DIY barn repair

[patandchickens]

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