Bondgarden Barn inside
The Barn at Bondgarden Farm has been the talk of Eliot all summer. Nearly a hundred feet long and roofed in slate, the barn was always a stunner, but in July, Rick Geddes lifted the barn 6 feet in the air, and neighbors and news crews took note. Geddes threaded four 50 foot, 12 inch H-beams into the building running in two parallel lines down the eave bays. Then he crossed the H-beams with eight perpendicular I-beams to pick up the loft joists in each bay. He gently lifted the H-beams using his truck’s hydraulic system, and rested them on six tidy cribbing piles. At this point, the repair work could commence.
Dan explains lifting in front of the hole cut for the steel
Built in the 1860s, the entire undercarriage was rotted, and the basement was no longer necessary. Bob Cantwell crunched up the undercarriage and excavated the basement. Chris McKinnon poured a new frost wall around the perimeter and two level grade beams beneath the drive posts. The new barn floor is crushed stone, which will be more appropriate for its equine occupants.
Bladed scarf repair
Most of the post feet were quite mushy, and required new feet or re-repairs. Fortunately, a few good posts remained, from which Dan and Tom could establish a standard post length. After checking for level with a transit, they used the top of the grade beam as a reference line. From there, they repaired each drive post to the standard overall length. In most cases, the post was repaired with a center tenon scarf, which resists twisting and preserves the maximum amount of original material. In cases where the rot extended above the loft or needed to be removed on one side more than the other, they repaired the foot with a bladed scarf joint, a traditional repair. We commonly see this scarf in old barns, repaired more than a century ago.
Center Tenon Repair
For decades, cattle used the drive posts as scratching posts. Below the loft, their stallside faces have been carved into gentle curves. The joists above were scalloped by the teeth of bored horses. We preserved the patina of the posts and fared the fixes to their organic profiles.
New girts and new eave wall
Once the repairs were installed, Dan and Tom could begin to address the hay lofts. Originally, there were a row of tying girts about halfway up the posts. The barn was converted to house taller livestock, after it had already begun to sink. The remuddlers removed the lower loft girts and snapped a level line on the uneven parallel posts. They neglected to replace the tying girts and erected stall walls, which were clad in 2x6s and filled with insulation. They slapped up loft joists, which broke over the stalls. In some places, the posts had dropped eight inches when replacement clapboards were hung. For now, on the backside of the barn, you can still see how far the barn was out of level by the undulation in the line of clapboards.
New stall studs
The crew used staging boxes to stabilize the loft floors and remove the poorly designed stalls. Then they leveled the lofts to the newly plumbed posts and installed level loft girts between the posts in 6″ x 10″ eastern white pine. The Goranssons will stock the lofts with hay for their horses.
Rear wall wave
Last but not least, Victor Wright, of the Heritage Company, will repair the slate roof. In some ways, all this work was to preserve the intact slate, worth tens of thousands of dollars. There aren’t many barns anywhere that were roofed in slate, but especially in Eliot. As they were interviewed by TV crews, the Goranssons explained why they went through this process to save their barn. They value the craftsmanship embodied within it. During the repair process, they witnessed how much work goes into raising a timber frame of this size. For centuries to come, their neighbors will witness the fruits of their efforts.
Repairing cornice to prepare for slate
