The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

Goats will love that and they are fun to have. Sounds like s nice barn. Mine is just 6×8 with a hay and feed storage area. Fencing? Whatcha gonna do for fencing? How many goats? How large of an area. I let mine out for a while at a time to eat and then call them back by banging the food tin.

 

The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

 

The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

That's a great little structure! I'd be done already if I hadn't over complicated things… ;-)

For fencing, I'm planning to start with a permanent enclosure about 25' square directly in front of the barn doors as an area for easy handling, etc. I'll probably go with Redbrand's 48" woven wire goat fence for that. The area around the barn is mostly choked with blackberry and thistle (which I hear goats like), so I'm planning to get some Premier 1 electric goat fencing and make temporary enclosure to rotate them around and clear out some of the area. Have you had any experience with either of these kinds of fences?

Thanks for responding; I can use all the advice and words of experience I can get!

 

The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

I have the 48" red brand and two strand of barbed wire above that for a total of 6'. Im trying to keep coyotes and bobcats out. So far successful and goats have stayed in. Never tried e fence. The redbrand was expensive but seemed to be the best.

 

The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

Good to hear about red brand. I'm going to go with that. For the coyotes and occasional cougar up here, I recently got an Akbash livestock guardian dog (he's about 4 month old now…and 40+lbs). Right now, he lives in the chicken run with 9 birds; he does great and doesn't chase them or anything, although it took the chickens quite a while to get used to the idea of a dog in their living space!

 

The Crazy Idea

In 2012, my wife and our two daughters and I moved from Chicago to southwestern Washington state, outside the small town of Woodland where we bought a lovely five-acre rural property with a small but lovely house. We wanted a change of pace from the city and a chance to be more connected to the land and our food supply. It was this change that also got me into woodworking, after I inherited my grandfather's hand tools. He was a building contractor in the 1920s and 30s, and his 1909 Disstons and planes started me down the path of electron-free woodworking.

This year, we decided we wanted to add a few goats to our lives, and that meant we needed a shelter for them. Since we would like to eventually milk our does and we live in the rainy Northwest, I wanted a more substantial shelter that included a milking station and room to store hay, feed, etc. Trying to live simply (and build cheaply), I decided to build the barn myself, using as much natural material from our land as possible. I am planning to build an ocatgonal barn about 18 feet across, using a post-and-beam framework with the wall in-filled with cordwood masonry. I chose an octagon because it has a larger enclosed area with less wall perimeter than a rectangle. It will have a living roof over reciprocal frame rafters. More on that later.

While our property, which we call Barewood, has many resources including 4 acres under timber (mostly red alder), it also has the challenge of being on a fairly steep slope and being overgrown with blackberries (hence the need for goats). The best location for the barn was near the garden…which means it is also a good hike uphill from the house and shop. Here is how the chosen site looked when I started:

Keep in mind that I have no power tools apart from a chainsaw, and that means no earth moving equipment except a wheelbarrow and shovels….

The dog will help. I have the potential for bears and mountain lions too, but not very likely. There are some things goats shouldn't eat. Might want to check into that, though they seem to know what's good and not.

 

Harvesting Timber

Rather than buying posts from a big box store or even purchasing 6×6 timbers from a local sawmill, I wanted to use some of the alders and maples that cover most of my property. Without a broadaxe or adze, I have limited means to hew the timbers square, so I'll be using them as roundwood. Fortunately, Ben Law's book on Roundwood Timber Framing provides a great resource to plan it out.

I am planning to rest the eight upright posts on prepared padstones rather than sink them into the ground in concrete like a conventional pole barn. The height of the posts is only going to be 7'6" above ground, since the barn is meant for goats and me (at 5'6", I'm the tallest in my immediate family!). To give myself some wiggle room, I would cut the poles at 9' long. The sides of the octagon are square, meaning the posts stand 7'6" apart from their neighbors. The horizontal beams, then, need to span that distance and extend at least a little beyond the tops of the poles, so I'll cut those at about 9' as well. The rafters will need to span a little over halfway across the diameter of the walls, but will also need about 24" of eave overhand to protect the cordwood walls from rain. I decided on a 14' length for these.

The first step was harvesting the timber and getting it drying. I started in November 2013 (though I'm only blogging about it now). I scouted my woods looking for suitable posts, beams, and rafters. I wanted logs of a suitable mass to be able to support the weight of the rafter and the living roof, but still possible for me to handle moving alone without power equipment or draft animals. I ended up selecting post sections of about 8" diameter (tapering to 6" or s0), and beam dimensions in the 4"-6" range. My rafters started at about 6" at the base, tapering to about 4"-5" after their 14-foot length.

Here are some of the trees on the ground…

...and my fancy lumber truck (otherwise known as a Hyundai Santa Fe)

 

Harvesting Timber

Rather than buying posts from a big box store or even purchasing 6×6 timbers from a local sawmill, I wanted to use some of the alders and maples that cover most of my property. Without a broadaxe or adze, I have limited means to hew the timbers square, so I'll be using them as roundwood. Fortunately, Ben Law's book on Roundwood Timber Framing provides a great resource to plan it out.

I am planning to rest the eight upright posts on prepared padstones rather than sink them into the ground in concrete like a conventional pole barn. The height of the posts is only going to be 7'6" above ground, since the barn is meant for goats and me (at 5'6", I'm the tallest in my immediate family!). To give myself some wiggle room, I would cut the poles at 9' long. The sides of the octagon are square, meaning the posts stand 7'6" apart from their neighbors. The horizontal beams, then, need to span that distance and extend at least a little beyond the tops of the poles, so I'll cut those at about 9' as well. The rafters will need to span a little over halfway across the diameter of the walls, but will also need about 24" of eave overhand to protect the cordwood walls from rain. I decided on a 14' length for these.

The first step was harvesting the timber and getting it drying. I started in November 2013 (though I'm only blogging about it now). I scouted my woods looking for suitable posts, beams, and rafters. I wanted logs of a suitable mass to be able to support the weight of the rafter and the living roof, but still possible for me to handle moving alone without power equipment or draft animals. I ended up selecting post sections of about 8" diameter (tapering to 6" or s0), and beam dimensions in the 4"-6" range. My rafters started at about 6" at the base, tapering to about 4"-5" after their 14-foot length.

Here are some of the trees on the ground…

...and my fancy lumber truck (otherwise known as a Hyundai Santa Fe)

Wow, you've really set out a big plan. Roundwood timber framing seems like a good choice. I haven't ever heard of it, but it seems really obvious in hindsight. Squaring up timbers by hand for a reasonable size structure would take months if not years for one person.

I'm really interested in how your project turns out and the process, I'd read as much of your blog as you have time for detailing everything.

 

Preparing the Timbers and Digging the Site Out

By the time of the first snowfall in December (again, I'm writing this months after the fact), I had collected enough timber for all of my posts and beams (with a few extras just in case) and about half of my rafters. With the help of Eleanor, my oldest daughter (she's 9), I drawknifed the bark off the logs and stacked and stickered them for drying over the winter and spring.

By April they had lost considerable amounts of water weight, but many of them showed some considerable checking and end-splitting. The alder seemed more prone to this than the bigleaf maple. Some of the logs would probably not be usable, but the extra length I had given myself might allow me to cut off the worst of the splits. I'm sure I made some kind of rookie mistake when drying, even though I put them in an area of mostly shade uder a tarp…

The next big task was the site preparation. On my land, which is on a fairly steep hill except for the house site itself, the most logical place to place the barn was near the garden and current chicken coop. However, the flattest place I could find had a grade of about 1 foot rise to 5 foot run! It would require digging into the hillside a fair amount, meaning it would be necessary to put in a retaining wall perhaps four feet high. My nephew lives near me and promised me a load of stone from his property to build the wall, so I began clearing the area.

The first task was to clear the blackberry vines, thistles, grasses, and small saplings in the area. Besides a machete, mattock, and scythe, I do admit to using a gas-powered weed trimmer for this not-fun chore. Once I was down to bare earth, I buckled down to digging.

This is the site after digging back (I hoped!) far enough. I removed yards and yards of earth…although that was okay because I would need several yards to eventually put on top of the roof to make the green/living roof anyway. Here is a shot of the pile of dirt I was making:

Around this time, the nearby grass over my septic drain field was getting tall-some of it over my head-so I decided to make some hay, since I would need it as a layer for the green roof between the burlap over the purlins and the pond liner above. My grass is mostly reed canarygrass, and it was overripe for goats to eat, but it would make good straw, so I scythed it down and raked it into windrows. After it dried, I tried my hand at making sheaves-turns out your average medieval peasant would likely laugh at my handiwork-and then I just raked the rest into a pile and covered it to dry.

Next, it was on to making wall frames (henges). Finally, some woodworking!

 

Preparing the Timbers and Digging the Site Out

By the time of the first snowfall in December (again, I'm writing this months after the fact), I had collected enough timber for all of my posts and beams (with a few extras just in case) and about half of my rafters. With the help of Eleanor, my oldest daughter (she's 9), I drawknifed the bark off the logs and stacked and stickered them for drying over the winter and spring.

By April they had lost considerable amounts of water weight, but many of them showed some considerable checking and end-splitting. The alder seemed more prone to this than the bigleaf maple. Some of the logs would probably not be usable, but the extra length I had given myself might allow me to cut off the worst of the splits. I'm sure I made some kind of rookie mistake when drying, even though I put them in an area of mostly shade uder a tarp…

The next big task was the site preparation. On my land, which is on a fairly steep hill except for the house site itself, the most logical place to place the barn was near the garden and current chicken coop. However, the flattest place I could find had a grade of about 1 foot rise to 5 foot run! It would require digging into the hillside a fair amount, meaning it would be necessary to put in a retaining wall perhaps four feet high. My nephew lives near me and promised me a load of stone from his property to build the wall, so I began clearing the area.

The first task was to clear the blackberry vines, thistles, grasses, and small saplings in the area. Besides a machete, mattock, and scythe, I do admit to using a gas-powered weed trimmer for this not-fun chore. Once I was down to bare earth, I buckled down to digging.

This is the site after digging back (I hoped!) far enough. I removed yards and yards of earth…although that was okay because I would need several yards to eventually put on top of the roof to make the green/living roof anyway. Here is a shot of the pile of dirt I was making:

Around this time, the nearby grass over my septic drain field was getting tall-some of it over my head-so I decided to make some hay, since I would need it as a layer for the green roof between the burlap over the purlins and the pond liner above. My grass is mostly reed canarygrass, and it was overripe for goats to eat, but it would make good straw, so I scythed it down and raked it into windrows. After it dried, I tried my hand at making sheaves-turns out your average medieval peasant would likely laugh at my handiwork-and then I just raked the rest into a pile and covered it to dry.

Next, it was on to making wall frames (henges). Finally, some woodworking!

David,

I've got blisters on my hands and my back is aching just reading your post and viewing the pictures!

L/W

 

Finally Some Woodworking!

As May rolled around and the weather grew nicer, I could finally get to work in earnest making the timber wall frames. I was planning for a barn raising sometime in later June, hopefully getting a dozen or so friends and family to help me set the wall frames up and to wrangle the 8 rafters for the roof.

Through a co-worker who was tearing out her deck, I got a good pile of usuable 2×6 boards, some pressure-treated 4×4s, and some concrete footing blocks. I used the 4×4s and 2×6s to build a level framework on which to lay the logs out and be able to work with them more easily.

I did some research about what kind of joinery to use. I wasn't terribly interested in using modern steel connections, so I cast about for more natural/traditional methods. From Simon Dale's site, I decided to go with half-lapped beams, because the idea of calculating 125-degree mortise angles for an octagon seemed a bit overwhelming. To secure the half-lap joints, I plan on using a central pin of rebar, drilled and driven vertically into the top of the post and through holes in the overlapping beam laps. That pin would also serve as a connection point for the rafters later on.

As a woodworker, my experience is mostly boxes and furniture (more of a joiner than a carpenter), so I figured a couple of half-laps were easy, right? Until I approached the work and it hit home was working with a tapering, round-ISH, irregular log was like! How would I get two co-planar surfaces nearly eight feet apart? It's not like I could use a plane or even a square to get a true reference face! What to do?

Lucikly, it was Roy Underhill to the rescue (duh, right?). One of his videos showed how to use a chalk line and a level to square a log for hewing, and the technique worked perfectly for making the half-laps match at opposite ends. Once that once done, the next challenge was to make the diagonal braces. These I wanted to do with mortise-and-tenon joints that would be pegged and wedged. Again, it was challenging to figure out how to cut precise joints from a round branch, but that problem was solved by building a square box jig, open on the ends, with one end cut in a 45-degree angle. As I write this, I don't have a picture of it, but I'll try to include one later. At any rate, it worked, and the joints came out looking like this:

And here's how the first henge/wallframe turned out:

It took a long time to make, but luckily I only needed four of them, since the other four walls of the octagon would be created by the addition of the overhead beam.

 

Finally Some Woodworking!

As May rolled around and the weather grew nicer, I could finally get to work in earnest making the timber wall frames. I was planning for a barn raising sometime in later June, hopefully getting a dozen or so friends and family to help me set the wall frames up and to wrangle the 8 rafters for the roof.

Through a co-worker who was tearing out her deck, I got a good pile of usuable 2×6 boards, some pressure-treated 4×4s, and some concrete footing blocks. I used the 4×4s and 2×6s to build a level framework on which to lay the logs out and be able to work with them more easily.

I did some research about what kind of joinery to use. I wasn't terribly interested in using modern steel connections, so I cast about for more natural/traditional methods. From Simon Dale's site, I decided to go with half-lapped beams, because the idea of calculating 125-degree mortise angles for an octagon seemed a bit overwhelming. To secure the half-lap joints, I plan on using a central pin of rebar, drilled and driven vertically into the top of the post and through holes in the overlapping beam laps. That pin would also serve as a connection point for the rafters later on.

As a woodworker, my experience is mostly boxes and furniture (more of a joiner than a carpenter), so I figured a couple of half-laps were easy, right? Until I approached the work and it hit home was working with a tapering, round-ISH, irregular log was like! How would I get two co-planar surfaces nearly eight feet apart? It's not like I could use a plane or even a square to get a true reference face! What to do?

Lucikly, it was Roy Underhill to the rescue (duh, right?). One of his videos showed how to use a chalk line and a level to square a log for hewing, and the technique worked perfectly for making the half-laps match at opposite ends. Once that once done, the next challenge was to make the diagonal braces. These I wanted to do with mortise-and-tenon joints that would be pegged and wedged. Again, it was challenging to figure out how to cut precise joints from a round branch, but that problem was solved by building a square box jig, open on the ends, with one end cut in a 45-degree angle. As I write this, I don't have a picture of it, but I'll try to include one later. At any rate, it worked, and the joints came out looking like this:

And here's how the first henge/wallframe turned out:

It took a long time to make, but luckily I only needed four of them, since the other four walls of the octagon would be created by the addition of the overhead beam.

David,

It's looking good . . . and this looks like more fun that all that digging!

L/W

 

Retaining Wall Setback...

The site for the barn is not dug far enough back into the hill. The ground is not yet level, though the slight slope that remains shouldn't be a huge issue. The barn is going to have a dirt floor anyway (on the goat half, at least), and the slope might help drainage. Once I establish my lowest post footing, I can use that as a reference datum point to calculate the heights of all the over posts in order to get a level rings of beams despite the irregular ground surface.

However, in researching what would be needed for a 4-foot high drywall stacked retaining wall, sources that seemed to know what they were talking about indicated that for an approximately 20-foot long wall, I would need about 7 yards of stone. My nephew had that much available from his property, all the local basalt that is bedrock out here. Basalt is super heavy, and my calculations indiated the 7 yds would be +/- 17 tons of rock! Getting to my property wouldn't be a problem-Ken has a dump truck and a Kubota loader-but the barn sits about 50 yards away from and 20 feet greater in elevation from the closet point we could bring heavy equipment. That meant that all the rock would have to be dumped in my driveway and hauled up by me in a wheelbarrow, a few stones at a time.

I'm a hand tool guy and a bit of a traditionalist, but I'm also 46, at that sounded like WAY more work than I'm wiling to do, and I'll have to rethink the stone idea…

 

Interesting read so far. Looking forward to read more about the project!

 

The Retaining Wall Saga Continues...

So as I finished digging the hill back to the necessary perimeter for the barn, I also continued trying to find an alternate kind of retaining wall a bit less heavy than seventeen tons of stone. My trusty Home Depot Outdoor book included the suggestion of a post-and-board wall. Since I happened to have a fair amount of treated 2×6 boards from my friend's demolished deck, I decided to sink my upper four posts into the ground (rather than sitting on padstones), cement them in place, and plank up the wall on their uphill side.

After looking at my poles again, I found I had four long enough to sink three feet into the ground and still give me enough height to make the 7'6" beam height. So I set about with a auger-style post hole digger driven by 1/16 horsepower, as Shannon Rogers likes to say. HOwever, I got no more than 18 or so inches down when I hit ROCK. And I don't mean A rock, I mean either bedrock or a boulder half the size of the barn site! I tried shifting the hole to one side slightly. Rock. Then the other. Rock. And what I was hitting was a flat shelf without even an edge, even after I widened the hole to about three feet in diameter… Frustrated, I gave up that post hole and moved to the other post on that wall, about 8 feet away. Guess what? The same kind of rock at the same depth.

I have absolutely no tools that would allow me to tunnel through rock like that, and if it was a huge boulder of that size I would have no way of digging it out even if I could dig around it (and its removal might destabilize the hillside!). A new plan had to be made.

As a test, I moved down the hillside (into the barn area) about three feet and tried another hole. This time I got down 24 inches before hitting rock. That gave me a plan. Instead of a single retaining wall, I would stair-step two of them. The first wall would actually be about three feet inside the barn's uphill wall and be about 17 inches high (three 2×6s). This would create a raising sleeping platform for the goats, and also at one end create a ready-made milking platform if I included a stanchion at that point in the dividing wall. The second wall would start where the first stopped, and continue to rise three or four planks higher until it achieved the full height I needed. The height of the lower area would also add to the depth my posts could be sunk into the earth, and I could achieve a three-foot depth successfully.

The lower area would be 18" high by 3' deep by 18' wide…and yes, it meant I would have to shovel all the earth BACK that I just dug out, as well as adding a buffer of about 1 foot of gravel between the earth and the wall to preserve the wood by keeping water away (a similar gravel buffer would need to be placed abouve the upper wall, and since that wall would outwside the wall perimeter, it would also need a drainage pipe at the bootm and landscape fabric to keep soil and plants from inflitrating the gravel.

Reshoveling the dirt was a daunting prospect, but as my friend Alicia says: "Ain't nothing to it but to do it."

 

We need pictures!

We need pictures!

We need pictures!

(get the picture?)

-Paul

PS. (edit) I looked at your other blog posts. The pictures are there!

 

The Henges Go Up

To start building the lower retaining wall, I needed to have two of my wall posts in place as the outer anchor points. I quickly realized that I couldn't just drop a post in a hole: I needed to build the whole henge and install it as a unit. Why? Because of the mortise-and-tenon diagonal braces, I had to make sure that the mortise was the right height and angle to mate with the overhead beam and its adjoining post. Even though timber framing doesn't have to be to the thousandth-level tolerances we expect when we make furniture, imagine the problems that even a 1/4" misalignment of the post would cause.

I also dropped in a few short posts for support and to provide attachment points for the wall planks. Then I shoveled in the gravel and earth to backfill it. (Are we having fun yet?) After finishing the lower wall, creating the postholes for the upper wall holes was now easy, so I brought up my first wall frame/henge, and cemented it into place:

To permanently lock the braces into place, I pegged the tenon into the mortises. I made the pegs from the smaller brances of the maples I had cut down, creating them by using a 5/8" rounder plane (like a pencial sharpener on steroids). These had been drying for months now; the idea was to to use dry pegs in green timbers, so that as the timbers dry and shrink (but the pegs don't) the braces would be locked ever tighter into place. After the pegs were pounded through, they were further secured from both sides with wedges I made from some scrap oak.

Here's a larger detail of the connections:

Now the woodworking takes focus as I churn out braces, posts, and beams to make the rest of the henges…

 

The Henges Go Up

To start building the lower retaining wall, I needed to have two of my wall posts in place as the outer anchor points. I quickly realized that I couldn't just drop a post in a hole: I needed to build the whole henge and install it as a unit. Why? Because of the mortise-and-tenon diagonal braces, I had to make sure that the mortise was the right height and angle to mate with the overhead beam and its adjoining post. Even though timber framing doesn't have to be to the thousandth-level tolerances we expect when we make furniture, imagine the problems that even a 1/4" misalignment of the post would cause.

I also dropped in a few short posts for support and to provide attachment points for the wall planks. Then I shoveled in the gravel and earth to backfill it. (Are we having fun yet?) After finishing the lower wall, creating the postholes for the upper wall holes was now easy, so I brought up my first wall frame/henge, and cemented it into place:

To permanently lock the braces into place, I pegged the tenon into the mortises. I made the pegs from the smaller brances of the maples I had cut down, creating them by using a 5/8" rounder plane (like a pencial sharpener on steroids). These had been drying for months now; the idea was to to use dry pegs in green timbers, so that as the timbers dry and shrink (but the pegs don't) the braces would be locked ever tighter into place. After the pegs were pounded through, they were further secured from both sides with wedges I made from some scrap oak.

Here's a larger detail of the connections:

Now the woodworking takes focus as I churn out braces, posts, and beams to make the rest of the henges…

David,

Do you have a weight-lifter as a helper to lift these into place?

L/W

 

The Circle Is Complete

This post is a bit celebratory: the wall frames are completely up and the retaining walls are built! Here is the state of the project:

And finally complete:

And here is a long shot, showing HALF of the distance and elevation gain from my driveway:

So now, on Aug 9th, I'm inviting friends and family over for a barn raising to add the rafters!

 

The Circle Is Complete

This post is a bit celebratory: the wall frames are completely up and the retaining walls are built! Here is the state of the project:

And finally complete:

And here is a long shot, showing HALF of the distance and elevation gain from my driveway:

So now, on Aug 9th, I'm inviting friends and family over for a barn raising to add the rafters!

Man, your an animal.
I'd like to stop by and take a look when your done. (after the barn raising is done)......................

 

Attached Chicken Coop

One of the design goals with the barn was to able to care for the goats, chickens, and the livestock guardian dog from inside the structure, without necessarily tromping around outside in the often-wet Washington weather. To that end, one of the back (uphill) walls of the octagon will therefore be common with one of the walls of the coop and provide access to nest boxes for egg collection as well as food and water containers.

After a few free Craigslist lumber finds, I was ready to proceed. I sketched out the framing plans for the walls on (gasp!) paper, and got to work. I have to say that even using hand tools, framing stud walls and whacking them together with nails goes a whole lot faster than the mortise and tenon and dovetail joinery I'm used to when building boxes and furniture! After an afternoon of work, I had my skeleton:

The whole thing sits on a plywood sheet about 3-1/2' x 6' that was left by the previous owner when I bought the house. The next step was to cover the sides (well, three of them, at least). I didn't want to use plywood because the rain here tends to play hell with the glue, so it was back to Craigslist. I scored a fair amount of old 1×12 cedar fence boards dating from the 19020s when the current owner replaced the original fence. They are quite rough and often significantly cupped, but hey, it's a chicken coop, not a highboy.

Because of wood movement, and because I don't want drafts blowing between the cracks, it's not a good idea to just butt the planks together and nail them up. I decided to shiplap them with my moving fillister plane. I love that plane: I'm not exactly sure how old it is, but I know that the company that made it went out of business in 1874 when they lost their contract for convict labor with the New York State Penitentiary System…

Once the siding was done, I painted up the boards with a new outdoor paint (keeping with the barn red motif) and added an access door and white trim on the face of the coop that would be visible from the approach to the barn.

Then, I installed the base. Because the barn is dug into a hill, there isn't a flat place to simply plunk the coop down. One end of the coop would be on the ground, but the end with the access door would be about 18" above the slope. One long edge of the platform is supported by the top of the retaining wall. For the other long edge and the short edge that dangles in space, I attached PT 4×4s that came together with a double half-lap joint resting on a 4×4 supported by a concrete deck footer.

After this picture was taken, I covered the floor with layer of EPDM pond liner (more on that acquisition later) to protect the plywood from the deleterious effect of chicken poop. Then I hauled up the walls from my shop to the barn site (why is everything so darned heavy?) and nailed them in place.

Here are some shots of the coop roughed in. First, the view from the barn approach:

And the view from standing inside the barn. The tool tote is sitting in the area where the nest boxes will be, and the food/water access door is to the left:

And here's a final shot, this time looking at the "chicken access" door that will lead to their run. It has a better shot of the shiplap:

And that's where we are for now! This blog is now up to the minute with the project, and the further updates will be in "real time"! Thanks for reading, by the way. I appreciate the comments and support!

 

Testing Out the Reciprocal Frame Rafters

Inspired by Simon Dale's Low Impact Woodland Home, the roof for the barn will be held up by reciprocal frame rafters rather than a ridge peak or a truss system. This will allow a clear span beneath without support poles. Other web resources about this kind of roof can be found at the Year of Mud blog and at Green Building Elements.

This weekend, I tested out the reciprocal frame concept on the ground ust to make sure the voodoo works before I tried it ten feet in the air. First, I brought the rafters together in my driveway:

For the curious, he poles are 14' spars of either red alder or bigleaf maple, debarked, with base diameters ranging from 5" to 7". The next step was to put the first rafter on a "charlie," or a temporary support, then beginning laying the other rafters one by one. Each rafter pointed 18" to the left of center, to produce a 36" central circle. After all eight rafters were placed, I carefully knocked the charlie out from the under the structure, to find:

It worked! Without fasteners of any kind, the rafters were supporting themselves off the ground by about two feet! I even climbed up on the top and bounced up and down. The more pressure I exerted, the stiffer the frame got. Very cool. Here's a look down at the central circle:

This Saturday, we put the frame in the air…

 

Testing Out the Reciprocal Frame Rafters

Inspired by Simon Dale's Low Impact Woodland Home, the roof for the barn will be held up by reciprocal frame rafters rather than a ridge peak or a truss system. This will allow a clear span beneath without support poles. Other web resources about this kind of roof can be found at the Year of Mud blog and at Green Building Elements.

This weekend, I tested out the reciprocal frame concept on the ground ust to make sure the voodoo works before I tried it ten feet in the air. First, I brought the rafters together in my driveway:

For the curious, he poles are 14' spars of either red alder or bigleaf maple, debarked, with base diameters ranging from 5" to 7". The next step was to put the first rafter on a "charlie," or a temporary support, then beginning laying the other rafters one by one. Each rafter pointed 18" to the left of center, to produce a 36" central circle. After all eight rafters were placed, I carefully knocked the charlie out from the under the structure, to find:

It worked! Without fasteners of any kind, the rafters were supporting themselves off the ground by about two feet! I even climbed up on the top and bounced up and down. The more pressure I exerted, the stiffer the frame got. Very cool. Here's a look down at the central circle:

This Saturday, we put the frame in the air…

David,

You're certainly teaching us all kinds of new stuff. (We're too old to put it to use, but it's certainly fun learning!)

L/W

 

Starting on the Paddock Fence

The barn raising is Saturday, so in the meantime, I'm attending to some other related things that need to be done, but that won't get in the way of the ladders, braces, and people that will need to be in and around the structure in order to get the rafters in the air. So, I've been done smaller projects like building out the next boxes for the chicken coop, teaching my wife how to stack the rafters, etc.

Another big project that needs doing is the paddock, the holding and working area for the goats just outside the barn. I was planning on purchasing premade treated posts to hold up the 48" wire fence, but a check with my CFO showed that the reserve expense account was running low, the unfortunate victim of an earlier refrigerator failure and a ruined carpet due to a water leak this past Spring. So, it was back to the woods:

These are some of the fence poles cut to length, peeled at the bottom, and treated with Green Coat wood preserative. While this was more work thatn premade poles (and about three times as heavy), it was also free and follows the from-the-land concept that has guided the rest of the prject. So, it's all good.

And now, on to the ugly chore of hacked out fence lines through the underbrush:

Is there any wonder why I need goats??

 

Starting on the Paddock Fence

The barn raising is Saturday, so in the meantime, I'm attending to some other related things that need to be done, but that won't get in the way of the ladders, braces, and people that will need to be in and around the structure in order to get the rafters in the air. So, I've been done smaller projects like building out the next boxes for the chicken coop, teaching my wife how to stack the rafters, etc.

Another big project that needs doing is the paddock, the holding and working area for the goats just outside the barn. I was planning on purchasing premade treated posts to hold up the 48" wire fence, but a check with my CFO showed that the reserve expense account was running low, the unfortunate victim of an earlier refrigerator failure and a ruined carpet due to a water leak this past Spring. So, it was back to the woods:

These are some of the fence poles cut to length, peeled at the bottom, and treated with Green Coat wood preserative. While this was more work thatn premade poles (and about three times as heavy), it was also free and follows the from-the-land concept that has guided the rest of the prject. So, it's all good.

And now, on to the ugly chore of hacked out fence lines through the underbrush:

Is there any wonder why I need goats??

"While this was more work thatn premade poles (and about three times as heavy), it was also free.."

Well, it wasn't really free - right? You had to provide the additional labor, time, and material (green coat) to make the posts. In the end though, you'll probably have a better looking fence and people who see it will probably be thinking, "I wish I had time to make my own posts instead of using those store-bought pressure treated ones."

 

Barn Raising Day!

Well, the long-awaited barn raising day finally arrived this past Saturday, and my family in the area arrived to help. Wrestling eight 14-foot rafters was definitely a portion of the barn build that I could not accomplish alone. Of course, like any good barn raising, the family brought food, we grilled out, and we made a day of it.

The first order of business was to explain to my "crew" what we would be doing. The barn's roof is supported by reciprocal frame rafters, a term coined in the 80s to describe roofs whose support members interlock with each other to create a self-supporting strucutre, like a kind of arch. It takes a few moments to wrap one's head around how it all works, so I had a small-scale model to demonstrate the concept:

After that, it was on to portaging the rafter timbers to the barn site. As for seemingly everything related to this project, the motto is: "If it's heavy, it must go uphill."

Once all the rafters were staged, we assembled the "charlie," the support tripod which holds the first and subsequent rafters until they support themselves:

After that, we started the show, laying the first rafter over the beam and onto the charlie. The base of the rafter (the eave side) had a pre-drilled hole about 24" up that slipped over the rebar pin from each post.

As each rafter is laid up, they have to be angled correctly to make the central circle to support the other rafters. This requires that each rafter be offset a standard distance from the central point. I chose an 18" offset. My daughter Eleanor was tasked with the "jumper," an extendable pole that she lined up with the offset mark to give us a target to aim the rafter. She trued the pole to vertical with a level to make sure the end 12 feet above wasn't out of line than the mark on the beam.

And here's my 7-year old, helping as well:

Once each rafter is laid up and "aimed," I marked where it crossed the rafter beneath it. Then I moved the top rafter aside and chiseled out an angled channel for the rafter to lie in. Once that was accomplished, I moved the rafter back into place, re-aligned it, then drove a six-inch nail beside the top rafter, just "downhill" of it into the rafter below to secure it from slipping down. I also lashed the rafter in place, because I'm a "belt-and-suspenders" kind of guy. Then Eleanor "jumped" her pole to the next offset mark, and the next rafter was passed up.

Finally, all eight rafters were in place and (theoretically) ready to support their own weight. All the Internet tutorials said to expect the rafters to creak and settle several inches as they found their place and took up the weight. So, we cleared everyone out of the area, and my brother-in-law, nephew, and I manned the three legs of the charlie and got ready to pull the legs apart and drop the charlie away from the rafters.

We all held our breath, said a little prayer, and pulled the charlie away.

Nothing happened. No creaks, no movement. Nothing. Just eight rafters blithely supporting themselves 11 feet in the air.

The central circle wasn't as symmetrical as I would have liked -chalk that up to my inexperience with this kind of roof-but I suspect the goats won't be bothered by asmymmetry. I climbed up to test with my weight, and I didn't die:

Next up: Attaching the purlins and starting to put the roof on!

 

Barn Raising Day!

Well, the long-awaited barn raising day finally arrived this past Saturday, and my family in the area arrived to help. Wrestling eight 14-foot rafters was definitely a portion of the barn build that I could not accomplish alone. Of course, like any good barn raising, the family brought food, we grilled out, and we made a day of it.

The first order of business was to explain to my "crew" what we would be doing. The barn's roof is supported by reciprocal frame rafters, a term coined in the 80s to describe roofs whose support members interlock with each other to create a self-supporting strucutre, like a kind of arch. It takes a few moments to wrap one's head around how it all works, so I had a small-scale model to demonstrate the concept:

After that, it was on to portaging the rafter timbers to the barn site. As for seemingly everything related to this project, the motto is: "If it's heavy, it must go uphill."

Once all the rafters were staged, we assembled the "charlie," the support tripod which holds the first and subsequent rafters until they support themselves:

After that, we started the show, laying the first rafter over the beam and onto the charlie. The base of the rafter (the eave side) had a pre-drilled hole about 24" up that slipped over the rebar pin from each post.

As each rafter is laid up, they have to be angled correctly to make the central circle to support the other rafters. This requires that each rafter be offset a standard distance from the central point. I chose an 18" offset. My daughter Eleanor was tasked with the "jumper," an extendable pole that she lined up with the offset mark to give us a target to aim the rafter. She trued the pole to vertical with a level to make sure the end 12 feet above wasn't out of line than the mark on the beam.

And here's my 7-year old, helping as well:

Once each rafter is laid up and "aimed," I marked where it crossed the rafter beneath it. Then I moved the top rafter aside and chiseled out an angled channel for the rafter to lie in. Once that was accomplished, I moved the rafter back into place, re-aligned it, then drove a six-inch nail beside the top rafter, just "downhill" of it into the rafter below to secure it from slipping down. I also lashed the rafter in place, because I'm a "belt-and-suspenders" kind of guy. Then Eleanor "jumped" her pole to the next offset mark, and the next rafter was passed up.

Finally, all eight rafters were in place and (theoretically) ready to support their own weight. All the Internet tutorials said to expect the rafters to creak and settle several inches as they found their place and took up the weight. So, we cleared everyone out of the area, and my brother-in-law, nephew, and I manned the three legs of the charlie and got ready to pull the legs apart and drop the charlie away from the rafters.

We all held our breath, said a little prayer, and pulled the charlie away.

Nothing happened. No creaks, no movement. Nothing. Just eight rafters blithely supporting themselves 11 feet in the air.

The central circle wasn't as symmetrical as I would have liked -chalk that up to my inexperience with this kind of roof-but I suspect the goats won't be bothered by asmymmetry. I climbed up to test with my weight, and I didn't die:

Next up: Attaching the purlins and starting to put the roof on!

Amazing. I am so doing this. I could build a second barn for my goats to just keep hay in and set up a manger. Maybe I could even dry wood in there. I could even build it outside of their fence and connect it to their area, then I can have an entrance from out side.

 

Purlin Madness

After the rafters were raised and secured last Saturday, we moved on to attaching the purlins. These are the radial pieces between the rafters that will hold up the roofing material. In our case, these are fashioned from alder branches or saplings, with the bark left on, nailed to the rafters with about a 4-inch spaced between them so that there is room for the purlins on the adjacent sides to attach.

It was great to have a "ground crew" of people to hand up purlins of the rough size needed, but I learned that non-woodworkers may not have the same level of discernment about whether a purlin had enough girth to support the span or if the wood was unsound. My suggestion is to pre-select all your purlins so there's not a question, but with everything else going on, I had merely collected a pile of straight branches and thin trunks to use and hadn't had a chance to "edit" the stack.

With the family helping, we got three of the eight panels purlined, although I may go back and add more here and there where I am feeling more flex than I'd like. After everyone left, I continued the work alone. I quickly realized it's tough by one's self to nail both sides of a 9-foot purlin as well as go up and down to get materials. I dragooned-I mean, apprenticed-my oldest daughter to help. She was a little hesitant at first aobut the height, but soon got used to it. She had used a hammer a bit before, but never pounded so many 16d sinkers in her life. After a few dozen purlins, her accuracy and ergonomics got better, although she wore out pretty fast. We'll work on her endurance…

I noticed as I went along that I gravitated to larger purlins, in the 2-12" - 3" diameter. These sizes required me to half lap them at the ends to allow a 2-1/2" nail to get some purchase. No fine woodworking here: just a quick crosscut to depth and then split the waste away with a hatchet tapped in from the end.

Ultimately, we got the whole roof purlined:

Next task: to add a cupola over the central hole. After all, it does no good to put on a roof but leave a big hole in the middle!

 

Purlin Madness

After the rafters were raised and secured last Saturday, we moved on to attaching the purlins. These are the radial pieces between the rafters that will hold up the roofing material. In our case, these are fashioned from alder branches or saplings, with the bark left on, nailed to the rafters with about a 4-inch spaced between them so that there is room for the purlins on the adjacent sides to attach.

It was great to have a "ground crew" of people to hand up purlins of the rough size needed, but I learned that non-woodworkers may not have the same level of discernment about whether a purlin had enough girth to support the span or if the wood was unsound. My suggestion is to pre-select all your purlins so there's not a question, but with everything else going on, I had merely collected a pile of straight branches and thin trunks to use and hadn't had a chance to "edit" the stack.

With the family helping, we got three of the eight panels purlined, although I may go back and add more here and there where I am feeling more flex than I'd like. After everyone left, I continued the work alone. I quickly realized it's tough by one's self to nail both sides of a 9-foot purlin as well as go up and down to get materials. I dragooned-I mean, apprenticed-my oldest daughter to help. She was a little hesitant at first aobut the height, but soon got used to it. She had used a hammer a bit before, but never pounded so many 16d sinkers in her life. After a few dozen purlins, her accuracy and ergonomics got better, although she wore out pretty fast. We'll work on her endurance…

I noticed as I went along that I gravitated to larger purlins, in the 2-12" - 3" diameter. These sizes required me to half lap them at the ends to allow a 2-1/2" nail to get some purchase. No fine woodworking here: just a quick crosscut to depth and then split the waste away with a hatchet tapped in from the end.

Ultimately, we got the whole roof purlined:

Next task: to add a cupola over the central hole. After all, it does no good to put on a roof but leave a big hole in the middle!

Looks like a fun although not altogether easy project.

 

Covering the Roof

If you've been following this blog series at all, you'll know it's been a lo-o-o-ong time since my last entry. Rest assured, I haven't been idle-quite the contrary, I've been too busy to think about documenting and photographing a lot of the work. But, here's a catch up of the roof.

Rafters and purlins make a great roof for a gazebo, but a lousy roof for a barn to keep out rain. The covering starts with burlap. While not strictly necessary, the first layer is the one that will be seen from the inside of the barn, so the burlap adds a more rustic look than simply the underside of the EPDM pond liner, which will follow.

We tacked down the ones around the edges and up near the cupola, but most will simply be held down by the weight of the roof atop them:

Once that was accomplished, we hauled up huge sheets of pond liner. Man, is that stuff heavy! I don't have any pictures of this, because I was too busy overexerting myself…

Any that, it was time for dirt. Because this will be a living roof, it needs dirt to grow. I rigged up a simple lever arm to lift 5-gallon buckets of dirt to roof level. and a couple of wonderful neighbors even came over to help. A few of us filled buckets on the ground, a couple of people operated the "crane," and a roof person spread the dirt around. Eventually, it looked like this and we spread grass seed:

Then covered it with hay to keep the birds off:

After a good watering, the rest was up to nature, so we turned our attention to the walls.

 

Covering the Roof

If you've been following this blog series at all, you'll know it's been a lo-o-o-ong time since my last entry. Rest assured, I haven't been idle-quite the contrary, I've been too busy to think about documenting and photographing a lot of the work. But, here's a catch up of the roof.

Rafters and purlins make a great roof for a gazebo, but a lousy roof for a barn to keep out rain. The covering starts with burlap. While not strictly necessary, the first layer is the one that will be seen from the inside of the barn, so the burlap adds a more rustic look than simply the underside of the EPDM pond liner, which will follow.

We tacked down the ones around the edges and up near the cupola, but most will simply be held down by the weight of the roof atop them:

Once that was accomplished, we hauled up huge sheets of pond liner. Man, is that stuff heavy! I don't have any pictures of this, because I was too busy overexerting myself…

Any that, it was time for dirt. Because this will be a living roof, it needs dirt to grow. I rigged up a simple lever arm to lift 5-gallon buckets of dirt to roof level. and a couple of wonderful neighbors even came over to help. A few of us filled buckets on the ground, a couple of people operated the "crane," and a roof person spread the dirt around. Eventually, it looked like this and we spread grass seed:

Then covered it with hay to keep the birds off:

After a good watering, the rest was up to nature, so we turned our attention to the walls.

David,

The barn is coming along nicely, but it certainly seems like a lot of work! That must have taken many, many gunnysacks. Nice job.

L/W

 

Cordwood Walls at last!

My wife and I have been interested in building with cordwood for almost 5 years now. Initially, we planned to use the technique to build our Washington home ourselves but we found great home that was already built that saved us the work.

Cordwood masonry is a centuries-old technique that uses short, debarked logs (like you might use for firewood) set in mortar to form structural walls or else fill in a timber frame structure. It's a great way to use woods that otherwise would not be structurally useful. I harvested and collected all the wood from our property last winter, debarked the logs, and left them to dry for nearly a year. Here are a few pictures of the walls in progress:

You may notice a few animals photobombing the pics: the dog is Zeus, our 6-moth old Akbash (a Turkish livestock guardian breed). And one of the goats, who'll I'll introduce in the next post…

 

Cordwood Walls at last!

My wife and I have been interested in building with cordwood for almost 5 years now. Initially, we planned to use the technique to build our Washington home ourselves but we found great home that was already built that saved us the work.

Cordwood masonry is a centuries-old technique that uses short, debarked logs (like you might use for firewood) set in mortar to form structural walls or else fill in a timber frame structure. It's a great way to use woods that otherwise would not be structurally useful. I harvested and collected all the wood from our property last winter, debarked the logs, and left them to dry for nearly a year. Here are a few pictures of the walls in progress:

You may notice a few animals photobombing the pics: the dog is Zeus, our 6-moth old Akbash (a Turkish livestock guardian breed). And one of the goats, who'll I'll introduce in the next post…

Interesting - never saw that before but makes sense

 

New Residents

As you may have noticed in the last post, the barn is already occupied. True, the walls aren't even done, but friends of our were thinning their herd and offered us a doe and a wether, so I asked for a couple of weeks and quickly built a 20' x 25' paddock and partioned the interior of the barn off to separate the goat lounging area, kidding stall, and sleeping platform from the human side that houses the hay crib, the feeder rack, and the access to nest boxes and feed/water station of the attached chicken coop.

Then we got our first three residents: Zeus, the livestock guardian dog; Leia, the Boer/Nubian doe, and Stormy, her 1-year old wether. As you can see from the pictures, they're going to have a tough life!

 

New Residents

As you may have noticed in the last post, the barn is already occupied. True, the walls aren't even done, but friends of our were thinning their herd and offered us a doe and a wether, so I asked for a couple of weeks and quickly built a 20' x 25' paddock and partioned the interior of the barn off to separate the goat lounging area, kidding stall, and sleeping platform from the human side that houses the hay crib, the feeder rack, and the access to nest boxes and feed/water station of the attached chicken coop.

Then we got our first three residents: Zeus, the livestock guardian dog; Leia, the Boer/Nubian doe, and Stormy, her 1-year old wether. As you can see from the pictures, they're going to have a tough life!

Yep it looks like it is going to a tough Lifee with all those Kids messing with them.

 

Windows!

My daughters wanted the barn to be "hobbit-style," complete with a round door. So, for the wall on the "human side" that will be visible from most of the property, I wanted to find a round window to match. Again through a free find on Craigslist from a floor and door company, I managed to acquire 2 beveled half-round and two rectangular door lites, double -paned:

For the "goat-side" window, I was also able to get 6 15" double-paned squares from the same place.

While I was building the walls, I used rainy days and evenings to work on the windows to go in the rough opening. At last, it was back to "real" woodworking: mortises and tenons, plow planes, miter cuts, and all the fun stuff. I decided to build a frame to hold the windows in roughly the layout above, with the two rectangular pieces forming sidelights to the central round window. I built the sidelites first, capturing them in a fairly straightforward post and rail frame I made from some poplar pieces I had around:

When both of those were made, it was time for the centerpiece. I decided the best way to mount it was to make a birch plywood surround the same width as the window with molding on both sides to hold the glass in place. In order to facilitate glue up and fitting everything together, I cut the surround into top and bottom parts to allow me to attach the molding before I inserted the window pieces.

To make the molding, I turned to my trusty 1926 Stanley Mitre Box No. 460, with its Disston 30" x 6" saw. I had restored the piece after it had been badly corroded and salvaged from a flooded garage. Using some beech slats from an old futon frame, I cut two dodecagons (12-sided) to hold it in, and glued them in place. I stained everything using simple Minwax Gunstock stain.

I was happy with the finished product: it looked good, it was square…everything was working out. Then I went to install it, and discovered that my 2×6 framing in my rough opening had shifted out of square by about 3/8" of an inch! Somehow, even two diagonal braces didn't stop the cordwood from altering the shape of the frame. Of course, I had sized the frame to fit the window with about a 1/16" tolerance, so I had to enlarge the 2×6 frame to make a truly square opening again. Once that was accomplished (though now I had about a 1/4" gap on each vertical side of the window, I fit the window in place:

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I've gotten a lot of grief from my buddies for making such a fancy window for a goat barn, but hey, the materials were free and the woodworking is the fun part!

Next (and perhaps the last challenge: hanging a round door!

 

Windows!

My daughters wanted the barn to be "hobbit-style," complete with a round door. So, for the wall on the "human side" that will be visible from most of the property, I wanted to find a round window to match. Again through a free find on Craigslist from a floor and door company, I managed to acquire 2 beveled half-round and two rectangular door lites, double -paned:

For the "goat-side" window, I was also able to get 6 15" double-paned squares from the same place.

While I was building the walls, I used rainy days and evenings to work on the windows to go in the rough opening. At last, it was back to "real" woodworking: mortises and tenons, plow planes, miter cuts, and all the fun stuff. I decided to build a frame to hold the windows in roughly the layout above, with the two rectangular pieces forming sidelights to the central round window. I built the sidelites first, capturing them in a fairly straightforward post and rail frame I made from some poplar pieces I had around:

When both of those were made, it was time for the centerpiece. I decided the best way to mount it was to make a birch plywood surround the same width as the window with molding on both sides to hold the glass in place. In order to facilitate glue up and fitting everything together, I cut the surround into top and bottom parts to allow me to attach the molding before I inserted the window pieces.

To make the molding, I turned to my trusty 1926 Stanley Mitre Box No. 460, with its Disston 30" x 6" saw. I had restored the piece after it had been badly corroded and salvaged from a flooded garage. Using some beech slats from an old futon frame, I cut two dodecagons (12-sided) to hold it in, and glued them in place. I stained everything using simple Minwax Gunstock stain.

I was happy with the finished product: it looked good, it was square…everything was working out. Then I went to install it, and discovered that my 2×6 framing in my rough opening had shifted out of square by about 3/8" of an inch! Somehow, even two diagonal braces didn't stop the cordwood from altering the shape of the frame. Of course, I had sized the frame to fit the window with about a 1/16" tolerance, so I had to enlarge the 2×6 frame to make a truly square opening again. Once that was accomplished (though now I had about a 1/4" gap on each vertical side of the window, I fit the window in place:

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I've gotten a lot of grief from my buddies for making such a fancy window for a goat barn, but hey, the materials were free and the woodworking is the fun part!

Next (and perhaps the last challenge: hanging a round door!

Very cool. Bilbo would be proud!

 

The Hobbit Door

At long last, the only thing remaining was the door. Now, as I have mentioned earlier, my daughter Eleanor (10 yrs old) has read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and she really wanted me to put a round door on the barn like a hobbit hole.

Well, as luck would have it, I found a free Craigslist posting for a company that had what appeared to be a side of a massive construction spool: it was a huge circle, 7-1/2 feet in diameter and 1-1/2" thick, made of of 1" x 6" pine boards in two layers set at 90 degrees to each other. In other words-it was exactly how I'd make a round door if I was building it myself!

The logistics of a round door are interesting, though. How do you hinge it? When you put a round door in (basically) square wall, how do you frame the empty corners? How do I latch it but keep with the central doorknob look that iis iconic of hobbit doors? How much strain would a nearly 8' door put on the door post when the thing is swung open? And on and on…and remember, this is the main door of the barn, that I will be using several times a day, every single day!

The first realization I came to was that a single door nearly eight feet wide opens very slowly! I would have to back up nearly four feet in order to open it enough to get inside, and that would be a huge pain on a daily basis. I decided that functionality trumped form in this case, so I cut the door vertically into two unequal parts (sort of a 60/40 split), given me a 3' wide left door and a 4-1/2' wide right door. This would also really reduce the load on the hinges and doorposts, too.

The second challenge was hanging a door with a round hinge edge. Here I took advantage of an item of serendipity: a concentric circular groove cut into the face side for whatever need the original builder had. I stained the inner part of the circle to match with window I built (a Minwax Gunstock) and the outer part of the circle I stained much darker (a Jacobean stain, also from Minwax). This gave the illusion that the inner circle was the real hobbit door, while the outside was part of the coaming or frame. After that, I sheared off part of the door frame edges, giving me a straight, flat edge about four feet long on the wall edges. This would give me a easy place to attach my hinges.

Because I would be muscling this door into place either alone or with only the help of my wife (a lovely woman with a game soul, but I would not describe her as "burly"), I needed a way to hang them true and level as easily as possible. I solved this by hinging two four-foot 2×8s together with 3 heavy-duty door hinges. The post plate was then lag screwed into my maple wall posts, and the other plate would be attached to the door itself. Once the hinges plates were attached to the posts, Melissa and I muscled the doors into position, marked and drill bolt holes through the hinge plate and door, and bolted the door onto the 2×8 hinge plate with 4 strong bolts. Worked like a charm:

The next challenge was the surround-those awkward arc-shaped corners that the door didn't fill. Conventional wisdom (and the Peter Jackson movies) would dictate that these should be part of the door frame, but I hated the idea of installing permanent foot-catching sills that I'd have to step over or negotiate every time. So, I simply cut them from 3/4 outdoor ply and screwed them to the back of the door! Again, this worked visually (I think) because I had stained the door to look like the entire outer part was a raised frame anyway. Now we had this:

The last piece was the doorknob/closure mechanism. Again, the central doorknob is the classic look for a hobbit door, but how to make it work? Luckily, smarter heads than mine-specifically Matthias from Woodworking for Engineers-had already figured this out! From his oh-so-cool site, I download an app that let me design a rack and pinion gear, which I cut from 5/8" birch plywood. When the spindle of the pinion gear turns, the bar shoots across the doors into a socket, locking the two doors together! I have a video of the action before I installed it, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to upload it here. I finished off the mechanism with a "doorknob" cut from an alder branch. The finished product:

With that, the barn is nearly finished, though of course, a woodworker is never really done…I'm sure there'll be plenty of internal improvements, external embellishments, etc, etc. etc!

 

The Hobbit Door

At long last, the only thing remaining was the door. Now, as I have mentioned earlier, my daughter Eleanor (10 yrs old) has read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and she really wanted me to put a round door on the barn like a hobbit hole.

Well, as luck would have it, I found a free Craigslist posting for a company that had what appeared to be a side of a massive construction spool: it was a huge circle, 7-1/2 feet in diameter and 1-1/2" thick, made of of 1" x 6" pine boards in two layers set at 90 degrees to each other. In other words-it was exactly how I'd make a round door if I was building it myself!

The logistics of a round door are interesting, though. How do you hinge it? When you put a round door in (basically) square wall, how do you frame the empty corners? How do I latch it but keep with the central doorknob look that iis iconic of hobbit doors? How much strain would a nearly 8' door put on the door post when the thing is swung open? And on and on…and remember, this is the main door of the barn, that I will be using several times a day, every single day!

The first realization I came to was that a single door nearly eight feet wide opens very slowly! I would have to back up nearly four feet in order to open it enough to get inside, and that would be a huge pain on a daily basis. I decided that functionality trumped form in this case, so I cut the door vertically into two unequal parts (sort of a 60/40 split), given me a 3' wide left door and a 4-1/2' wide right door. This would also really reduce the load on the hinges and doorposts, too.

The second challenge was hanging a door with a round hinge edge. Here I took advantage of an item of serendipity: a concentric circular groove cut into the face side for whatever need the original builder had. I stained the inner part of the circle to match with window I built (a Minwax Gunstock) and the outer part of the circle I stained much darker (a Jacobean stain, also from Minwax). This gave the illusion that the inner circle was the real hobbit door, while the outside was part of the coaming or frame. After that, I sheared off part of the door frame edges, giving me a straight, flat edge about four feet long on the wall edges. This would give me a easy place to attach my hinges.

Because I would be muscling this door into place either alone or with only the help of my wife (a lovely woman with a game soul, but I would not describe her as "burly"), I needed a way to hang them true and level as easily as possible. I solved this by hinging two four-foot 2×8s together with 3 heavy-duty door hinges. The post plate was then lag screwed into my maple wall posts, and the other plate would be attached to the door itself. Once the hinges plates were attached to the posts, Melissa and I muscled the doors into position, marked and drill bolt holes through the hinge plate and door, and bolted the door onto the 2×8 hinge plate with 4 strong bolts. Worked like a charm:

The next challenge was the surround-those awkward arc-shaped corners that the door didn't fill. Conventional wisdom (and the Peter Jackson movies) would dictate that these should be part of the door frame, but I hated the idea of installing permanent foot-catching sills that I'd have to step over or negotiate every time. So, I simply cut them from 3/4 outdoor ply and screwed them to the back of the door! Again, this worked visually (I think) because I had stained the door to look like the entire outer part was a raised frame anyway. Now we had this:

The last piece was the doorknob/closure mechanism. Again, the central doorknob is the classic look for a hobbit door, but how to make it work? Luckily, smarter heads than mine-specifically Matthias from Woodworking for Engineers-had already figured this out! From his oh-so-cool site, I download an app that let me design a rack and pinion gear, which I cut from 5/8" birch plywood. When the spindle of the pinion gear turns, the bar shoots across the doors into a socket, locking the two doors together! I have a video of the action before I installed it, but unfortunately I can't figure out how to upload it here. I finished off the mechanism with a "doorknob" cut from an alder branch. The finished product:

With that, the barn is nearly finished, though of course, a woodworker is never really done…I'm sure there'll be plenty of internal improvements, external embellishments, etc, etc. etc!

Now all that's needed as an embellishment is a burned-in Dwarvish symbol for 'Burglar'!

Great work!

 

Final Thoughts

Well, it's been a long road, starting from here:

And here:

And ending up here:

I wanted to use this final entry on this project to talk about some of the many things I've learned, in order to maybe help out other woodworkers who might attempt similar madness.

The Wins

--The journey of the building is important, not just the destination. Build what you want, how you want.

-- Wow, did I learn a lot about working with roundwood logs! Ben Law's book, Roundwood Timber Framing, was a huge help, although his is a power-tool-and-crane approach, whereas I was on the me-and-chainsaw and hand tools plan. Videos by Roy Underhill and Peter Follansbee because very useful, because the old ways of doing things really applied to my situation much more closely than modern timber framing practices.

-- Sourcing the wood from my land and free Craiglist ads saved a ton of money compared to buying new materials.

-- Almost every time you are told you have to have a metal fastener or a modern jig to do something, there was probably a historic work-around that uses the wood and materials you have…you just have to learn the skill and take the time to do it!

The Hard Lessons

-- The biggest lesson is: IT TAKES TWICE AS LONG (OR MORE) THAN YOU EXPECT IT SHOULD.

--If it's heavy, you will somehow need to haul it uphill.

--Cordwood is a great way to build, but your first wall (and maybe later ones) won't look as perfect and dead-straight as the ones in the pictures.

--Building without drawings makes the project very flexible and adaptable to the realities "on the ground," but it also makes it difficult to communicate things to a work crew without personal instruction on each step of the process.

-- Doing things with hand tools and the "old-fashioned way" is great and very satisfying, but it makes it hard-or impossible-to find skilled labor to help you if you do.

-- When you need loose materials like sand, don't be an idiot and buy it by the bag. Granted, I don't have a truck and would have had to pay for delivery, but it owuld have been so much cheaper in the long run.

--When building with "free" materials, you still need nails, bolts, mortar, and lots of other "incidental" expenses. THESE ADD UP, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CRAIGSLIST WOOD YOU FIND.

--The joint tolerances and door clearances we're used to for furniture don't work as well in a outdoor construction, especially with natural materials and in the wet Western Washington climate. Get over it.

I'm sure there's ten dozen more, but that'll do for now. Thanks to everyone for following this series, and I hope to hear about your projects soon!

Regards,
David

 

Final Thoughts

Well, it's been a long road, starting from here:

And here:

And ending up here:

I wanted to use this final entry on this project to talk about some of the many things I've learned, in order to maybe help out other woodworkers who might attempt similar madness.

The Wins

--The journey of the building is important, not just the destination. Build what you want, how you want.

-- Wow, did I learn a lot about working with roundwood logs! Ben Law's book, Roundwood Timber Framing, was a huge help, although his is a power-tool-and-crane approach, whereas I was on the me-and-chainsaw and hand tools plan. Videos by Roy Underhill and Peter Follansbee because very useful, because the old ways of doing things really applied to my situation much more closely than modern timber framing practices.

-- Sourcing the wood from my land and free Craiglist ads saved a ton of money compared to buying new materials.

-- Almost every time you are told you have to have a metal fastener or a modern jig to do something, there was probably a historic work-around that uses the wood and materials you have…you just have to learn the skill and take the time to do it!

The Hard Lessons

-- The biggest lesson is: IT TAKES TWICE AS LONG (OR MORE) THAN YOU EXPECT IT SHOULD.

--If it's heavy, you will somehow need to haul it uphill.

--Cordwood is a great way to build, but your first wall (and maybe later ones) won't look as perfect and dead-straight as the ones in the pictures.

--Building without drawings makes the project very flexible and adaptable to the realities "on the ground," but it also makes it difficult to communicate things to a work crew without personal instruction on each step of the process.

-- Doing things with hand tools and the "old-fashioned way" is great and very satisfying, but it makes it hard-or impossible-to find skilled labor to help you if you do.

-- When you need loose materials like sand, don't be an idiot and buy it by the bag. Granted, I don't have a truck and would have had to pay for delivery, but it owuld have been so much cheaper in the long run.

--When building with "free" materials, you still need nails, bolts, mortar, and lots of other "incidental" expenses. THESE ADD UP, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CRAIGSLIST WOOD YOU FIND.

--The joint tolerances and door clearances we're used to for furniture don't work as well in a outdoor construction, especially with natural materials and in the wet Western Washington climate. Get over it.

I'm sure there's ten dozen more, but that'll do for now. Thanks to everyone for following this series, and I hope to hear about your projects soon!

Regards,
David

Well, it looks like the goat barn turned out pretty well after all! I'm sure the goats will love it!

 

Final Thoughts

Well, it's been a long road, starting from here:

And here:

And ending up here:

I wanted to use this final entry on this project to talk about some of the many things I've learned, in order to maybe help out other woodworkers who might attempt similar madness.

The Wins

--The journey of the building is important, not just the destination. Build what you want, how you want.

-- Wow, did I learn a lot about working with roundwood logs! Ben Law's book, Roundwood Timber Framing, was a huge help, although his is a power-tool-and-crane approach, whereas I was on the me-and-chainsaw and hand tools plan. Videos by Roy Underhill and Peter Follansbee because very useful, because the old ways of doing things really applied to my situation much more closely than modern timber framing practices.

-- Sourcing the wood from my land and free Craiglist ads saved a ton of money compared to buying new materials.

-- Almost every time you are told you have to have a metal fastener or a modern jig to do something, there was probably a historic work-around that uses the wood and materials you have…you just have to learn the skill and take the time to do it!

The Hard Lessons

-- The biggest lesson is: IT TAKES TWICE AS LONG (OR MORE) THAN YOU EXPECT IT SHOULD.

--If it's heavy, you will somehow need to haul it uphill.

--Cordwood is a great way to build, but your first wall (and maybe later ones) won't look as perfect and dead-straight as the ones in the pictures.

--Building without drawings makes the project very flexible and adaptable to the realities "on the ground," but it also makes it difficult to communicate things to a work crew without personal instruction on each step of the process.

-- Doing things with hand tools and the "old-fashioned way" is great and very satisfying, but it makes it hard-or impossible-to find skilled labor to help you if you do.

-- When you need loose materials like sand, don't be an idiot and buy it by the bag. Granted, I don't have a truck and would have had to pay for delivery, but it owuld have been so much cheaper in the long run.

--When building with "free" materials, you still need nails, bolts, mortar, and lots of other "incidental" expenses. THESE ADD UP, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CRAIGSLIST WOOD YOU FIND.

--The joint tolerances and door clearances we're used to for furniture don't work as well in a outdoor construction, especially with natural materials and in the wet Western Washington climate. Get over it.

I'm sure there's ten dozen more, but that'll do for now. Thanks to everyone for following this series, and I hope to hear about your projects soon!

Regards,
David

David, I would never have attempted it myself, but you have a fine looking project of which you should be very proud.

 

Old project but how has the construction held up all these years?