Well Used Cattle Barn

[greenacres212]

I acquired this barn in April of 2016. It used to be an old cattle barn here in Michigan until they stopped farming in the early 90's. Right now the front foundation is the only one that is savable. The rest of the foundations are crumbled to pieces and have to be rebuilt. The upper level has mountains of loose straw in it that we have slowly been removing. We try to pick away at this barn as we can, but the rest of the property, including my house, has needed some attention.

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[Dave]

Thanks for the post and the pictures.
If at all possible, that barn should be saved. Would you have a use for it, if it was done?
Keep us updated , please.

[greenacres212]

We are 100% sure we are going to save the barn. We bought the property because of the barn. I have done a lot of work to clean up around the barn. It had vines covering 80% of it when we moved in and the grass was grown up all around it. I am currently trying to "make it safe" as the back of the barn is all being supported by the interior columns. The foundations are crumbled. Then when we get the funds I am going to pour a concrete footing around the side and back that is crumbled. I plan on installing a block wall all the way up to the main level sill on the side you see in the picture as that gets the brunt of the wind and then the back I am going to rebuild the rock foundation and leave it open.

Our plans when structurally sound is to rent it out to friends and family. We thought about making it a venue but its a lot of time to commit plus you have to bring it up to commercial code.

A dream would be to install a large patio on the back side of it, have my own antique museum below, build a loft with a balcony inside and use the main level for parties/get-togethers.

Pictures: 1 shows the barn when we bought it, another shows one of the doors I fixed up going into the silo shed, and the other is the old cattle troffs. I have torn out the cattle troffs to give me more open floor space.

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[greenacres212]

Here are a few more pictures. One of me in front of the barn this spring (2017). Another one of an old water pump that fed the troffs (Yes we are keeping this, because its cool). The other one is the inside of the silo shed. And in case anyone was wondering I took the front doors off because the wind was blowing them around, so I took them off and working on beefing them up and adding something at the bottom to stop it from blowing up.

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[ohiosam]

Fix the roof then the foundation. After that you can take your time on the stuff in between