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Corn Crib Converted Into Farm Shop
“I needed a workshop and considered tearing down my old corn crib and putting up a new building, but I didn’t want to spend the money. Instead, my boyfriend and I covered the old crib with some used steel siding, built a pair of large sliding doors, and painted the building red with white trim. I’m happy with the result,” says Sue Edwards, Dodgeville, Wis.
    “Structurally, the corn cribs were very strong,” says Edwards, who made the conversion last spring. “The oak and pine lumber in it was in excellent shape.”
    The 22 by 40-ft. corn crib had two 7-ft. wide bins with a 7-ft. wide drive-through alley running down the center where a corn sheller’s dragline could be laid down. Workers would then rake ear corn into the dragline. The bins had raised wooden floors on concrete foundations, while the alley was made of dirt and located one foot below the bin floors.
    “I show horses and ponies and use the building to store my carts and a buggy. I also refurbish the equipment and needed a nice, dry place where I could work on them over the winter,” says Edwards. “I was going to tear the building down and start over because of the uneven floor, but then decided to fill the alley with enough gravel to make everything level. I installed lights above the center alley and below the crib’s loft. I also removed some cross braces that supported a loft in order to open up the alley.”
    She bought used sheet metal from a local Amish salvage yard and used self-tapping screws to attach it to the crib. She plugged the screw holes with metal epoxy, and then applied two coats of exterior latex paint to the metal. She also installed a small dusk-to-dawn floodlight at each end of the building. Her boyfriend used 2 by 4’s and 2 by 6’s to build the sliding doors.
    “The crib’s metal roof was too steep for us to safely paint it, so it’ll have to wait until we reroof it some day,” says Edwards. “We spent a little more than $1,000 for the steel, lumber to frame in the door, door tracks, and paint.”
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Sue Edwards, 2796 Spring Valley Rd., Dodgeville, Wis. 53533 (ph 608 935-7079; shackatoa1@gmail.com).


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2017 - Volume #41, Issue #6