Barn Demolition

I thought I should take a moment to share my wisdom of barn demolition and salvage.

Step 1- Tie one end of a rope around a vertical timber.

Step 2- Tie the other end to your compact Japanese pickup truck.

Step 3- Pull

Step 4- If Barn is still standing, repeat steps 1 through 3.

Seriously, some barns are not worth the trouble of dismantling from the top down. I read up on the subject before I tackled this job, they suggest dismantling a building esentially in the reverse order you would build it. There was no way you were going to get me up on the roof of my barn, not with daylight shining through in several [hundred] locations.

Not to mention the sagging roof line or the sill plate and posts in the dirt. It seems to me that if the barn were stable enough to dismantle from the top down, there wouldn't be any reason to take it down in the first place.

Several neighbors stopped by to introduce themselves in the proses. Like barn raising, there is nothing like barn demo to bring a community together. I got lots of comments and suggestions to how I SHOULD be doing it. All of which revolved around the assumption that the barn was strong and sound. It just wasn't so. How the heck could I have pulled down a barn, bigger than my house, with a 4cyl Toyota? It was half rotten. Not to mention it had gotten an overhaul  or two in its 120 + years of service, one of which appears to have been a ruthless butchering.

Its too bad though, she must have been a beauty in her day.