# DIY barn repair



## TeamChaos (Jul 29, 2010)

I'm trying to salvage the barn at our farm and I don't have any $$ to pay a contractor for the work or even a consultation. Have any of you done it? Do you have any good sites or books you can recommend? Anything NOT to do, especially regarding foundation work, that you might have learned the hard way? Thanks.


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## patandchickens (Jul 30, 2010)

Depends what kind of barn repair you mean -- replacing roofing or siding, or some minor structural repair, is a WHOLE nother thing from (say) a collapsing foundation or major problems with the main support structure of a post-and-beam barn. Some things are very DIY, others are not.

The best book I can recommend is called Renovating Barns, Sheds and Outbuildings, by Nick Engler.  Pay close attention to what he says needs to be done "carefully", as some of them are in the realm of "things that are hard to do successfully AND fairly regularly get people killed". (The owner of a large horse farm an hour or two N of here, and his adult son, were killed last month when attempting to do something to the foundation of a cottage on their property, they had it jacked up and were underneath...)

Again, some things ARE very doable yourself, others not so much.

Post some pics, collect some opinions? 

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


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## TeamChaos (Jul 31, 2010)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxchaos/sets/72157624623624630/
barn 

That should link to a photo album of the barn on flickr. I have dug about a foot down around the foundation to see what I'm working with. I am very worried about getting myself into something beyond my scope of capability but on the other hand, something has to be done to save it from ruin and $$ isn't going to fall from the sky...


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## TeamChaos (Aug 1, 2010)

Sorry to bump my own post but the locals on another message board told me that what I have is NOT a barn, but rather a shed. Oops. I thought a barn denoted a place where animals live/have lived/ are fed on a farm, I guess my years off the farm are catching up with me


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## patandchickens (Aug 1, 2010)

Enh, call it whatever you want   To me, if it's large it's a barn (irrespective of whether it houses animals -- I mean, what about a *hay barn*?) and if it is not so large, especially not so tall, it is either a small barn or a shed or some other outbuilding. But, really, why get hung up on semantics.

Afflicted with dialup as I am, I was not able to view all your pics, but from the ones I did see, it is not clear to me what the barn is resting on? Is it just a pole-built structure, with wood all the way down to the ground; or is it resting on a sill of large old rotted-out timbers lying on the ground; or is it on any sort of stone or concrete piers or foundation, if so, what are they like?  I am a bit unsure, some of the pics look like there is a wooden (?) sill, others are pretty clearly just 4x4 posts set into the earth?

The structure as a whole gives the impression (?) of dirt/manure/weeds having been allowed to pile up against the lower walls and rot them out. Siding is easy to replace if the basic 'bones' of the structure are sound -- just remove any siding that is rotted out or too weak anymore, do any minor structural repairs, then replace with new siding. (Not cheap, but not difficult). If the siding is sound, leave it; but if it is soft and crumbly or comes off easily, it should be replaced.

However if the structural elements themselves are rotting (if you can jab a penknife way into the posts with very little resistance, at any point even if it is just down low or underground) then it is much more of a job. If it is just a few of them, you can stabilize the building on either side, and then -- one post at a time! -- cut out the damaged part and splice in a new one, or if it is just the underground part that's bad you can pour a concrete pier in sonotube for the good aboveground part to rest on. (If you do that, it may still be a good idea to replace or sister the lower part of the post where it will rest on the concrete, since if the bottom was rotted the middle part is likely soft too)

If it is more than just a few of the posts that are bad, honestly you would probably be looking at a teardown and rebuild, not a repair job. But there is no good way to tell from pics what physical shape the wood is in, so I dunno whether this is an issue or not.

The other thing to check out is what shape the roof rafters/trusses are in. Roofing itself is not that hard to replace, even parts of the roof decking maybe, but if significant amounts of rafters/trusses are damaged that can be a great big pain in the patootie that can push you towards the 'cheaper and easier to just rebuild' direction. Look for anything slipping out of position, separating away, truss plates coming apart, rafters rotting, that sort of thing. Go up there and look up close, dont' just squint up from the floor.

Really your priority needs to be a) foundation stability [meaning either the posts as they are sunk into the earth, or whatever foundation the building might have if it is not just pole-built]; b) structural integrity of main supporting things i.e. posts, plates and rafters/trusses; c) roof integrity [because roof leaks rot out rafters, plates and even posts]; and, as a fairly distant fourth place priority, d) soundness and integrity of siding. I mean, obviously you need to fix any gaps in siding before putting chickens or whatever in there  but if the foundation, structural members and roof are not in acceptable shape then it is a waste of time and money to be futzing with siding.

It might not need much, it might be a total writeoff, I have no idea, I've seen barns looking generally like yours that span the whole range. If I had to guess I'd say "probably reasonably repairable for small animals" (mainly because the roof and walls still seem to be mostly plumb, which is less-common when there are severe foundation or roof-rot issues) "but I wouldn't be putting cattle or horses in there" (because it is just not built strong enough to begin with for them). It would be a real challenge to predatorproof your floor for chickens (I would recommend concrete or large pavers, honestly) and you might contemplate doing it for goats/sheep too just to reduce the amount of feed that gets filched by raccoons etc. 

But who knows. Only YOU are there to poke and sniff the wood to determine its condition, and wiggle on things to see what they do, and look at where things join together, and suchlike. If it seems sound, start fixing it, in the order of priorities given above; if it seems weebly or like almost all the wood is on its last legs, you might be better putting your time and materials into a new building even if it is initially smaller.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


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## lupinfarm (Aug 1, 2010)

It looks a lot like our little barn/shed Pat  

To me it looks like parts of the concrete foundation are missing/deteriorated and have left holes. I cannot tell but perhaps under the "dirt" could be a cement floor, though it could also just have a dirt floor and cement footings.


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## Calliopia (Aug 3, 2010)

Be very careful that what is holding up your barn is not the damaged siding.  We found this to be the case with our shed. Ripped off the water damaged siding that was in TERRIBLE condition and the roof nearly fell in on us.   Before you start ripping into it I'd get some structural columns and brace the absolute crap out of it so you don't end up with a collapsed barn on your hands, or head.   I don't know if the pictures are the "bad" sections or the whole building looks like that. 

1) It looks like your barn is in sections.  Do one section at a time and go from areas that need the least work first.  Once repaired they will help support the rest of the structure while you are working on it.  

2) Be careful when pulling off the siding. If the barn sways when you pull, stop.  Add more bracing and cut off the siding in sections at this point. 

3) Line up all your materials for a sections worth of work and do it all at once. Even if it sucks up more time than you want, keep going.   A strong wind and a partially sided building are NOT friends.   Even if you only rip off and replace 1 wall of siding at a time, don't leave it open for very long. 

4) I cannot stress bracing and supporting before you start deconstructing enough.  

5) Joists that are bad need to be replaced or carefully sistered or sandwiched.  You don't want to do all this work only to have the roof fall in next winter w/ a good load of snow.  

6) If you can manage it it would not hurt to put a row or three of cinderblocks to build up the foundation so you don't get this water damage again.  

7)  It probably IS fixable.  People have lived in worse and it hasn't fallen down yet so you've got something to work with. 

8) To keep manure, etc from piling up on the inside walls, I'd pick up flat bathroom wall sheeting or surround or even linoleum.  Stick a 2-4ft high ring of it around the inside and replace as needed. It doesn't have to be pretty it just has to block moisture from your wood siding. 

9)  Find someone else with a broken barn and offer to tear it out for free for the salvaged wood. 

10) Construction dumpsters on Sundays are your friend.  (I didn't say this and if you get in trouble it's not my fault -  Do NOT take anything that isn't in the dumpster)

11) Repair your foundation where needed. If the missing sections are small enough you can patch them. 

I like farm auctions, demolitions/renovations and construction sites for salvage/scavenged materials.  

 Best of luck with it!


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## dkluzier (Aug 3, 2010)

Looks like a barn to me too 

We have a very old old falling down exscuse for a barn and debated the same thing as you.  We got books with plans and thought about building it from a kit and finally decided against it.  Our construction know how would fill a thimble at best.

We have a Durabilt barn ordered and they will be doing the building for us.  The only thing that we will be doing is tearing the old barn down, which I am not totally sure is a good idea either.  Couldn't afford to pay someone to demolish it for us, that only adds to the cost, about $4,000.


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## lupinfarm (Aug 3, 2010)

Okay, so I found photos of my little barn that looks just like yours (siding and all!)

Here are the before shots. Sadly you can't really see the extent of the damage to the foundation but I can tell you! Oh the left side close to the house about half of the footings had crumbled away. This building is around 100 years old and the footings were made of some sort of parging/lime/whatever cement... probably lime. At the back  facing the house again, about 1/3 of the footings were crumbled/missing. The building had also started at some point to slip off the foundation but it appears to have halted a very long time ago and only moved maybe a 1/4". There was also an old door on one side that was no longer used which we filled in. 














Here you can see what we did with the footings re: patching them. Its not the prettiest job  and I bet Pat is cringing right now looking at this photo but it gets the job done and is sloped away from the building so water doesn't run in. We don't have a whole lot of soil to work with in this area so we had to do the best we could with this and the main focus was plugging up the holes (scraping out all the crumbling stuff first of course). Next time we have to do anything with this building we're hoping to either tear it down and start over or use hydraulic cement. 






And this is it today, well not exactly today but recently. I'm still not finished painting it =/ I know I know bad me! We replaced the siding, did some structural (replacing any rotted pieces) and mostly basic things. It needs some additional work but we're getting there!






Just so you know, this is what the inside looked like before we started work. It has that same lime/cement floor as the foundation and that big brown bit at the front is actually a "bunker". It used to be an ice house, basically a huge freezer.


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## TeamChaos (Aug 3, 2010)

Thank you all so much- for the pictures, the advice, for taking time to share your thoughts and experiences! Lupinfarm, I love the bunker! I hope I can get the Almosta barn to half that beauty!

After I read Patandchickens' post, I scampered up to check the roof (I hadn't really looked up with an eye for structural detail- I mean I watch the bats swoop every nite and I can tell you where all the birds' nests are- oops!)- I know the tin roof needs to be patched up/ replaced. I figure I can silicone the gaps and I'm talking to the junk man about getting some of his tin sheets, we'll see. The trusses and supports are solid- it really seems like it's a solid structure but the bottom washed out. I have been working on scavenging cinder blocks with hopes that I can rebuild some of the walls w/ cinderblock footings/bottoms to eliminate the perpetual water vs wood war. I'm definitely going to go one section at a time (which is hard for me, I'm so good at the demolition and destruction part ) and I've asked for help from a few more experienced souls in bracing it before I so much as pull another nail!

The front room (the "goat house" as it's always been called... although no goats have lived in it to my knowledge) is pretty hard hit. I think I might see about building a hay loft in the "Great room" of the barn for this winter and focus on making that dry, safe storage and giving myself a little more time to finish that front room right.

One lucky find is that there IS concrete flooring throughout. Not a solid piece but various poured squares of it. I took down a feed bin and a half wall in one of the stanchions and made a rather dry and safe grain room for the horse and chicken food- hooray! 


Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for talking me through this and contributing so much- I had the sort of day where everything I needed to get done required about a thousand more steps than expected, so it's a much needed pick-me-up!


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## patandchickens (Aug 4, 2010)

TeamChaos said:
			
		

> I figure I can silicone the gaps and I'm talking to the junk man about getting some of his tin sheets, we'll see.


Use a good exterior caulk with as long a rating (yrs) as you can find, probably NOT silicone caulk. I forget exactly what we used on our barn roof, some sort of butyl caulk maybe? Read labels.

If you cannot afford to replace the whole roof and it is really not in bad shape, you might consider alternatively a combination of a) re-screw the whole thing THOROUGHLY and then b) get someone out to paint it -- a BARN painting guy, not a house painter! There are special barn-roof paints they can spray on that will do a pretty good job stopping up all the little leaks that are too small to find/caulk.



> it really seems like it's a solid structure but the bottom washed out. I have been working on scavenging cinder blocks with hopes that I can rebuild some of the walls w/ cinderblock footings/bottoms to eliminate the perpetual water vs wood war.


A difficulty with this is that you really need a _wide/deep _foundation to prevent uneven settling/heaving. Doing a whole new foundation of that sort for even just half the barn would be quite a very-large project (and not cheap either, even if you do all the work yourself) Have you considered concrete piers for the posts, instead? 

If you do a concrete pier (in sonotube) under each post, you can infill between them with pressure-treated wood, up to the point where it seems safe to start putting on regular siding.



> I've asked for help from a few more experienced souls in bracing it before I so much as pull another nail!


Help is definitely good  

Basically though what you want to do is nail stout diagonal braces *in both directions* on any wall that is going to be affected by a given "unit of work". A sort of chevron pattern of braces usually works well (e.g. slanting up on the E half of the wall, slanting down on the W half of the wall) or a sideways chevron if it's just a short section of wall. Put the braces across the longest dimension of the wall section that you can -- e.g. from extreme lower left to extreme upper right, not shorter or less-slopy. Additional bracing is needed if you're going to fool with parts of the support structure.



> I think I might see about building a hay loft in the "Great room" of the barn for this winter and focus on making that dry, safe storage and giving myself a little more time to finish that front room right.


Aside from the whole issue of whether a loft is really the best place for hay storage, bear in mind that if you build a loft you should really sink or sister-in its own posts, not just add to the load on existing posts. (Exception would be if you have enough familiarity with engineering tables and wood condition/strength to convince yourself that the original barn structure is SO overbuilt that it can easily bear the considerable extra weight of a loft)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat


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