Johnny Barn

A couple of weeks ago I showed you this picture of the barn that inspired my pink barn.

When I brought the pink barn top to Janet-Lee for quilting, I told her it was inspired by the barn at the bottom of her street. "Oh, that's John and Deb's barn. Let me take a picture and send it to them." I asked Janet-Lee what the barn was for. "I think it's just for storage." It turns out John & Deb built it themselves.

So when I drove by that day and the doors were open, I pulled over and ran up to the barn to take pictures.

The barn is post-and-beam construction (the same as my brother's barn in Colorado) and is, in fact, used for storage. I saw bicycles, tools and several surfboards. I was impressed to see a wasp's nest hanging from the second story railing, and not at all surprised to see a UNH hockey jersey hanging in the barn as well (UNH hockey is BIG in the Seacoast area).

After I took my pictures I saw a man working out in the yard, and I went over to talk. It was John. 

"Janet-Lee showed me the picture of your pink barn quilt and asked if it looked familiar. I said, 'That looks a lot like MY barn.' JL said it WAS my barn."

I told him I thought his barn was beautiful. We talked a bit about barns, and how I have had "barns on the brain" for some time, and now looked for and at barns wherever I go. He said he had looked at a lot of barns before he built his. We talked about several features of his barn were typical of New Hampshire barns but are not found in barns in neighboring states. Later I sent him pictures of my brother's Colorado barn and my interpretation of it.

He invited me to stop by on my next visit to JL and see the timber frame screened in porch he built at the back of his house. He also said he's planning to build a 10' x 14' timber frame structure for his wife, a muralist, next spring.

"It will have basically the same feel and proportions as the big barn, but just a bit smaller," John wrote to me in an email later, "The fun never stops!!! Haha!"