At Home In a Barn: From Dairy Barn to Cozy Home

Living in a barn may seem an unusual ambition, but an abandoned Minnesota dairy barn captured author Johannes Postma’s imagination in 1976 and enticed him to devote years to making it his home. This account of Postma’s do-it-yourself building adventure begins with the barn’s early history as the heart of a small dairy business. It then moves to the various stages of renovating the structure into a unique rural home. In addition to keeping much of the barn’s beam structure exposed, Postma preserved the barn ambience by using weathered boards from some of the farm’s outbuildings as wainscoting in much of the hayloft living quarters. Now he describes the interior and exterior transformation made over the course of twenty-four years. Including images and illustrations, At Home in a Barn offers a great transformation story for all those interested in barns, the preservation of old structures, and do-it-yourself ventures.