Building your dream barn is an exciting undertaking which requires a lot of thought and planning. This article will take you through the process of making a dream barn wish-list, designing a layout, considering cost, planning the finer details, and more. Examples for a 38 ft x 72 ft barn are given.
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So, you are building a barn. Congratulations!
This isn’t going to be just any barn though, this is your dream barn, the one you have been wishing and saving for. It’s very exciting but can be overwhelming at the same time. You want to get the plan right so that you have the room and functionality that you need.
Decisions will have to be made, but first, it’s helpful to make a list of all the features you want. Then you can prioritize and lay them out based on your space and budget.
Making a Dream Barn Wish-list
To get started planning your dream barn, ask yourself what is the new barn going to be used for? Storing equipment? Housing for livestock? A combination of both? Write these down.
In addition to the general purposes of the barn, identify features you want the barn to have. This list will help you work with your builder, if you are hiring one, on what reasonable dimensions might be.
For our barn, our list included the following:
- A run-in, accessible from the pasture, large enough to house a round bale feeder
- Multiple box stalls to function as horse stalls as well as kidding pens for our goats
- A tack room
- Square bale hay storage
- Grain storage
- A walk-in cooler for processing animals
- Milking parlor
- Ample open space for activities, storage, tractor, manure spreader, etc.
Making a Dream Barn Layout
Now that we had our list, it was time to draw. I am no artist by any means, so graph paper was especially helpful to get some scale. Laying out where you think you want everything to go is an important step and can help you start to get the scope of your build.
We started with something we knew the dimensions of, the stalls. They were to be 10ft x 10ft each, and we wanted four of them. From there, we drew in the area for our hay storage, run-in, and open floor space.
In that space, we played with different options of where to put our cooler, grain storage, milking parlor, and tack room. The graph paper allowed us to essentially move all these squares around, make them larger or smaller, and find a layout that seemed to work for us. We designed and redesigned until we had everything we wanted.
Our initial drawing of our 38 ft x 72 ft barn is included below.
Calculating Cost for Your Dream Barn
Now the hard part…cost. Money doesn’t go as far as it used to with the price of building materials today. I would suggest getting multiple quotes and looking at the work that your potential builder has done.
Honestly, we turned down more than one builder with a lower quote based off truss spacing, bracing, or other things we saw in their work. We wanted a good quality build.
Determine your budget and then decide on and work with your builder. With all the above considered, you can’t make a barn that is too big. That’s not to say you should build outside of your means. However, if you are on the fence, and you can afford it, you should opt for more space than you think you need. I promise that space will not be wasted, and you likely will be happier with your decision in the future as your operation grows and changes.
To help soften the financial blow, also think about what work you may be able to do yourself. For example, we had the “shell” built and cement poured, while we built the stalls, tack room, cooler, and did the electric and plumbing work ourselves.
Planning Details for Your Dream Barn
The decisions are ultimately yours, but a good builder will give you many suggestions in the planning phase as well as the building phase that should be considered. The builder can also help you with many of the finer details.
Things to consider would be ceiling height, type of siding, concrete versus dirt floors, optional gutters, size and placing of doors and windows, water spigots, and so much more.
Our 38 ft x 72 ft dream barn has a 12-foot ceiling, red raised-panel steel siding, and a black steel roof with a copula. The copula adds some flair, a place for a weathervane, and helps with ventilation.
Our run-in has a dirt floor and the stalls have 21AA crushed concrete covered with stall mats. The rest of the barn has 4 inches of concrete. We have one water hydrant in the back of the barn and one in the front.
Our tack room and walk-in cooler are framed in with 8-foot ceilings. The roof of these two rooms provides an additional 4 feet of storage space on top. If you are thinking about building a walk-in cooler, you can use our discount code for 25 dollars off your CoolBot with this link.
For more information on how we transition our box stalls into temporary kidding jugs for goats, click here to read our other article.
Enjoying Your Dream Barn
Lastly, enjoy the build and don’t rush the process. All good things take time. Sit back and take in the progression, as your dreams become a reality. We had a blast watching our dream barn get built and getting our own hands dirty in the process.
Your dream barn will be a place for tinkering, learning, and gathering. For us, it is a place to welcome new life, shelter the sick or injured, and spend time together as a family. It’s where we host parties and find peace and solace in a busy world.
We hope you enjoy your dream barn as much as we do ours!
Butcher, coach, and handyman— there is nothing this man can’t do or fix. He loves the outdoors, playing with his kids, as well as hunting and cooking homegrown or wild meats!