– By Sharon Thatcher –
Historic restoration isn’t something most rural builders want to tackle, but there are occasional opportunities to build something new or to enhance something old in a way that preserves a property’s historic integrity. Featured are two builders who have accomplished that.
Barn recovers
Greiner Buildings Inc. has been doing barn recovers since the 1980s. It is a small part of the business, currently maybe 3-10 barn recovers a year, but it helps to fill the construction schedule. “These can come in handy for filler jobs or providing work load during slow periods, during winter when the ground is frozen, or when other sites are too wet or muddy,” said Matt Greiner, company president.
Greiners’ experience with metal siding is what has drawn customers to seek them out. “Customers know that we do new buildings that have the same siding and roofing materials that they look to have installed on the older barns. So naturally they contact us to see if we are interested in bidding and performing the job. If we have the space in our schedule and if the job fits our model, we will look at it,” Greiner said.
Not every barn meets their criteria. “Sometimes barns are not safe to repair, have poor access for machinery and/or can be beyond reasonable condition for repair,” Greiner said. “Other times, the job may just not fit our model or scheduling.”
One of Greiner’s more recent projects was the Willard barn featured here. It is a two-story rounded-roof barn with a hayloft constructed by the owner’s grandfather in the early 1900s. It has sentimental value, so the family wanted to install metal siding to preserve it and give it a refreshed look.
The rounded roof, however, presented some unique challenges. “It is quite tall to the peak so it makes it difficult to reach,” Greiner said. “The barn also has a lot of sliding door openings so that required extra bidding and planning work.”
Except for the roof, the Willard project was fairly routine. That is not always the case. “We did one in West Branch, Iowa, a few years ago. It was not a large one, but we had a lot of demands on it such as preserving old style hay-loft doors, cutting in octagon shaped windows, preserving the old loft, etc. It was a lot of work and effort and continually tested us.”
Greiner relies on his usual sources for materials in barn recovers.
“We typically use Central States wall and roof metal, just like on our post frames. McElroy’s mini-rib product has been useful in the round-roof applications,” Greiner said.
“We usually modernize and use modern day windows, walk doors and slide doors. So it’s just a matter of preparing the opening to accept the new products,” Greiner said.
Working on older structures can be hazardous and Greiner cautions safety. “Make sure the foundation is fairly solid and that the structure is basically straight and square and not leaning excessively,” he offered. “If there is a safety concern you have to decide if it makes economic sense to recover the project.”
Greiner said the trend for recovers has been fairly steady for several years and sentimentally is generally the driving force, as the Willard case which was preserving something built by a relative.
“We have taken on less of these jobs as our other business sectors have grown,” he explained. “But there are still a lot of the older style barns out there.”
Some of those older barns are now in fact early post-frames. “We are seeing older post frames come around for recover and repair-needs,” Greiner said. “So that may be a new trend in coming years.”
New old-style structures
Two new post-frame garages support the look of the historic house. Hochstetler Buildings Inc. photos
When the owner of a historic 1800s Italianate style home in Westerville, Ohio, wanted to build two extra buildings with complimenting design on a small property, he turned to Hochstetler Buildings Inc. of Plain City.
“We had done several commercial projects [for the owner],” construction manager Evan Bishop said, “so they felt comfortable coming to us for this project.”
Hochstetler builds post frame, which was a perfect selection for this project. “Because of how tight the site was, post frame was a good option,” said Bishop.
The property itself is historic because of its early connection to the town and to Otterbein College located there. It was a rare day when Westerville zoning officials signed off on a post-frame project like this in the city, but they were careful to consider the architecturally drawn plans and liked what they saw.
The project included two post-frame buildings, a 2-car garage and a single car garage plus a breezeway that connected the home to the 2-car garage.
“The architect (Tim Carr of T. Walton Carr Architects) really wanted what is called a railroad building style roofline,” Bishop said, adding, “and we did that with just a conventional truss set-up we were able to incorporate into the roof line.”
Window and eave brackets were custom made at Keim Lumber Co., Millersburg, Ohio.
“We have a good standing relationship with Keim Lumber,” Bishop said. “So what we did was take pictures, went up on the ladders and got charcoal sketches, then sent the actual hand drawings to Keim.” Keim used cad drawings to create the brackets, which were machine carved from multiple layers of pvc.
“The eave brackets were five pieces and they were assembled together into one bracket,” Bishop said. “Keim made the brackets for us so all we had to do is mount them. The same for the window brackets.
“We found a cement board crown trim that had a very close match to the crown, and custom-made the window head trim. It was pretty labor intensive but once said-and-done it looks very close,” Bishop said.
Cement board hardie panel-type siding lathe was used to coordinate the look of all the buildings, new and old.
The end product was a project that won a first place in last year’s Buckeye Frame Building Association Building of the Year awards, and second place in national competition sponsored by the National Frame Building Association.