Old Barn Repair - Update

I want to thank JimN and all who sent me information on available barn repair services. I am keeping every name for future reference. Turns out I found a guy who lives about 4 miles from me whose life work and passion (and I do mean passion) is repairing and saving old barns and houses. He owns 11 houses and 7 barns that he bought solely to save from demolition and has no plans on selling any of them. The barns are full of neatly stacked rough cut hardwoods and beams that he has salvaged from unsaveable buildings. He came from a low income and terrible childhood and is truly a self made man. When he was around 10 years old while wondering through old buildings he became fascinated with the construction of floor joists and rafters and the rest is history. He is now 42, does not drink or smoke and still single. He gets up at five every morning and is on the job at eight and I have never seen him were a jacket. If the temperature is below twenty he will add a knit hat and brown jersey gloves. He says if he won the lottery he would still get up every morning and do the same thing, and to know him is to believe him.
I didn’t start this as a tribute to Ben; it’s just refreshing to see a young man with honest passion for honest work.
He arrived at my home on a Sunday at about 2pm. In five minutes he told me what had to be done immediately to save the barn. We made a financial deal and he was back at 4pm with a large pickup full of ladders, jacks and posts. By 5:30pm he had the roof jacks in place and ladders set and said he would be back in the am to start the repairs.
We decided to do the job in stages for both financial and weather reasons. The first part was rebuilding two posts and sandwiching a center cross beam with 16inch LVL and rebuilding the foundation for the center post. LVL is laminated plywood beams.
I am not restoring my barn I am repairing it.
Here are some photos of the beginning work.

Dell

All the people that looked at the barn for bids estimated it at around 1860-1890.

I don't normally post large photos but modern view wasn't working for me today.

Dell

That's great to see someone saving an old barn. I see too many of them crumbling away around here. There is one along Kansas hwy. 150 just west of US 50 that I drive by often, and it makes me sick to see how it's deteriorated over the last 20 years. I think it's part of a big ranch now and I'm sure they don't care.
Mom had a guy come in after Dad passed away and rebuild the rock foundation under the south end of their barn. It had been crumbling away for several years and finally had the frame drooping on that end. Only problem was when they jacked it up and rebuilt the foundation, it came out about an inch too high and it caused a slight "spread" to show higher up. Still, it made it solid again. I don't know the age of the barn, but the frame was pegged together and not bolted or nailed. She then had a metal roof put on because it was cheaper than shingling it again. I had composition shingled over the wood shingles when I was in high school in the late '50s and that lasted 30 years.[/i]

Dellbertt, great to see you are working on your barn. Thanks for sharing pictures also. The greatest threat to old barns is apathy. I've included a link to the Wisc. Barn Preservation Program. As popular as they were, there are no longer yearly barn preservation workshops. Not being a barn owner, they were still a great thing to attend. With the dairy situation, i.e. poor prices, high input costs and mainly huge dairy operations coupled with the high cost of maintaining a barn, the acceleration of the barns demise is going to be a blur. It appears your barn now serves as a tractor storage structure. I like the captioning in your photos. Good luck with your project.
poke here: Wisc. Barn Preservation Program

What state are you in?

That is great, Dell. I'm glad you did it. mike

We just had a ton of work done to our old bank barn. A bunch of the floor beams were rotted off where they set on the wall. About 10 new oak beams fixed that. Then they went into the basement. The posts had gradually rotted and settled. This pulled the whole barn down. We actually went upstairs and found a vertical beam pulled out of its joint because the post below it in the basement had settled. A bunch of jacking and a new post and fotter solved the problem. I think they jacked the beam 4 or 5 inches to get it back up where it should be...It will be good for another 200 years now...

The nice part about working on barns is everything is visable and accessible. My barn is close to 250 years old. When I started working on it forty years ago, 25% of the posts ends were rotted and all the sills needed to be replaced.

To make it more functional for my needs, the cellar had to be dug out and concrrete poured. Half of the next floor up was replaced with pre-streesed concrete. That meant much of the foundation had to be replaced. ] am still amazed at the fifty foot hand hewn plates, forty foot girts, and twenty five foot rafters all adzed into 8x8 lumber.

I have ezpanded the square footage by 80% and currently live in it.