When I returned home from sea this Monday, Gustav suggested that we did some work on the northern gable of the barn.
The barn was originally designed so that you could drive straight through it, and unload all the grain in the middle where there was a pit and a grain elevator. Being of this design meant that both ends had large barn doors.
The southern one I replaced probably 10 years ago, but since the northern part ends in the paddock for the horses, making a new gable hasn't been high up on my list.
Gustav suggested a rather elaborate design where the inside would be covered in some thin plywood, so we would have a place to put our logos, and I couldn't really argue about that. Instead of the old one piece door, we are making it like a wall with a regular door and a double hatch to allow logs to be loaded onto the sawmill. It will be a major improvement over the old system, where I had to squeeze myself through the same hole as the logs, and I couldn't close up that hole, meaning that there was a lot of draft through the barn.
That barn with the half-hip roof and the red brick outside looks just like the old barns/farms north of Oldenburg. The big door for wagons with grain, hay, etc was not centered on the front of the building like in most other North German farms. Is the roof of sheetmetal now? What kind of wood are you using to frame in the opening?
ReplyDeleteThank you for the posting and the pics.
Alfred
Hi Alfred.
DeleteThanks for commenting.
It is funny, but I hadn't given much thought to if it was normal or not with this type of design. I think it is pretty normal in Denmark, but there could be local variations as well.
Our barn is not particularly old, as far as I remember, it is built in 1948, so maybe the design of those barns that are much older is different.
The roof is sheet metal, which the original roof also was. I replaced the roof 10 years ago, because the old metal plates had begun rusting through. The old plates were a very traditional kind: EMU brand from Wolverhampton. They have a distinct pattern, and on the inside there is a painted emu, and it says EMU brand Wolverhampton on each plate.
The structure will be made out of spruce, and the covering inside is some 6 mm plywood. On the outside I ended up buying some pine boards that are originally meant to be for a roof inside your house, but they have a nice profile and all the strength will come from the frame anyway.
I intended on getting some more traditional boards like old type floor boards, but since the price of materials has sky rocketed during the last year, I went for these as the lumberyard could give me a really good price on them.
I am going to paint it red once it is done, just like it was originally.
Brgds
Jonas
Hi Jonas,
DeleteThank you for the details. My parent's farm - north of Osnabrueck - was rebuilt after WW2 - also in the regional, older layout but with less timber and more brick. Only the roof framing was done with timbers (Spruce).
After sending my earlier comment, I remembered the name of for the style of the farm building that looks like yours: gulf house. Here is the wikipedia link with some pics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_house.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of a large wedding held in the center of one of those large farm houses.
Alfred
Hi Alfred
DeleteSorry for the late reply.
Thanks for the link, I think that our barn was built with recycled timbers, because the timbers that hold up the roof structure are hand hewn with an axe, and that was definitely not the norm even in 1948.
So I suspect that there uses to be an older barn that was taken down and then the materials were re-used.
I would like to build a barn with a Zollingerdach at some point, well - maybe not necessarily a barn, but some sort of building. I really like the look of that structure, and the idea that it was invented to save materials.
Brgds
Jonas