Taking Care of An Old Barn

 

Taking care of an old barn should be a regular habit on a homestead. If old barns are not cared for regularly they soon fall into disrepair. We have all driven down those back country roads to look off into a field and see what must have been a nice barn at one time. However, because of neglect it is now a pile of ruin. A haven for rats, snakes, and spiders. What a shame we all think. This can be prevented from happening, but it does take some effort. Our own barn is now about 100 years old. The man who lived here before us took excellent care of this barn and then he passed away. His widow was not able to do much and the barn was neglected for a new years. It didn't suffer much during this time because he cared for it so well during his lifetime. When we moved here to Willow Pond we took on the job of caring and keeping this old barn. The first thing we did was clean it out really well. This allowed us to see what issues there might be. We noticed that the added on shed roof was sagging because the foundation had moved around. Parts of it were not really even on a proper foundation. We live in the south so it is always best for any building to not have wood touching the ground. So we tore the walls down to studs, jack it up, laid a proper foundation, set the walls down on the foundation, rebuilt the walls, repaired/replaced any roof supports, replaced a couple pieces of roofing metal and voila'....a beautiful attachment to the barn that will stand for years to come. The next chore was to paint the barn. This took awhile as it is a very big barn. Then we replaced part of the floor on the livestock side and some roofing supports on that side as well. You get the point. Each season or year there is maintenance to be done on the barn. Some barn maintenance projects are large. Some are small. Much of it depends on how well, or how often, you stay on top of the maintenance check list. Do you fix small things right away or do you let them grow into bigger repairs. We like to plan barn maintenance chores in the spring and the fall. We got behind on this schedule when I was working at the restaurant. With both my husband and I working so much it was difficult to keep up with regular daily chores, much less extra projects. Better planning would have helped. Better scheduling would have helped also. So here I am, home again and able to do that planning and preparation. Spring is right around the corner and I am making my list of barn repairs and maintenance that we will need to take care of this spring and then another list for this fall. I am sure there will be things in the summer that come up. They will either be take care of immediately or they will wind up on the fall list.  Take a look at your old barn and get to working on that list. Old barns are beautiful treasures that don't need to be lost. There are too many pinterest pictures still to be taken! Blessings, Kat