This is, or I should say was, our beautiful almost 100 year old barn. This little barn was one of the many reasons that we chose the property that we bought in Bellville. Unfortunately, one of the negatives to said property were all of the dead trees, remember the roof disaster? So we set about taking these trees down one by one until all that was left was this bohemouth next to the barn. I would estimate that it was at least 50+ feet tall and very dead!
We got quotes, and decided to use one of our local guys who has been helping us with some other things, including replacing the roof on the main house. He did his best and took as many precautions as he could, but that tree was a literal monster, and it fell where it wanted to taking out our beautiful barn in the process.
Thank goodness all of the structures on our property are insured. Of course, that doesn’t bring back our beautiful barn. After a few (tons) of tears were shed, we set about rebuilding. The insurance company totaled the barn, so most of it had to be replaced, which ended up being a good thing because so much of the wood was dry rotted. The bad thing was that the amount that the insurance company gave us to rebuild was only a fraction of what it would cost. The quotes we got were between $35-$70K. So we decided it was time to ante up on our building skills, and we got to work. I drew up a little sketch of what we were looking for. A lot of it changed as we worked on the barn, but we still got the main concept of what we wanted.
Robert, our go to guy, rebuilt the lean to and top of the barn. He also installed new electrical wiring and replaced the rotten wood on the back of the barn. It was decided to save on costs, we would build the doors and gate, as well as do the painting and all trim work. This is an area where experience with contractors is key. We have none, so our lesson learned is to ALWAYS get what is going to be done in writing. Everything turned out okay though, because David and I had a great time rebuilding the parts of the barn that were not quoted.
We did have one HUGE bonus though! We had enough leftover roofing from the main house to use on the barn roof, which saved a ton of money!
Here are some photos of the building process while the contractors were doing their magic.
Stay tuned for Part Two of The Little Red Barn, where it will be at about 80% completion!
