Nebraska Office

PO Box 53

Wayne, NE 68787

(402) 286-BARN

“Taking pride in restoring our history and recreating the past”

New Old Barn Once Again Graces the Countryside

Press Release

For Immediate Release

June 1, 2006 For more information, contact: Michelle Sterling-Evans

Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Barn Builders, Inc.

michelle@barn-builders.com

New Old Barn Once Again Graces the Countryside

Not many things remain in our modern society that was built in the 1880s. Iowa’s Story County has an amazing piece of architecture that not only dates back to that time period but was recently historically rebuilt to once again be as beautiful and useful as it once was. The building is the Handsacker Barn located just outside the city limits of Fernald, Iowa. The barn is a unique structure to the Midwest since it is square in shape; it is also the second oldest standing barn in Iowa. Gloria and Gary Handsacker are the current owners of the barn; it was originally built by Gary’s great-Grandfather, J.W. Handsacker.

The square barn is more commonly found in the East and was mainly utilized by the Pennsylvania Dutch. The barn spent five months under heavy reconstruction to restore it to its former glory. There are few companies that would have undertaken such a monumental project as restoring this barn; but Barn Builders is not your typical construction company. Bruce Willemsen, the company’s CEO, took one look at the barn and new that his company was up to the challenge. The Pella, IA company has specialized in restoring old barns and building new barns since 1998, but Bruce has over 20 years of construction industry experience. Willemsen commented that the restoration construction on the Handsacker Barn came just in time, “I didn’t understand how the barn was still standing, the northwest corner of the barn had broken off and the three remaining corners had rotted out.” The most extensive restoration work was done to the barn’s foundation. In order for the limestone foundation to be restored, the barn had to be lifted so that the crumbling rock could be removed and replaced with a stronger structure. It is remarkable to look at the stone foundation, especially when you take into consideration that all of the rock that was used in the original structure had to be hauled by horse and wagon from a quarry near Ames, Iowa. Not only was the stone foundation in bad shape, the central structural timbers had to be straightened which was causing the middle of the barn to sag. The Barn Builders crew did this by digging out the central posts and raising them up six inches using concrete footings.

“The barn is very unique, you just don’t see a structure like this any more, especially one this old,” said Willemsen. “Most of the pre-1930 barns have fallen in or have been torn down. This barn is fortunate in that the Handsacker's wanted the structure to be historically rebuilt. They had a pre-1900s photograph of what the barn looked like shortly after it was built that we were able to work off of, but when your restoring something like this you have to take the time to be able to figure out how and why it was put together the way it was and then be able to put it back together as good or better as the original structure.”

Working from that pre-1900s photograph, Willemsen could see that the original structure had a bridge leading into the second floor, which also gave it a ground level entrance. Through the years, the bridge had been taken out and the space had been filled in making a dirt ramp. The Barn Builders crew dug the dirt back out, put in a new limestone retaining wall and rebuilt the bridge to what it would have originally looked like. In addition the barn also received all new doors and windows and was painted the original red color with white trim.

Willemsen goes on to state that, “It is very gratifying to be able to restore such a grand structure back to its original glory, to many times we pass barns that have falling in, or are just being left to rot. That is what Barn Builders is all about. We live by our motto of ‘Taking pride in restoring our history and recreating the past.’ It is so sad for me to drive by farms and acreages today and see the old barns disappearing and being replaced by utilitarian metal buildings. We are losing our agricultural history. In the past, the barn was the most important building on the farm, a lot of the times the barn was nicer than the farmer’s home.”

If a farmer or acreage owner doesn’t have an old barn to restore and doesn’t want to put up a metal shed, we have recently introduced a line of historically recreated new barns. “We offer five different barn designs including our newest barn – the Legacy Round Barn. We are very excited about the Legacy Round Barn since we are the only company that we know of that offers this type of barn to its customers,” states Willemsen. For more information on reconstruction of old barns or the line of new barns; you can visit the company’s website at www.barn-builders.com.