During the summer of 2001, John and myself decided to have a hot house built. New Hampshire has a very short growing season and the last several summers have been particular cold. Not good for growing fresh veggies!
Well, as things go we wanted a hot house, and ended up desiging a new barn with a conservatory, media room, Japanesse tea room and bath, a photography studio, two offices, a computer room, an elevator, an exercise room, a photographic darkroom, sauna, and a hot house. Not to mention the tunnel connecting all that to the main house.
SO WHY ON EARTH DO ALL THAT?
The old barn, built sometime during the late 1870s, was beginning to fall down and rot away in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Several key structural cross-joints were removed sometime in the last 50 years which caused the barn to lean.. I mean really lean, and not in a good way. The main support wood columns were resting directly on dirt and roting at the base. And then there was the biological factor - generations of mice and woodchucks had taking up residence there. Years of neglect and bad engineering, re-engineer, and biological "waste" were quickly adding up. The old barn had maybe 5 to 10 years left in it by the best estimates.
The hot house was going to be attached to the old barn, and we decided, along with suggestions from our contractor and architect, to go ahead and clean up the old barn while we were at it. Various ideas were batted about - insulating the structure, putting some offices there, maybe a guest bedroom or two. All great ideas, except it would require major reworking and construction pain to fix the barn's aging structure. Another round of remodeling would need to occur 20 or 30 years down the road as the existing structure aged more.
After the structural engineering reports came back saying the barn was at the end of its life, we decided to simply tear down and rebuild to spec. This would be faster, last longer, and have a modern with all the accessories, yet keeping in style with the old building .. somewhat.