On a Sunday spin in the country, one of the scenic delights used to be the handsomely weather-beaten, quaintly dilapidated barns that lined rural roads. The pleasure is fast vanishing. From New England to the Midwest, the old barns are being dismantled by barn buyers who covet their richly textured boards and hand-hewn beams, sell them to satisfy America’s increasingly nostalgic appetite for rustic building materials. The barn boards are being used in homes mostly as warm wall paneling for family rooms, dens and country kitchens, or for cabinets to contain the latest stereo-tape decks and color TVs, and even for picture frames. But the weathered wood is also finding its way into supermarkets, restaurants, executive suites and department stores.
Leading supplier of weathered barn siding in the Midwest is former County Judge Gerald Jolin, 53, of Appleton, Wis. For years, as a sideline, he hunted old barns for architect friends. The demand kept growing, and in 1965 he set up Decor Materials Inc. and went into the barn business full time.
“Just any old barn won’t do,” says Jolin, who keeps a man busy roving back-country roads through central Wisconsin. Pine and hemlock are best, he has found, because the pitch between the growth rings lets them weather more beautifully. But if the barn is less than 50 years old, the wood is usually insufficiently weathered; if it is more than 100 years old, the wood is often too brittle. “Out of 30 barns, you find only five good ones,” says Jolin, who reckons wastage caused by cracking and splitting on even a fine barn at 75%.
Molded Antiques. Bill Krawski, 28, comes from a family of Connecticut tobacco farmers, but five years ago he decided to harvest barns instead of plants. He has stripped 120 barns, including enough to restore the entire Old Mystic Seaport Village. But Krawski sees an end in sight, reckons that there are only about 100 more tobacco barns in Connecticut to be reaped.
Architect Donald Janinski of Hampton Falls, N.H., decided that barn siding and beams were just what was needed to give a colonial look to half a dozen new Sheraton motels in New England. At first, Janinski found that farmers were anxious to be rid of the rundown structures, and he was able to buy the wood for the cost of pulling down the barn ($200 to $400). “But the farmer gets sophisticated pretty fast in New Hampshire and Vermont,” says Janinski, “and today the weathered timber costs up to three times as much as new lumber.”
As the old barns disappear, big lumber companies are rough-sawing plywood and mahogany siding to give a textured look. Even synthetic barn boards are on the way. The Abitibi Corp. recently brought out a hardboard paneling called “Barnboard,” and, says an executive, “it’s one of our biggest sellers. We’re moving 3,000,000 ft. per month.” Armstrong Cork has just put on the market its “Sturbridge paneling,” made of compressed wood fibers, which is embossed by molds made from antique barn siding and is practically indistinguishable from the real thing.
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