Customer Reviews

Renovating Barns, Sheds, and Outbuildings

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's easy to say that this is the best book on renovating barns - it's the only one that I know of. But, this book is very, very good. I'm lucky enough to be able to spend much of my time designing new barns and helping clients restore old ones. I'm amazed and embarrassed by how much I learned from this book. Nick Engler presents a good primer on barn design, and then goes to work, explaining in detail how to repair each and every common problem with old barns. If your barn is leaning, if the stone foundation is buckled, if your pole-barn posts are rotting, if your timbers have splintered, if your roof sways, you'll learn what to do to fix the problem and to keep it from happening again.

if you are looking for good, solid, usable information on restoring old barns and the mechanics of their structure, this book is the bible on it. quite detailed and good instructions. the author doesn't just tell you it can be done, but how to do it as well. this book won't help trendy city folk, with no building skills, pick out carpet samples for turning a barn into a home, but it is the number one resource on the structure of barns and making them solid and usable again before changing their purpose. I highly recommend this book.

Excellent book on how to tackle serious structural deficiencies of your barn from foundation up to the roof.I think you could use this usefull information on other types of buildings such as older homes and garages.In fact this book will show you how to replace rotted out logs in a log cabin.Many simple pictures and diagrams on how to get it done.Also good basics on how to run water and electric utilities once you square up your building.

Wow, I couldn't believe this book when I got it. It is the best book I've ever seen when it comes to explaining all the forces acting on barns and how to counteract them. This a book that really explains the concepts behind the fixes. Illustrations are great. There are some advanced methods of fixing barns that are good to know but I'm not sure I could handle them, it's great to know about them.

I never write reviews, but this book deserves one.

I read Donald's review and thought to myself "That describes every phase of the project I'll be taking on at my own barn". So I picked up the book, read/studied all 240 pages over a weekend, and took my original project plan and enhanced it in multiple ways. You can piece this information together with hours and hours of research (that's what I had been doing up until this point), or you can get this book. Clear explanations, excellent illustrations, and Nick Engler's writing style is just generally easy/fast to read.

We just purchased a property with an old barn and this book was recommended to us as an initial resource. It has provided a good overview of barn history and guidance for restoration.

This book is not exhaustive; every barn presents a unique scenario with unique challenges for renovators. That said, this text gives a very good overview of the restoration process. I found the chapter on foundations to be especially enlightening, and I am sure this book will aid me in my future barn renovation projects.

Barns are a part of our American history; use this book to help you preserve these icons of American agricultural history!

I was contemplating refurbishing my old barn. After reading this book I was able to thoroughly inspect my old barn and found several reasons that helped me decide to not renovate. I disassembled the barn, saved what I could, built a proper foundation and started construction of a new "old" barn reusing the materials I saved plus other materials I salvaged from other barns. This book is full of useful information and has great photography and illustrations to go along with it.

I like books with a lot of "HOW" in them. This book has that.

I bought this book because I have a fascination with timber frames. I know of an old farmhouse with two barns that are partial post-and-beam structures. They sit on crumbling stone foundations and much of their bracing is provided by the wood lap siding itself. I've been in those barns and gazed at their structure wondering how much of a chore it would be to restore all of it and convert it to a living space. I've also wondered if it would be cheaper and more time efficient to just build a timberframe home directly without trying to salvage a barn. For the barns, one of the biggest headaches I could see was the foundation. Besides disassembling the entire structure and rebuilding it on a new foundation, I wasn't sure if it was possible to repair the foundation from underneath the barn whilst correcting some of its lean and non-square joinery.

Well, this book illustrates how to do all of that. My only complaint is that I wish more of the pictures were color. However, the drawings and diagrams are nicely done and easy to understand. This is one more book for my arsenal (along with Ted Benson's books on timber framing) as I mentally prepare for the battle of building our next house, substituting my own labor and sweat for debt. This book has plenty of "how" on its pages and I keep it by the living room chair so I can flip through it daily. It's gotten me thinking about new ways to do things, provided some information about squaring old structures, and provided some new terminology that aids me in further research. Overall excellent book.