PHOTO - farm building converted in house

Hi Guys;
This is what a farm building looks like when converted into a house. This place was originally built in 1725 out of 2 feet thick sandstone blocks. Converted in 1988.
Its part of a rectangular courtyard with the entrance into the yard on the right through the archway. This particular house was originally a barn where the windows are would have been a doorway(with wooden doors) from floor to roof for wagons to pass through loaded with hay or unthreshed straw to be stored. The small pitched roof extension above the front door would have been a doorway where straw or hay could have been pitched into the loft area from a cart.
In winter the unthreshed straw was threshed by flails during winter, and the draught of wind would have helped seperate the grain from the chaff. When they are converted the original hand hewn oak beams & trusses are left (on display). They are not energy efficient homes - I can testify to this fact, its my home.
Cheers David

Theres a few old barns that have been converted here in Iowa also.

Yours looks great as well as the ones here.

But I don't think any are to efficient, still they would be great to live in.

Gary

I was actually quite stunned at just how well the old hay insulated the inside of the barn. 90 degrees plus inside, but you would start to shiver as you travelled the length of the center section. Hay piled 9 feet high when I started, but when I got down to the dirt I had to quit for a few days to let the frost thaw out.

I took out two feed rooms, leaving a giant 19x17 hole in the north wall, making a machine shed of the center, and storage around the outside.

Since the barn had never been completely emptied, some of that hay could have been easily 80+ years old. Took all summer to remove it all by hand. Oh the good ol' days.

Nice house! Did you do the conversion? It's fairly common here for folks to either convert an existing timber frame barn or tear one down and reuse the framing to build a house.