Solar Decathlon: Barn wood

This particular entry is directed more at my parents than the rest of you. Ok, not this part... or the next bit... but we'll get there.

My parents live on a farm. There's a stone chicken coop that needs the foundation jacked up a bit, a stone garage designed for a model-T, a stone cow milking structure, a huge wooden hay barn, and a less huge wooden barn that happens to have hay, a boat, and a styrofoam castle in it. These wooden structures are in less than ideal condition. Now that he's retired Dad has expressed some interest in replacing the huge hay barn with something that better fits their existing needs instead of those from fifty years ago. Some interest. Not a lot. Not as much as me. But some.

Anyway, what I want to do is tear down the old barn and sell off the old wood to raise money to pay for the new barn. I detected a bit of skepticism at my plan. However, to further prove my point that there is a demand for barn wood I present Exhibit A.

A barn wood ceiling


A close up of the same ceiling

Three of the houses at the Solar Decathlon used barn wood in their house. Or rather, three houses talked about it. Most of the time you couldn't tell. Only in this house was the wood clearly from a barn. As you can see, they ran it through a planer to get rid of the warping but didn't cut so deep that it would lose the cracks and some of the surface oxidation that gives it the barn wood look.

Also, I'm revising my sketches of the replacement barn to incorporate a shipping container or two.