile floor and maple cabinetry. The small door you see below opens to a cubby that houses the water heater and the water softener. See the doorknob in the lower left corner of this photo? There is a doorway directly behind us and it leads into Bedroom B. The door in front of us is the one we just came through from Bedroom A.
As you come in to Bedroom B you can see the door that leads out into the kitchen:
We've come full circle and that concludes the apartment tour!
Animal Section
The animal section of the barn has 3 pens. These pens, or stalls, have dirt floors; the remainder of this section has a concrete floor. Each of these stalls has a double-door leading out to the pasture. Here's a photo of one of the stalls:
The fence on your right is the divider between the two large horse stalls. Adjoining this stall along the front (the fence to the left of that gate is the divider) is a smaller pen which we kept our goat in. There's a doorway you can see just above the gate--that leads into the workshop. And the large doorway straight ahead goes outside.
This animal section has a water spigot, electric outlets, and lighting. There is a haymow directly above this section but we never actually kept hay there! For that reason there is no access hole cut to throw hay down from the mow to this part of the barn. For now, the haymow is accessed through a doorway off the apartment deck. As you can see, we used the haymow for storage:
The Workshop
· Measures 800 square feet
· 10' ceilings
· Plenty of electric outlets
· Concrete floor
· Rough-in for a toilet and/or sink
· Clear span
· Drywalled and insulated
· Used as a kitchen cabinet workshop