The Modified Post and Beam Frame

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Having no building experience whatsoever, and about to build a 2600 sq ft house from scratch, I've had to do a lot of research to find plans that could be modified to fit my particular situation.

I knew I wanted to add on to the original structure of the barn, pictured below:

What's there is a 36'x36' pole barn. I've found plenty of plans for what the original builder was doing. It's a four to six stable horse barn with a large center aisle loft. The problem for me in all these plans was that every one of them had a gable roof, and I wanted a gambrel for greater loft space. Most horse barn lofts are simply for storing hay. I wanted our upper story to be a spacious apartment. So I couldn't find any plans for a 36'x36' horse barn/pole barn with a gambrel roof.

I could have an architect draw some up for me, of course, but that would cost a small fortune. And building seems rather straightforward. I thought I could either modify a set of plans, or borrow some ideas to create my own thing.

Once I broke the structure up into first story frame, and roof, and decided to just focus on the pole barn side of it, and deal with the gambrel roof later, I found solutions. The following website in particular was what I based almost my entire first floor post and beam ideas on:

http://www.savillehillfarm.com/BarnBuilding.htm

This site details briefly a family's experience with building their own pole barn from a kit. They detail the process step by step, give all the dimensions of lumber, and lengths. So since this all came from a kit I figured it would be a rather reliable standard to go by.

I knew my four rows of posts 12 feet apart didn't cut it. Especially since the outside rows were composed of 4x4's, twisted and cracked. In their kit everything was a 6x6, and only 10 feet apart. So I decided that instead of putting more posts into the ground, I'd build a perimeter foundation, lay down sill plates, and put intermediate posts (or doubled studs) between the main posts, 4' o.c. And the 4x4's would also be beefed up into essentially 8x8's with 2x's all around them, boxing them in.

In the above kit they used boards for beams, one on either side of the post, run parallel, with blocking between to stiffen them, and the beams rested on short cleats on the posts. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by running my cleats all the way down to the block (foundation), and beef up the posts at the same time. Their beams were made of 2x12 boards, whereas I went with 2x10's, which was all I could get locally, and I think okay, considering I would have doubled studs every 4' supporting the beams.

What I was hoping was that I could keep the original structure of the barn, which was pretty level, and plumb, and just remove one board at a time, and replace it with new wood. But unfortunately I had to demolish quite a bit of the structure, and abandon all his old marks, as I went along. I wanted to preserve as much as possible of the original builder's ideas for this structure. I liked the notion of picking up where someone else left off, rather than wiping it out.

I started with the right side of the barn, the second post back. The first thing to do was detach the girts from it (the upper horizontal boards seen in the above photo), and try to get it plumb. The posts, especially the 4x4's, were enough out of plumb that something needed done about it. It looked like the whole structure might have rocked south a little.

I took a rope and tied it to the top of the post. I then attached a nail sort of low down two posts back. I pulled the rope hard to move the post where I needed it, then wrapped the rope around the back post and tied it, and the nail kept it from slipping up the post. This technique worked well. The 12' posts were much easier to move than I thought they'd be. Once the post was plumb, I reattached the eave girts as braces to hold it, either lower down, or at an angle, so they wouldn't be in the way of the boards I was putting up.

I'd decided to go with exactly 12' as the height of the top of the beams, so that my studs would be 12'. So I just substracted the width of my 2x10 from 12' to get the length of my cleat. Since the cleat went all the way down to the block on both the inside and outside of the post, I used more of the borate treated wood. I put a small piece of seam sealer foam between the edge of the board and the block. I attached the board with both drywall screws and 16d nails, using an 8" C clamp to tighten the board to the post. My thinking in putting the cleats up first was that then I'd have something to set the heavy 12' 2x10 on as I tried to fasten it. Otherwise I didn't know how I'd ever prop it up there.

Getting the 2x10 up at first seemed impossible. I tried to walk up it with the ladder, and hold it in position - no way. Too heavy, and all that weight spread over 12', while I tried to climb a shaky ladder. I had to sit and think for a moment. Then I came up with the idea of propping the board up diagonally on a brace (a girt nailed up at about mid-height), then walking the other end up the ladder, setting it on the ladder, and attaching a rope from this end to one of the upper girts, or top of a post. Then I went back and tied a rope to the other end of the board, and raised it higher. I kept raising each end higher and tying it off until I was close to where I needed to be. It took about a half hour, but eventually I got the board up on the cleats. I held it there with bungee cords, then fastened it with 2 1/2" drywall screws and 3" 16d nails. Here's a photo:

You can clearly see the girts removed and used lower down as braces. The cleat on the left is the green borate because it goes down to the block, while regular framing wood is on the right, because it's on top of a sill plate.

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I was so pleased to have that 2x10 level after all that effort to get it up there that I took a photo of it:

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The next step was to duplicate what I did on the inside of the barn on the outside. Both cleats on the outside went down to the block, so both were borate. I put up another 2x10 on top of the cleats, this time on the outside of the posts. It was harder in the sense my ladder was much lower down and on the uneven ground, rather than inside the barn on the graded dirt. But what helped is that I had the first 2x10 to tie my rope to, to pull the second board up.

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After I got this in place I put in a 2x4 between the 2x6 cleats, nailed directly to the 4x4 post. This served a double purpose - to fully box in and beef up the post, and provide more nailing surface for both the cleats and the 2x10's above.

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After this I put in my first doubled stud, or sistered stud, essentially 2 2x's. First I ran a tape measure along the sill plate, from post to post, to figure exactly where the studs should go, dividing the space equally into thirds. It was a little less than 4'. I marked it with a pencil. Then I measured up from the marking to both the bottom, and top, of the 2x10 boards for the beam. This is because I was going to notch out the stud on both sides, so the 2x10 would rest directly on the stud. I was going with 2x6 studs throughout. The notch on the outside would be a full 1.5", so the edge of the stud would be flush with the outer surface of the 2x10. But the inside notch would be only 1/2", so only part of the 2x10 would sit on it.

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I cut one 2x6 first. I did all cuts with a circular saw, then finished the notches with a jigsaw - and put it up to see how it fit. If it worked I screwed and nailed it in place. I used the big C clamp at the top to pull the 2x10's together into their notches, flush with the stud. At the bottom I didn't bother with toe nailing, which didn't seem sound to me. I used metal angles to attach the stud to the sill. I got them for only 60 cents a piece at a local hardware store.

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I then went and cut my next 2x6, put it in, fastened it in place, then began the tedious process of sistering the two boards together into one. I used C clamps and drywall screws, staggered up the whole length, every few inches or so. It took a long while, but once it was done those doubled 2x6's formed one solid post. Here's the first stud in:

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You can see the ropes still taut that were used to pull the posts plumb. Here's a closeup of the joint between the notched top of the stud and the 2x10 beam, before it was doubled:

A shot from far back with the stud in:

A shot from outside the barn once I had both doubled 2x6 studs in at 4'o.c., and that wall was essentially finished, minus the blocking:

Here's a photo of me working on the next post, dismantling eave girts:

If I could do it over again, I would have used a 10' ladder, instead of an 8'. But the 8 footer was on sale at Home Depot for $90, so I went with that.

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In this photo I have finished one square of the barn:

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Since every section is 12'x12', there are 9 sections. The upper board that has no studs is a 2x10, part of what will be the center right beam, for the joists. The lower board without studs is a 2x6 brace. This is where I was keeping some of the original look of the barn. I needed something to hold the posts together right to left, or east to west. The beams did a fine job of holding everything together front to back. The joists were going in left to right, but they serve no function of pulling things together. They simply sit in hangers, and support weight above. So I went with 2x6 braces to pull everything together left to right. No need for a 2x10 here, since it's just a brace, with no real weight on it. And the brace served the additional purpose of acting as cleats for the 2x10 boards in the center beams, and also for additional fastening - as I used a metal angle to attach the brace to the perpindicular 2x10 above.

Here more 2x10's are up, front and center, and the kids have made a seesaw using a stump and old board:

Here the front right four sections of the barn are done:

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I've faced the front 6x6 posts with massive 2x10 pressure treated cleats (ripped down to 8.5"), that run all the way to the block. Having no table saw, I bought them at Lowe's and had them ripped there. I went with treated wood since we're having barn doors here, and the area might get exposed to a lot of moisture.

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Here's a shot from the front:

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Here's a shot of the front right corner, from inside the barn:

You can see a couple of things here. For one I've used my first joist hangers, to put up the 2x10 on the other side of the studs that creates the beam. I first measure where the hangers go, draw plumb lines (using a torpedo level), attach the hangers with just 2 screws, then go through the tedium and agony of getting the joist up into the hangers. To make life easy on myself I could have cut the joist a little short and just dropped it into the hangers. But no I cut the joist exactly to fit, and actually pounded it into place with a rubber mallet. This makes a great tight hold, which is what I'm going for, but it makes getting the joist in a nightmare. I'm going to have to come up with a better technique. Once I have the joist where I want it, I unscrew the hangers and move them in to place, clamp them with little C clamps, and fasten them completely.

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The other thing to notice in the above photo is the blocking. You can see it between the studs, and between the studs and posts. It is what helps turn parallel boards into a beam. For my blocking I used two 9 1/8" doubled 2x6's. I doubled them on the ground then put them up. Sometimes I had to pound them in to get them to fit. Sometimes I had to use a clamp to pull the boards into the blocking. Since the borate was 14', I had plenty of 2' ends sitting around to cut down for blocking. This corner of the barn is now totally finished.

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Here's a photo of the 6x6 post that is one back from the front at the center right. The parallel 2x10's are above running straight back. The parallel 2x6's braces are running across. You can see how they function as cleats here, and how I attached everything using metal angles and drywall screws.

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If you look really closely you can see a small piece of wood behind the ends of the braces. This is because the center posts are 1.5" less in diameter than the outside beefed-up 4x4 posts. So this is a piece of 1x material (actually 3/4"), that is fastened first to the post, on both sides, then the braces fastened to it, with 3" 16d nails driven through all of it into the post.

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Ultimately when the barn is finished this old gray post will be boxed in with a finish material, and it will run all the way up to the braces and beams, so the transition is more seamless.

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Here's another shot of where joist hangers have been used, and blocking:

The front 6x6's have been boxed in with 2x material on three sides, and become truly massive posts. I like the look.

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From another angle:

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If you look closely you can still see the old girt attached to the post at the top of the photo.

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Here's a shot with the girls in front. You can see ropes running everywhere for plumbing the posts. I kept them in until a post was attached on all sides and had no way to move:

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