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Moving the Barn! Really this time… :-)

By Michelle Marine

on Aug 25, 2011, Updated Jan 13, 2022

9 Comments

Have you wondered if it’s possible to move a barn? We got a free barn and today I’m sharing the story of moving the barn! In today’s installment, I share a lot of pictures of how our free barn was moved from an old location to a new home. You can read the other posts in the series here.

When last I left you with the barn saga, “our” barn was supported and beamed and ready for transport.  We were so excited to move the barn! Every day we waited to hear that today would be the day! But many minor catastrophes happened to delay the actual move date. For THREE weeks we waited. The first two weeks, everyone stayed close to our town.  No one wanted to miss seeing the barn drive off its foundation. Every day we fielded numerous calls. “Did they call?” “Are they coming today?” “When IS that barn going to move?” We had no answers, only more excuses.

Moving the Barn!

The third week, people went back to life. Our extended family started running errands in the Quad Cities and doing the work they had neglected the previous two weeks. Remember the Aug 1 deadline? Well, Aug 1st came and went. Then it was Aug 2nd. Then Aug 3rd. The original owners were getting antsy. They needed it off their property.

On the afternoon of Aug 4, my husband called me: “Be at the barn in 15 minutes. They’re moving it. right. now.” Of course! Everyone was out of town. But not me. I ran with the kids to van and we raced out of town. We arrived at the barn not a moment too soon. For three weeks, we had been kept waiting. And then, for the big event, we had a 10 minute notice?! Patterson and Company were firing up the big rig when I arrived with the kids and the camera.

You can refresh your memory of how the barn looked for the three weeks it was waiting to move with these posts.

Essentially, the barn was cut off its original foundation (which was poured with concrete mixed by hand!), pulled off the foundation, taken across the road, turned 90 degrees, and driven to our property through a maturing bean field (those were some expensive beans we smooshed!). But at least we didn’t have deal with any electric poles.

It was truly an amazing sight. The pictures speak for themselves, so enjoy!

In case you are wondering what we intend to do with this barn, we are converting it into offices, a showroom, a shop, and storage for our home building / remodeling company, Oak Tree Homes. We hope to have it completed this winter. Stay tuned next week to see how Patterson got it from its temporary location on our property to its new foundation. This was by far the trickiest part of the move!