The $500 barn

[yogifink]

The following weekend I began to put up the beams that will support the roof.

The timber is coming from our property from when we cleared. Unfortunately, when I was clearing the lot, I has cutting lumber to match the dimensions of our first set of plans. Now that we have changed plans, the logs I need are different sizes. So, some of the wood has been sitting for about 10 months, cut down last November. These are what I want to use, cut in the winter with no sap, dry(ish), and the bark falling off. However, I don't have enough long ones, and rather than putting in joint I opted to fell a few more. Theses suck, full of sap and needing to be debarked.

Anyway, the beams are about 35 feet or so long. I dropped the beams in front of the posts and marked where the beams will sit on the posts. Then I moved and cut out some kerfs (flat spots). The cuts are ugly, to be polite. I wanted to provide a lot of wiggle room. I'm doing this by myself and only wanted to put them up once, not put one up, take it down, trim, put back up, and so on.

I had to put the middle beam up last. Considering the taper on the logs the kerfs have to be cut at different depths. So I wanted to be able to make sure the roof slope would be correct before I made my cuts. After I got the back and front ones up and pinned, I realized I couldn't get the bobcat inside the coop to raise up the middle beam...

Commence lots of cursing.

I got it in the eventually, but not before nearly breaking all of the purlins, and my legs while giving my self a double hernia!

 

[paintedChix]

Found your other two pages! Not sure why I've never seen them before.

WOW - LOVE how sturdy your run is! My hooped coops aren't that sturdy or heavy.

OK, see you are WAY ahead of us in recycling and building with whats available. Wish you were still in Aberdeen... ??s... would have been fun to ask in person.

 

[yogifink]

Yep, life is grand! Where in NC are you now? Keeping up with some of the permaculture stuff? Following the All American Farm Tour with the Justin Rhodes family? I can't imagine all this, though do like parts...

I see nothing wrong w/ using the lumber from your property! Really looking forward to your shares on how you are doing each part. Are you going to be doing DLM on the floors of the coop/brooder spots or out in the runs (if they become "nude")?

Have you looked at pulling down some old buildings in your area (you can put an ad in Craigs List for that or find one) - to utilize materials for building your barn? Some folks around here will go for that, some won't - it's a thought. Not sure what you do...

We actually stayed with the Rhodes Family a while back, they run a B and B in Asheville. When we were doing our soul searching, this is were we intended to land before we decided to stay put. We live in an area called the Sandhills, if you couldn't tell from some of the pictures

Yes, DLM is the plan in the coop. For the runs, we plan to turn them into our compost factories. Justin made a short documentary on this method. We were already doing something like this before we met them, and once we saw it on a larger scale, have decided to go all out.

I used an old barn to build our last coop, the tree house. With this one, I have something else up my sleeve...

 

[yogifink]

Found your other two pages! Not sure why I've never seen them before.

WOW - LOVE how sturdy your run is! My hooped coops aren't that sturdy or heavy.

OK, see you are WAY ahead of us in recycling and building with whats available. Wish you were still in Aberdeen... ??s... would have been fun to ask in person.

We're in Pinebluff. Shoot me a pm.

 

[yogifink]

Here is where I am at now. I have got a couple of the rafters up and set in place. I have to cut notches in the rafters so that the sit on the beams. Between cutting the notches and wiggling the rafters around and trying to get everything as level as possible, I'm averaging 2.5 rafters for a full days work. 5 in so far, 4 more to go.

They are ran wild right now, meaning not cut to length. I'll trim them all up at the same time once they are all in.

As of right now, they are just sitting there. My plan is to pin with rebar nails. Ill make nails from the left over rebar from our house. My project for tonight.

 

[Kiki]

 

[Elyrian1]

Loved the intro post, congratulations on the family expansion, the new place, everything! I'm curious to see how the barn comes out.

 

[BirdHead]

$500 is hell of a cheap barn! You must got the hook up on wood, wire and roofing!!!

 

[BirdHead]

It costed me nearly $600 to build this !

 

[yogifink]

$500 is hell of a cheap barn! You must got the hook up on wood, wire and roofing!!!

If you know where to look...

So far I'm into it for about 50 bucks for the skit boards.

The two other coops I did write ups on where also built around the dollar but I think its more about getting creative with what you have access to.