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Picture a majestic bank barn. Wagonloads of hay roll in and out of its yawning doors. The clopping of horse hooves and the shouts of farmhands fill the air. Muscles ripple and pitchforks dig deep while each person participates in preparing for the winter. It’s an act of community and an act of survival.
Two hundred years ago, a barn served as the hub of a farm’s operation. Indeed, a farmer’s survival depended on a structure that could house his animals and store their provender.
Times have changed. Some of these barns still sit at the center of a farm’s operation. Many barns, though, have fallen into disrepair. They’ve each done their life’s work, and now they wait, deteriorating.
Or have they done their life’s work? Stable Hollow Construction says absolutely not! As barn restoration specialists for nearly two decades, we are passionate about giving new life to old barns. Our team’s vision is about helping people bring their barns from that era of time to this era of time.
Some of these restored barns operate again as new centers of community life. Weddings, celebrations, family reunions–these communal acts unfold in the time-sanctioned space of historic barns. Everyone can enjoy these restored spaces because somebody valued the legacy of the past.
Some barns get deconstructed because of land development or a property owner’s decision. Because of our love for history and our vision for its creative preservation, we hated seeing these old barns going for firewood.
Over the years Stable Hollow has been salvaging this old barn wood and building up an inventory of reclaimed building materials. In addition to barn doors, we are now making custom-built furniture and decor.
At the woodshop, our artisan woodworkers craft each piece with the same historical consciousness, authenticity, and care that Stable Hollow is known for in the barn construction world.
Stable Hollow is serious about saving barns and is excited to bring more barns into the present and future–in every way we can. Our barn wood custom creations enable us to fulfill this vision even more.
The custom possibilities are many–chandeliers, windmills, wishing wells, barn beam accents, lamps, fireplace mantles, etc. If someone owns a special piece of wood, they can bring it to the woodshop and have something beautiful made from it.
Stable Hollow envisions outfitting newly restored event and hobby barns with sets of tables.
Sometimes we need to tear old barn wood out of a barn. Instead of throwing it out, we’ll bring it to the woodshop and turn it into tables. Then we’ll take the tables back to the same barn. It was their barn floor; now it’s their table!
One of the beauties of barn wood construction is the rare species of wood found in barns built long ago. For example, throughout the early 1900s, a blight scourged American forests of nearly all the chestnut trees.
Many old barns built before the blight boast significant amounts of chestnut, a lightweight, medium-brown wood that deepens into a reddish hue as it ages. Salvaging this wood and crafting something new from it allows the chestnut to live a little longer.
It all comes to life in a small woodshop set up temporarily in an old church near Stable Hollow headquarters. A team of artisan craftsmen builds these custom creations the old way, forming an intimate connection with each piece. They tap into historical construction methods, like mortise and tenon peg joinery.
Imagination and curiosity guide their work. No two pieces are the same. Blending historic know-how with hands-on expertise, the team allows the character of the wood to speak for itself. Chisel marks, insect bore holes, gashes, indentations–these marks all tell a valuable story. If possible, these marks are preserved.
Peek inside the woodshop and observe each step of the process.
The first step is cleaning the wood. Washing or sand-blasting the wood and digging out the nails prepare it for building. After this, they cut the wood roughly to the length they need for the project, then saw the wood width-wise to take off the face. They plane the wood and final-cut the pieces to their exact sizes.
Next, they assemble the pieces, joining them with pegs and adding glue if needed for additional stability. An epoxy finish fills in tabletop cracks. After sanding, a natural finish is chosen to preserve the wood. Finishes like linseed oil, danish oil, tung oil, and polyurethane add little to no color to the wood.
Our custom reclaimed creations sit at different places on the rustic spectrum. For a primitive-style table, the supports stay in their cleaned, barn-wood state without any other interference besides cutting to size. Other finished pieces look more refined–built from barn wood, but sanded, planed, and finished.
Like each restored barn, these reclaimed pieces each have a story to tell. Was this chair once a horse manger? Whose hands drove the chisel into this barn beam that now supports a table? What feet wore this tabletop smooth?
And the stories will live on into the future. Who will celebrate around this table? What laughter will be shared, what songs will be sung, what memories will be made around this table? What feasts will it hold?
So never give up on an old barn. Demolition doesn’t mean annihilation. If your barn can’t be restored, maybe it can be preserved in new, creative ways. From barn floor to tabletop, from barn beams to chandeliers–let history make its mark in your home.
Fire up your imagination, and tell us your vision for something new. In as many ways as we can, we’ll help you bring your barn from the past to the present so it can serve future generations. Let’s work together to create your monument to the past.
Building the Future by Preserving the Past.