Restoration Plan

Restoration Chronology
Horse Barn
Working Barn
1920s Fill-in
1940s Add-on

Restoration Discoveries & Questions

photo - East Wall before restoration

2000 - 2001

The restoration of the East Wall began with demolition. Before the oxen had even moved into their new ox barn, volunteers in the FarmHands program broke apart and removed the concrete slab outside the door of the ox stall. The removal of this slab exposed an old drain pipe from what was once the milk room. It wasn't until September 2001, however, that serious work began on this wall.

photo - FarmHands fathers removing concrete slab
photo - Foundation showing drain pipe

The work began, as with every section of the barn, with careful jacking and support of the upper section of the barn, to allow for the replacement of the sill and lower framing. On this wall we used posts and jacks from the floor to the lower tie beam and from the lower beam (mow floor) to the upper, so that the weight was evenly distributed between two tenons. After it was supported, we began exploratory demolition.

photo - Support for the east wall

The lower section of wall at the south end was in poor condition, and had only been held in place by a couple of nails in the siding and window trim, a small part of the corner column, and the electric fence wire. Once the siding, trim, and wiring were removed, a good pull removed this section of wall entirely. The siding was then removed from the next two bays to expose the framing. It was in worse condition than we thought and required replacing everything from the mow level down.

photo - Exposed framing of the east wall

Thom Livingston began work on the east wall foundation to allow us to install a new sill. Although there were still intact sections of stonework, where the drain had gone through the stonework and where the ox stall doorway had been, the foundation had to be completely rebuilt from slightly below grade. To allow work to commence as soon as possible on the wall, Thom focused first on the foundation sections that were mostly intact. This gave us three points to set the new sill on and Thom could return later to finish the foundation wall.

photo - New sill in place

As soon as we had enough foundation to set the new sill on, we installed the new sills for the east wall and the south wall at the same time, half-lapping them at the corner. The original sills clearly show axe marks, indicating that they were hand-hewn, and so we are replacing them with timbers fashioned by the same method. The original sill for the east wall was in two pieces, spliced just south of the midpoint of the wall.

2002

photos - Sequence of photos showing the hand hewing technique for making sills
photo - New south and east wall sills in place

We moved the splice to just north of the midpoint. This allowed us to replace all three columns that we had been able to expose so far. We were not able to work on the full length of the wall because the feed room was still in this section of the barn and there was still some hay in the mow.

photo - Splice in the new sill
photo - East wall framing exposed up to the feed room

Once the new sills were installed, we were able to splice the new piece into the corner post. We erected towers of cribbing along the east wall to use as a scaffold to work from. We spliced the corner column near the top, cutting the old one just below where the angle braces join it from the top joint. We had to rig a block and tackle and ropes to assist us in raising this column into place. The next two columns didn't need to be cut off so high and we put our joints just above the mow floor level. The shorter length of the new timbers for these columns allowed two men to raise them without the aid of any ropes. We then installed the girts in this wall and put the studs in. (For a more detailed look at the work to replace the southeast corner post see the section on the Southeast Corner.)

photo - East wall in April 2002 with new corner post in place

On Saturday, March 9 FarmHand parents painted the primed window frames on the east wall of the horse barn and painted a number of primed pieces of siding.

photos - Painting east wall window frames and siding

During the week ending March 23 some additional work was done on the east wall upper levels especially the framing for the three mow level doors.

photo - mow level doors

In late July work began on siding the east wall.

photo - progress on August 2, 2002

During December and early January siding the east wall was completed.

2003

photo - east wall on January 25.