Saturday, January 10, 2004

By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There's nothing like an old barn to give your property character and a sense of history. But unless your house is in a rural area, it probably didn't come with any outbuildings. So what's a wannabe barn preservationist to do?

You can always follow in Todd Rossman's footsteps and buy an existing barn and reconstruct it on site. But instead of tramping around looking for one for sale, you can check out newspaper classifieds or go to the Internet.

The Barn Journal (www.thebarnjournal.org) lists barns for sale as well as links to barn experts and contractors and articles about barns. Barn Again (www.agriculture.com/barnagain) offers tips on new uses for old barns and a barn rehab checklist. And there are several companies that sell either intact barns or barn parts.

HistoricProperties.com lists barns of varying sizes and prices for sale by region. Current Pennsylvania properties include a 3,000-square-foot bank barn dating from the 1870s for $20,000 and a two-story, 900-square-foot, hand-hewn oak carriage barn built in 1820 for $7,500. Both are available from The Foundation for Historic Building Rescue in Harleysville, Montgomery County, a nonprofit preservation group.

But what if you don't have the space, money or time for a major barn reconstruction? A new storage barn from Country Barns of Pittsburgh is an economical alternative. Custom-built on site by Mennonite crews from Ohio out of tongue-and-groove white pine or primed Duratemp plywood siding, they range in size from 8 by 8 feet to 16 by 30 feet and cost between $1,700 and $7,400, depending on size and style. Construction typically takes a day or less (customers must prepare the site beforehand with 4 inches of gravel).

All barns come with a 2-inch-thick tongue-and-groove pressure-treated floor and fiberglass shingle roofs. Paint or stain is available at an additional cost, and because the barns are built from scratch, customers can request modifications such as an additional door or fewer windows.

One of the most popular designs, says owner Leonoor Zehner, is the Swiss-inspired Chalet model. This charming structure boasts shuttered windows with window boxes and screens and a gable above the barn-style front door. The roof is trimmed with scalloped fascia. This model is so picturesque that one customer who built a 12- by 12-foot chalet on two acres in Mt. Lebanon added electricity and a screened porch, turning it into a summer house. Other customers have used the storage sheds as pool houses, pottery studios and playhouses.

Or you could use one as a garage. Harry May of Bethel Park recently spent a little more than $4,000 for a 14-by-24-foot knotty pine mini-barn to house his 1929 Model A. He also added a 14- by 16-foot loft for storage, along with electricity.

"I couldn't afford a cement garage, and I could tell this was a quality product," he says, adding that it took the Mennonite crew just six hours to construct.

Graced with a Dutch-style gambrel roof, double barn doors and a window box full of petunias in the summer, the natural oak-stained barn looks perfectly at home next to May's 70-year-old white stucco Colonial house.

"Just don't call them sheds," says Zehner. "They're barns."

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