[CharleyL]

Back in October of 2010 my grand daughter wanted a horse barn. Not a big barn, but one for her plastic horses, kind of a doll house, but made for plastic horses. She gave me a plastic horse, so I would be certain to build it the right size. I studied several designs, and even downloaded a plan from the internet, but nothing was wanted or even approximately the right size, so I designed and built this horse barn for her based something like one of the designs, but built to a scale that would fit that specific plastic horse that she had given me. The agreement between us was, that I would build it, if she and her mom would paint it.

So I set about building the barn for her, mostly from the idea that was formulating in my head. As I got further into it, more and more ideas came to me and I incorporated as many as I could. I took some project pictures using my cell phone, and also using a small digital phone that I had at the time. Well, that little phone trashed every picture that I had taken, so I only have the few in progress photos that I took with my cell phone and they are the first photos posted here. It's 36" long, 18" high, and 14" deep.

I delivered the horse barn before realizing that the camera had trashed the pictures, so I was never able to take any replacements. My grand daughter and her mom spent quite a bit of time painting and staining it, but I wasn't able to visit them during this to take any progress photos. Then, when it was finished, my grand daughter wouldn't let me have it to take to my woodworking club, or even to take pictures of it without her coming along with it (it meant that much to her).

Ok, now 9 years later, she is a 21 year old adult and has just graduated from college with an associate degree. She no longer plays with the barn and they just bought a real farm. I volunteered to store the barn for safe keeping during their move, so I finally had the chance to take the pictures that I had wanted to take all these years.

The first few photos show the work in progress. Then comes the photos of the finished barn. The roof was BB plywood, grooved to make it look like metal roofing. All three roofs lift off as well as the floor of the hay loft in the center section.
I beamed the under side of each roof section to help the roof sections sit in place, but also to make them appear more real if you look in through a doorway and up at the under side of the roof. A steeple was planned, but she got to see the barn before the steeple was built, and wanted it just as it was. I decided to make coral fencing afterward, and with nothing to scale it to (she had the barn by this time) so it should have been a bit taller. My sister had a plastic farm when we were kids and I remembered how her coral fences had been built, so I made these with similar feet, and this idea worked out quite well.

This project took 9 years for me to build, and then finally to post it. I hope you all enjoy.

Charley

 

[RainMan 2.0]

Wow great outcome ,that looks really sharp. Love the little details . This will be in the family for centuries I suspect

 

[honesttjohn]

That's cool when you do something like that and they appreciate it.

 

[Stick486]

that's AWESOME!!!!

 

[Herb Stoops]

Great job, Charlie, I like the effort at all the details, must have taken a lot of head scratching to figure how how to make it so it assembled and disassembled easily. The correl goes with it exactly right. They did as good job of painting it too.
Did you you make or buy those tiny hinges?
Herb

 

[CharleyL]

Great job, Charlie, I like the effort at all the details, must have taken a lot of head scratching to figure how how to make it so it assembled and disassembled easily. The correl goes with it exactly right. They did as good job of painting it too.
Did you you make or buy those tiny hinges?
Herb

Thanks everybody. I really appreciate all of the positive comments.

Herb,

Those hinges are the smallest that I could find and get on short notice, but if I remember right it took Lowes three shipments to get all of them in stock for me at my local store. Installing that many hinges was a nightmare too. I just now counted them and there are 56 hinges in the barn and the fence gate total. with 4 Screws per hinge equals 224 screws that needed to have carefully placed pilot holes drilled, and then each screw held in place with a pair of tweezers while starting it in it's hole. I think it took me as much time to install the hinges as it did to build the barn.

Yesterday I managed to find and order the tiny flat brass hooks that I had used on the larger center barn doors front and back. When I built the barn I could only find pairs of these hooks in packages along with their mating loops, which I didn't want for $3.75/package. With as many doors and split doors as the barn has, buying them this way was cost prohibitive, so I didn't buy them, except for the two used on the front and back center doors. At least the hinges came 4 to a package.

This recent order yesterday was for packages of 4 identical hooks without the mating loops for $0.60 per package. I use a round head screw to attach the hook, plus a second round head screw for the hook to hook to on the mating door. Yesterday I bought 20 packages of 4 each of the hooks. I'll also need some brass round head screws to go with them, and they will be coming from Amazon for $10 per hundred screws. I'll be adding these hooks to every door and half door of the barn before my grand daughter gets it back. I wish I could have found them at a reasonable price 9 years ago and they would already be part of the barn.

I can still remember her comment to me when she first saw the barn. "That's beautiful." "It's much nicer than I expected." "Thank you so much, grandpa". I'll remember these words and her emotion until eternity.

This is the same grand daughter that I helped build gates for her live goats back in January. I bought the materials as her Christmas present, but then supervised her in building them. She did almost all of the work including all of the circular saw cuts. About the most significant thing that I did other than provide direction was to hold the gate in place while she drove the screws in with my impact driver. This was for 2 goats, a mother and her young baby. Since then another young goat has been given to her, and last week the momma goat gave birth to two new babies, a male and a female. She must have become pregnant just before my grand daughter bought her, so she had actually bought 4 goats in that purchase. I'll see if I can find pictures and add them tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Charley

 

[MEBCWD]

Great project and building for grandkids is so much fun.

 

[JOAT]

Every time I visit my older son I pass a horse barn that is the twin of that one. Except yours is smaller.

 

[DesertRatTom]

I really love this project. I think you posted it a long time ago, so glad to see it again. I had a step daughter who had a horse, my neighbor up the hill's daughter also had a horse, so I built a corral and a shelter and sun shade for them. This was in a remote mountain canyon, so there wasn't much level ground. The girls loved those horses and rode them all over the canyon, even venturing into the neighboring canyon via a narrow pass. Bringing back memories. Thanks, very nice project.

 

[jj777746]

Fantastic job Charley,more intricate than my concrete block stables I owned years ago.

 

[harrysin]

With such detail I'm not surprised that it took so long Charley. Such construction will survive several generations.

 

[CharleyL]

Every time I visit my older son I pass a horse barn that is the twin of that one. Except yours is smaller.

Theo,

I would love to see a photo of that barn. Can you take a photo of it and post it?

Attached are a few photos of my daughter's first goats. I don't yet have photos of the new ones. The mother brown goat (Theodosia) is the one that just gave birth to the two newest babies. The smaller white and brown one (Virginia) is the older daughter of the mother goat, and she was purchased together with her mom back in January.

Charley

 

[CharleyL]

Fantastic job Charley,more intricate than my concrete block stables I owned years ago.

Horses don't eat concrete blocks, so your stable must have survived well. I've had to re-make several friend's horse stalls and fencing after their horses chewed them to the point of them almost falling apart. The horse barn that I helped add gates to for my grand daughter back in January has considerable damage from the horses that once lived there. The doors/gates needed replacing to keep the goats in because of the chewed condition of the originals. We built these for 2 of the four stalls. One stall is the storage space for the goat food (it's being kept in a non working chest freezer to keep the rodents and raccoons out). The remain stall will be repaired soon for possibly a pair of burrows that are supposed to be given to my grand daughter. The owner hasn't yet fully decided on giving them up.

The recent completed toy horse barn photos were taken in my new, and as yet not fully completed photography studio that's located in a large spare bedroom of my home. Photos of the studio will also be posted (separate post) when I have it more completed.

Charley

 

[CharleyL]

With such detail I'm not surprised that it took so long Charley. Such construction will survive several generations.

Thanks Harry,

I made it from mostly scrap pieces of Baltic Birch of several thicknesses left over from a large project that I built for one of the NC Science museums, so I spent very little cash making it. I think the hinges were the big cost item. For the window trim, corners, roof beams, and coral fencing I used mostly poplar, also from scrap. Making the 1/8" thick trim pieces gave me a lot of experience using my Grrippers with 1/8" side pieces, but I also used a thin strip ripping jig on the table saw for this. The barn corners are L shaped 1/8" thick pieces, and I think the sawdust created from making them wasted more wood than I ended up keeping in the finished piece.

Charley

 

[Nickp]

WOW, Charlie...can you make another one just like it so I can move in...?

 

[DaninVan]

That is outstanding, Charley! A labour of love, for sure.
(Those goats sure look real. And giving birth? What an imagination! ... )

 

[CharleyL]

The barn is way too small to live in. It's for plastic horses.

The goats are real. Theodosia, the momma, is about 3' tall and 4' long. My grand daughter now has 5 goats total, plus about 15 chickens and a couple of guinea hens. The guinea hens are wandering free on the farm and eating the tics and other insects. They are doing a great job so far. Before their arrival it was quite easy to find tics on you after being in one of the fields. Now you can walk in the same places with no fear of tics getting on you. She lets the chickens loose in the yard, but pens them up at night. The guinea hens roost in the low trees at night and don't eat much, likely because of all of the tics and insects that they are consuming.

Charley

 

[JOAT]

Theo,

I would love to see a photo of that barn. Can you take a photo of it and post it?

Will see what I can do.

 

[JOAT]

The guinea hens roost in the low trees at night

Night time alarm.