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What’s the opposite of a barn raising?

By Dawn Sailors In Projects

Whatever you call it, that’s what we did yesterday morning. (I hinted at it here! Did you guess?) My friend, Jamie, knows a farmer in Iowa who had an old barn he was planning to tear down, so he kindly agreed to let us have at it first. The benefit to us was that we could keep whatever we wanted from the wood we tore down! A lot of work to say the least, but with the price of authentic barn wood, getting your own for free is an awesome deal. So why not take advantage of living here in barn-central when you can, right?

In case you are totally lost right now, (why would anyone in their right mind want old barn wood?) here are a few pictures from Pinterest of some of the awesome things people are doing with it these days. (Be prepared to be amazed.)

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So naturally, knowing we’ve been planning this little adventure for a few weeks, I’ve been pinning barnwood inspiration like crazy. I have a few ideas in mind for what we’ll do with our new stash of lumber, but before all that, here is our Saturday morning in pictures.

The barn when we got there in the morning:

Getting to work. Brett removing one of the doors for me! We brought that sucker home in one piece, hinges and all. Beautiful!

Isn’t the light beautiful? You can see from this photo though, why the barn was about to be demolished. Holes all through the ceiling, and the floor was sagging and weak in spots, but lots of good wood to salvage!

Making some progress now!

I love how you can see what a truly dirty job this was in this next photo of Jamie removing some shelves. Luckily he brought masks along because he and Brett spent most of their morning in a cloud.

Here’s a view from the bottom floor, once most of the wall was removed.

Some of the guys removing nails and stacking the lumber.

And one more, an Instagram photo of Jamie surveying the scene.

I can’t wait to get started on the projects I have lined up for this wood. Talk about DIY. This is like extreme DIY. I feel like I could be a long-lost Picker Sister right now. Stay tuned for projects to come in the next few weeks!

-Dawn