Building With Barnwood

Ever since reading "All This And Heaven, Too" from Looking for Hickories by Tom Springer, I've been thinking about my own barn legacy. Before my parents bought the land where my house now stands, our property and all the surrounding neighbor's properties were one piece of farmland. When the owner decided to sell it, they sectioned it off into smaller pieces of property, one of which my parents bought. There were two kinds of land they had purchased; half of the property was a field while the other half was covered in a small section of woods. Among the trees were two barns and a smaller shed. By the time I was born, the only thing left standing, and that is still standing, is the smaller shed. Everything else had rotted and collapsed, littering the woods with barn wood.  However, my parents salvaged some of the wood and used it in our home.

In several places in the kitchen and living room, the barn wood serves as a decorative trim. Two strong, barn wood beams travel from one wall to another along the ceiling. Resting on top of them are various vintage decorations and antiques.

The biggest accent of all is the basement wall that is completely lined and accented with barn wood, complete with two barn wood pillars.

Various tools and antiques decorate the wall along with the saw blades that my mom painted with picturesque scenery of farmland. One shows a snow covered barn standing beside two silos, guarding by a strong, wood fence. The second shows a small wood house nestled among a prairie, the owners clothes hung out to dry.

I have always acknowledged the barn wood decor of the house as something unique, but I've been thinking about it even more. The barns' legacy lives on in my own home, even if we didn't use the barns for their original purpose. Who had the barns before? What had been in them? I may not know the answer to these questions, but, in a way, the barns have become immortalized within my house.