Barn Rehab Project
Last Updated: Nov. 13
Look. When we first toured this house with a little run in, hay loft and desk in the tack room-ish area, I flashed back to 8 year old me. The little girl who lived vicariously through the Saddle Club and Phantom Stallion and Misty of Chincoteague. I had visions of how much she would have LOVED to sleep in the hayloft and spend hours brushing a pony there. I’ll be honest with you, I would still absolutely do all of that as an adult. However, this teeny dream barn has seen better days.
Welcome to the Barn
The barn is a little rectangular building with one (X by X) ‘stall’ space with a sliding barn door, a small feed or tack room space with a separate Dutch door, and an overhead hayloft. The stall has what I think is a hay manger, a small door dividing the animal area from the food area. There aren’t any rubber mats or stones for storage, only the natural clay dirt that has hardened into a really solid stone-like floor. There are cobwebs galore, and something has burrowed quite cozily under the feed room area.
On the outside, there are a few points where there clearly used to be a fence attached to the barn, but it’s been gone for a very long time. The sliding barn door doesn’t really slide anymore, so it’s been open for our six months, plus the last three years of the home being vacant. It’s a wooden door on wooden tracks, so it’s not going to slide as easily as modern metal rollers. The Dutch door to the feed room is barely a door anymore; every week, it’s sliding further and further off the hinges. We’re not messing around with it yet, leaving the door shut until she gives up. The roof needs some love, though luckily, the overhang on the front is in great shape
There’s also a lot of damage to the bottom of the back wall. Our property has a pretty significant slope, so the water rolling down from the house gutters flows directly into the back here. The barn backs up to a pretty big tree and there are a few others in the way of the new fence we’re planning. The trees are dropping a lot of branches and litter on the roof of the barn, causing more damage to the already leaky roof.
The Goal
Based on what the previous homeowner left, we think they used to have a horse in this little barn. Despite having five acres, which is technically plenty of room, we’re not planning on fencing a big enough space for a full-size horse. Instead, we’re aiming for some smaller friends: a couple of goats, a couple of sheep, and maybe a donkey or pony, depending on the field size. The field we build will be shared with our chicken coop too, which we’ll build from scratch a couple yards down.
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