Barn Projects

Within the last week our old barn has taken on a new look as a couple of projects have been completed. At the entrance to the barn, old broken concrete was removed and a new 26 by 32 foot section of concrete poured to form our "courtyard".



With the rebuilding of the wall at our barn complete we turned our attention to landscaping the work area.



Crushed stone was added around the new concrete and drive way area.

Barn Wall Project

If you've followed this blog for the past few years, you know we take on summer projects. There have been several clean-up/fix-up projects at our barn and cabin this summer but this barn wall project required the most time and labor.

When we acquired the barn property in 2001 the stone wall at the entrance to the lower floor of the barn was in bad shape and leaning over.  This wall is over one hundred years old and as time pasted, the wall continued to slowly move more to the downhill and a gap in the wall widened. The following two photos show the wall before we started this project.



The first step in this project was to correct as much of the leaning as possible. Since the dirt behind the wall was pushing the top of the wall over, I used my backhoe to remove the dirt so the stone could be pushed back. With the dirt behind the wall removed I used a wooden block and an 8 pound hammer to pound each stone back, a fraction of an inch at a time. After a couple of weeks of hammering the two sections of the wall were reunited and upright.

To prevent the wall from pulling apart again, concrete and rebar were added on the back side of the wall.



With the old sections of the wall stabilized, new stone was added to patch/rebuild missing sections of the wall.  About 30% to 40% of the wall was replaced. The wall isn't perfectly straight/square but it does look like its been there for over a hundred year.

Barn Project

It seems like we take on a construction project each summer that involves concrete. This summer's project was a new floor in the basement of our barn. The barn is over a hundred years old and was once a working dairy barn. The old, uneven concrete floor was designed for milking cows and not storage. Two years ago we fixed the floor on the south side of the barn and this year it was time to fix the north side floor.

The first task was removing the old concrete. Much of the old concrete had deteriorated and was able to be broken into manageable chunks. I was able to use my old John Deere tractor and a back bucket haul the old concrete out of the barn.

With the old concrete removed, the floor was leveled with crushed stone and compacted.

The floor was now ready for new concrete. Due to the size of this concrete job we hired Jim Histand and his crew to pour the new concrete.

The new concrete floor.

We also had Jim and his crew pour a section of concrete in front of one of the barn's garage doors, while they were here.

The finished approached to the garage door. This section of concrete also has a floor drain and will be used to wash our vehicles.

Going... Going... Gone!!!

Over the past month the barn at Jason and Mary Abell's has gone through a dismantling to make room for a new pole barn.

Start of barn board removal



Barn boards removed



Remove structural support and collapse barn.

Barn project

Ever since we bought the farm property we have been working on fixing the barn. Last summer we started working on shoring up the foundation on the south wall of the barn. After a year of jacking up the barn and pouring a new concrete foundation we reached a milestone in the project and were able to finally pour a new concrete floor on the south bay of the barn.


The south bay of the barn is 13 feet by 45 feet and required almost 12 cubic yards of concrete to bring it close to level with the old concrete in the middle bay of the barn. The new concrete is almost a foot thick in one area to correct a sag in the old floor caused by movement of the old foundation.

Because of the size of this concrete pour (12 cubic yards) we subcontracted this work to Jim Histand. Jim and his crew made the hard work of pouring the new floor look easy. This concrete pour was exactly one year from the day we poured a new footer for a barn support.

Concrete wall

The concrete retaining wall at the barn is now complete, the drain lines are connected and we've started to back fill behind the wall.





We have now moved our concrete work to the inside of the barn and will work on footers and supports to prepare of the for pouring a section of the barn floor.

Concrete work at the barn

Our barn is over a hundred years old and needed some work to help it last for a few more years. This barn had been built in a couple of different stages over several years with reclaimed beams from other barns. The support posts of the barn had been placed on large, flat rocks, placed on dirt (hard-pan). A concrete floor was added later but poured around the support posts leaving the bottom of the posts embedded in dirt. Over the years the bases of some the support posts started to rot.



We want to fix the old floor of the barn but first need to re-set the supports on a solid base. We got a couple of 20 ton jacks and raised the barn enough to remove the old post. We then removed old concrete floor, dirt and rock until we found a solid spot to pour a new concrete footer with re-bar. Once the wide base was in place we poured a new concrete extension above the floor line for the post to set on. The bottom of the old support post was cut off to the correct length and the rot removed. The post is then reinstalled (level and square) and bolted to the new concrete base.



Another part of this project required the installation of a new retaining wall on the south side of the barn to replace an old section of the stone support wall that had fallen due to frost movement. We started by removing the dirt and rock from the old wall section. A 6 inch thick base of concrete with re-bar was poured to form a level platform to build the new wall on. We then poured a 5 inch high section of the new wall to form a "key" to hold the forms for the new wall.



Once the "key" was ready more re-bar was installed and the concrete forms for the bottom section of the wall were attached to the "key".


The bottom section of the wall is 32 inches high, 8 feet long and 10 inches wide. We mixed 11 batches of concrete in our mixer and completed this pour in a couple of hours.



Once the bottom section cured we removed the forms and moved them up for the top section of the wall and clamped the form in place. This section only required 8 mixer loads and was completed in less than two hours.



A new 5 foot high retaining wall. This photo shows the wall, Mary and the cement mixer. Another extension of the wall will be poured on the right end of the wall where the re-bar is sticking out.