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A Barn Reborn

A Washington home recreates the look of long ago


As seen in: Timber Homes Illustrated - 2003 Annual Buyer's Directory
Story by Colleen Morrissey, Photos by Roger Wade, Styling by Debra Grahl

W hen Rob and Susie were looking for some property that they could escape to each weekend, it took much longer than either of them had anticipated. The problem wasn’t a lack of availability of land or homes for sale, but more due to the fact that their wish list was so specific it made finding what they wanted more difficult.

Their list was a tall order to fill, but one day, three years after beginning their search, the couple stumbled upon a property that immediately piqued their interest—and was only an hour away in nearby Gig Harbor. The property they found met almost all of their criteria. “We were looking

Once the inside of the barn was completed, the crew got to work on the outside. They topped the roof with a vintage cupola made from sheet metal that Rob found, which even has several bullet holes from being shot at in its previous life. The barn doors were part of the original structure that the crew salvaged. Although the large triangular-shaped windows may not be regulation barn, they are effective at showing the timber frame when the loft is lit up at night.

for an old farm on the water within an hour of the Seattle area,” Rob says. “We wanted something that could be accessed without a ferry, and have an orchard, a sandy beach and sunset views.”

Rob and Susie were instantly drawn to the property not only because it met all their demands, but also because it possessed a number of farm buildings, dating to the early 1900s. Admitted lovers of anything old and antique, especially related to farming, the couple discovered that not only was there an old farmhouse, cottage, and boathouse on the property, but a vintage gambrel barn as well. 'I love barns, old antiques and farms,' Rob says. 'I especially love old East Coast barns.'

As soon as Rob saw the old barn he knew that someday he would refurbish it. The loft above the barn would be the perfect place to create a cozy little getaway where he imagined family and friends could gather together. About five years ago, he started to plan its redesign and collect vintage materials to outfit the space.

Rob had three ideas for the loft. First, because of his love of old barns, he wanted it to be rebuilt as a timber frame done in a traditional style with mortise-and-tenon joinery and wooden pegs similar to how a barn would have been built in the late 18th century. More importantly, he wanted the frame to be handcrafted using salvaged timbers. And in particular, Rob says: “I wanted to use old

While the barn's roof was covered with hand-split, jumbo cedar shingles (an extra thick shingle that will las about 50 years), the exterior walls of the barn were covered with board and batten hewn from old barn siding. Rob found the wood at Conklin's Barnwood in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Underneath all the old wood are modern-day insulated panels to make the barn as energy efficient as possible.

The barn was built to mimic a classic East Coast gambrel-style barn. The distinguishing feature of a gambrel barn is its four-sided roof structure. In a functional barn, this type of roof expanded the width of the barn, allowing for more storage space. In this case, it serves to open up the space in the loft, enabling nearly 1,530 square feet of living space to be reclaimed for the family's use.

hand-hewn beams from old barns.” The barn would also be fit with classic barn features such as an ornate cupola made from sheet metal, barn-sized windows and a workable hay loft door.

His second idea for the loft was to furnish it in a quasi-hunting-fishing lodge style. It would have trophies mounted on the wall, hidden cubbyholes in the floor to store food, as in days of old, as well as an antique wood-burning stove in the kitchen that would serve as one of the loft’s main heat sources. “We have property in the mountains of Idaho,” Rob says. “Ideally, a lodge would be better suited for Idaho, but we only get up there a couple times a year.” Building a lodge close to home meant that Rob and his sons could use it year-round.

And lastly, he wanted the loft to be a fun place where his sons and their cousins could meet to play and fool around while shooting pool, sleeping over in the loft or practicing their rock climbing on a technical climbing wall that was configured by the stone masons on the exterior portion of the barn’s stone chimney. 'Like what you see at an REI store,' Rob says.

With that trio of goals in mind, Rob enlisted the help of Rick and Bob Stockmann, owners of Stockmann Brothers Construction Company in nearby Bellevue, Washington. 'I tracked them down as they were known as experts in building timber-framed barns,' Rob says. 'I met Bob Stockmann at a home show and he invited me out to Montana. I flew out there, went fishing with him and looked at some of the homes he built. I decided that he had the hands-on craftsman skills to do this job. I looked a long time to find someone with his degree of skill.'
The focal point of Rob and Susie's den is a wood-burning fireplace created from stones quarried off the Clark Fork River valley. Although hard to see in the photos, much of the rock is covered with lichen that has taken 70 to 100 years to grow. All of the boards on the interior walls were hewn from recycled barn siding and then blaned smooth on one side. The boards were then coated with a lacquer finish to help bring out the rich tones of the wood.

Since Rob wanted his timber frame to be constructed from authentic barn materials, he and the Stockmann brothers traveled all over Washington state looking for old barns that they could demolish in order to salvage the wood. 'But all the barns in the Northwest were built during the sawmill era,' Rob says, 'so they were either sawed timbers or they were literally old trees. A lot of the barns were built with the rounded trunks of trees.'
Shocked to find out that there weren’t really any hand-hewn barns available nearby, Rob focused his search on trying to obtain timbers from barns salvaged back East. “What he really wanted to do was bring back something that looked like it had been on his property for a hundred years,” Rick says. “And the only way to do that was to find timbers of that age.”

One company that specializes in collecting vintage barn timbers is Conklin’s Barnwood, a Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, company that has been salvaging and collecting old barns for years. “The fellow over at Conklin’s had barns from New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont,” Rob says. 'I went out there a couple of times and picked out the timbers for the frame inside, and got some old barn siding for the walls on the outside.'

The charm and character of the old barn wood is clearly on display in the area between the kitchen and rec-room where posts and beams abound. The rough-hewn appearance of the century-old wood, with its mortise pockets, wooden pegs and chisel marks, is what inspired Rob to use it as the centerpiece of his remodeling project.

The roof in the loft is held up by six king-post trusses, three of which are visible in the space just above the main gathering space in the home. The entertainment center, just below the mount of the shite mountain goat, houses not only a stereo but a hidden plasma-screen TV that can be raised for viewing with the push of a button.

The timbers that Rob chose for the loft are mainly hardwoods, covering a wide range of wood species, from hickory, walnut and chestnut to white pine, oak and, possibly, pecan. The timbers vary in size from 8 by 8 to 10 by 14 inches. In addition, Rob says, “Nothing was done to the timbers (such as applying a stain or preservative) except that they were re-cut to meet my specs.”

Once all of the timbers were chosen, the Stockmann brothers arranged to have the wood shipped to Port Townsend, Washington, where the timberwright shop of Timbercraft Homes is located. Timbercraft, along with the architectural firm of Nash, Jones and Anderson in Kirkland, helped engineer a frame to fit the loft space, as well as provide the craftsmen to cut and raise it.

The joinery crew found working with the old timbers to be an education in itself as they couldn’t help but study the century-old joinery that was in timbers as they re-cut the pieces. “We could still see layout scratches, tooling marks from band saws and chisels, old hand-hewn pegs here and there, and occasional initials carved into the surface,” says Charles Landau owner of Timbercraft. “And because the timbers were hand-hewn, we had to adopt several new methods for the layout of lines and how we cut and finished the joinery.”

Almost all the materials that were obtained for the loft were bought as either recycled or salvaged. “That’s the whole key” says Rick. “Rob wanted everything to be authentic. He had been collecting materials for the loft for years.” Some of the antique materials Rob purchased in the years before building began include: the kitchen stove which dates to the 1890s; the bricks for the firewall behind the stove which were first fired in 1929; and a variety of antique light fixtures. “Even the doors were reused from the original gambrel barn that stood here,” Rick says.

Rob was very specific about how he wanted the loft to look, and he made sure that he communicated this in weekly memos to the crew. “He was very articulate about how he wanted each timber to look inside the loft,” Rick says. “For instance, when we took him to the timber frame company (before the frame was cut), he showed us which side he wanted to face the interior, which was a challenge” because many of the timbers still retained a number of mortise pockets and tenon tongues in them.

Rob bought many of the objects used to furnish the loft as either salvaged or antiques. In the kitchen, an old-fashioned stove, dating from the 1890s and retrofitted to burn both wood and gas, serves as one of the loft's two main heat sources. The stove sits on a bed of bricks that were determined to be first fired in 1929.

“We had to make sure what we had would qualify structurally,” Rick says. “Because of those old mortise-and-tenon joints, we had to create some new ones and then reinforce them with hidden metal plates.”

While Rob had no intention of refurbishing the loft for any purpose other than the sheer enjoyment of seeing his dream of owning an authentic gambrel barn outfitted with salvaged materials come true, the home was recently recognized by the local master builders association as one of the best homes built with sustainable wood products or salvaged materials in the Seattle area.

In the long run, receiving accolades are nice, but they’re soon forgotten as time goes by. For Rob and Susie, what really matters is that they’ve not only created a gathering place for family and friends, but a way that they can spend precious moments with their children and create memories that will last a lifetime.