After the unique experience of converting a barn into a home, I have to say it’s defiantly a life changing way to live. My wife and I choose a barn conversion over standard construction because of the lower building costs, not to mention being just plain different from the rest of the folks around these parts.
We choose an old stock barn that was built near a hundred years ago and was owned by a single family for generations. It had a lot of cultivatable land attached to it too. What a blessing. Using the same saw mill type of lumber the barn was built with we made a quite comfortable home complete with all the amenities. And with all the fertile land surrounding it, I became a part time farmer.
Three of our children were partially raised in our barn home and they say they would not have done it any different if they had been the ones choosing the type of home they lived in. My youngest son Will took over the stalls that were used for keeping the horses and cows separate. Matter of fact, he helped me with a major part of the remodeling by building the floors and walls of his room in the same basic rough wood the barn was built with. His big thing was making sure to leave the door open so I could ask him “What’s the matter with you? You live in a barn?” to which he always answered “Duh dad, yes I do!”.
My daughters were the hardest to please because of the one bathroom I designed into the house. Seems I never got around to building a second, plus the fact the only bathroom was upstairs in the loft. I’ll get around to building that second bathroom sooner or later even though older kids have already moved out and started families of their own.
And my dear wife, bless her heart, is always after me to change this or enlarge that. I learned a long time ago not to ask her for a “honey do list”! Last one she composed took me over a year to complete.
The greatest appeal to me with this type of home is, even though we have a front porch, doors and windows, very few realize our barn is a home. This adds to our privacy which we take very seriously.
Link to “Converting A Barn Into A Home, or otherwise known as Redesigning a Barn to Make it a House“… This is a Free Course in Drafting and Design! Donations are appreciated…
