In 2020, I was in between jobs and took a gig building a barn for some friends. We started the foundation in November of 2020 and almost immediately after pouring the foundation I received an offer letter for a job. Fortunately, the job did not require relocation so I agreed to continue the barn on weekends. What followed was the longest "only 6 months" project of my entire life. Initial surveying to layout the foundation happened on October 30, 2020 and my last day of work putting sliding doors on the loft was April 12, 2025. There were numerous reasons (excuses) for the delayed timeline. There were times when my friends wanted to take a break for a few weeks or month for financial reasons and there were times I needed a break for life circumstances. During this project, lumber prices when absolutely wild due to COVID, I moved into a new house, we were hit by a historic freeze and a hurricane (years apart, and the barn did not fall down), and I became a father for the first time.
In that 4.5 years, I spent 775 hours working on this project, most of which was done alone and without mechanized equipment. I did not pay for materials so I do not have precise figures on how much this project cost. However, because I am family friend working on a "whenever you get to it is fine" schedule, I work cheap. I charged $20 per hour for this project which came to $15,500. If I were to take on another comparable project, I would like to work with a crew and with more mechanized equipment (either a crane or preferably a telehandler). This is by far the largest structure I have ever built. It is has a 20 x 40' foot print and the loft is 20 x 20'. The roof peak is 21 ft tall.
