Horse Barn House

[mattn]

Howdy all,

I'm looking for advice about horse barns and the possibilities of converting a portion of the barn into living quarters. I've got a chunk of property far away and private and I was thinking it would be really nice to have a place to park machinery out of the elements and also have a place to house a worker. I've seen this done before, where 4 or 6 of the stalls were finished off inside a la studio apartment. I'm not terribly well versed about which barns are quality and which are better to stay away from, so I'll ask here!

I've seen a few locally on craigslist that looked really nice...in the neighborhood of $10-30k.

From what I've seen, the barn usually sits on a level and compacted dirt pad. I'd have to lay a cement pad for the living quarters as opposed to building a subfloor or something to that effect. Since I just need the basic shell and maybe a few interior tongue and groove walls, I could probably do without much of the 'horse stall' parts. In general, these barns are pretty unitary, right? Fairly easy to bolt and unbolt the interior as needed?

Thanks in advance!

 

[riptides]

The interiour of my dairy barn is assembled with stall kits from the company in the link. They can be assembled and even taken down if needed.

My SO wants to convert the loft area into living quarters. I'd rather not be housed above animals having attended to them more often than not. I'd do a separate structure.

Welcome to Woodstar, A stall for every stable

 

[tcreeley]

One summer I spent working as a waiter, I slept in a corner box stall - of a converted stable to dormitory.

Living quarters should be well sealed from where animals are housed. I spent one year working as a groom at a Morgan show stable. We had a trailer set 3' from the barn. Around 4:30 am the horses would start shifting around and banging on the walls of their stalls. Better than an alarm clock- impossible to sleep through!
One stable I know has dirt floors + 50+ stalls and arena. Living quarters are upstairs in a connector building.

 

[mattn]

I'm an ag farmer, so no critters will be on the property. I was planning on using the inside of the barn for equipment storage and for living quarters. From what I've seen, it would be fairly easy to take out the interior stall pieces to open up the inside.