FrankenBarn, the 2011 Barn Raising Project

For years now my father's been complaining about his shortage of indoor parking spaces and workspaces. He's been converting all of his outbuildings (mostly disused 100-year-old chicken barns) into garages and putting up tents and lean-tos wherever he can hide them out of view from his house. Still, this isn't enough.


He's also been compulsively squirrelling away a respectable stockpile of heavy timbers and leftover lumber from wherever he can find it.  He's been finding leftover construction materials on Craigslist, rooting through recycled concrete forms at the used lumber yard, and even pulling large chunks of wood that float down the river and dragging them home.


All of this hoarding has been aimed toward one day, someday, building a new workshop.  Doing my best to be encouraging, I've been telling him for the past couple of years that he'd be better off just hiring a construction company to come in and erect a steel building on a proper concrete slab. 

Finally, something goaded him into action.  Here's the finished result:


If you'd like to see pics of it all coming together, read on...