The Little Red Barn Get-Away Structure

As time permits, I will tell the story of the construction of the little red barn on our land here in Wisconsin’s gorgeous driftless region. The image to the right shows the trusses, ladder, trim, doors, and other parts of the little structure loaded precariously on the back of my trusty Ford Ranger ready to leave for the 220 mile trip.

You cannot see it in the image(?), but I made a cradle that goes from the cab top to the rim of the tailgate to rest the load on, and then strapped everything to that. Luckily I had a cordless screw gun and lots of different sized screws along because the load started slipping on the freeway just out of town (Milwaukee). I stopped and screwed the bottommost truss to the cradle, then went truss to truss and attached them all into one big assembly (about a half hour on the side of the road). We made it just fine, but it was one hell of a scary trip.

When we arrived, we had a box structure that was put up the week before, and because the trusses were loaded in order, we just had to unscrew them one at a time and put them up on top.

 

 

 

 

Features of the Little Red Barn;

• Kitchen area with cast iron sink, microwave, hotplate, crock pot, coffee maker, toaster, and refrigerator.

• Filtered hot and cold running water.

• Massive shelf space (it was originally supposed to be just for storage after all).

• Loft sleeping quarters.

• Full lighting with 3-way switches for the loft, and a dimmer for the lower area .

• Drinking fountain on exterior wall (GFCI outlets there as well)

• Breaker box.

• Flushable Plywood #1 Toilet

 

 

 

To the left is an image of the loft sleeping quarters upstairs. On the far wall you can see the door opening that was going to be used to unod stuuf directly from the back of my truck to what was originally supposed to be a storage area.

 

 

 

The barn is just a 10′ x 12′ shed, but it is built to code or better structuraly –for instance, the trusses are lag screwed to the top plate and most joints are glued. In the image below to the left is a view from the edge of bed of the plywood toilet ,  and to the right is looking up the ladder thru the entrance to the loft (hole in the floor). I just added some more pictures to the plywwod toilet page at the link above, and there are drawings and a 3D model as well.

 

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