"The client was a referral from my son who is a structural engineer in Denver. That’s where this project started around 2017,” says Drake Ambrosino New Energy Works Midwest sales representative. “New Energy Works did the timber frame for the client’s home in 2019 and since the client was thrilled with the work, we did on his house he said, ‘I want to build a barn.’”
Only a stone’s throw from their home on the same acreage, the client’s legacy barn will consolidate their land’s livestock, hay, and farming implements under one sturdy timber frame roof. “It’s a ten-acre site in Lafayette, Colorado which is northeast of Denver. The client is a commercial builder, so he’s got experience – he knows what he’s doing,” says Ambrosino. “He raises goats and chickens and cuts his own hay on the property, so this is going to be a working barn.”
“It’s what we call a six-bent barn from front to back. The end gables, the number 1 and the number 6 bents are a king post and queen post combination; they are on the ends because they will also have gable doors installed on them,” Ambrosino says. The truss is a bit of an amalgamation, as Ambrosino explains, “There’s a short king post (center to peak of the truss), two queen’s posts (on each side of the king), the rafters and the bottom cord. For the middle bents 2,3,4, and 5 the client wanted head room, especially 4 and 5 for the loft. If they were conventional trusses, it would have been a head knocker for anyone up in the loft.”
Ambrosino continued, “We were stumped for a little while on how to create the head space in the middle, so I suggested to the client, ‘Why don’t we do the scissor trusses like the ones that are in your house? We can just mirror them’, and that excited him.” So, bents 2,3,4, and 5 became scissor trusses.”
Matching the client’s house to his barn through both the timber structure and shared aesthetics was the perfect solution for extra space and a specialized look. The raising day was led in tandem by our west coast timber framers Darren and Seth with assistance from Levi and Evan. “It was a five-day raising, with the truck arriving on a Monday,” Ambrosino says. “The four-man crew unpacked it and then assembled the six bents on the ground by hand and stacked them up like pancakes horizontally. The crane showed up the next day. This is typical of what our timber framers do; I always say that they are our best salespeople,” continued Ambrosino. “They arrive prepared with timbers hand crafted in the shop for the project, work hard from the sunup to sunset depending on the season, and they always do an incredible job.”
The massive barn was assembled and raised by Friday and appropriately topped with a lush pine bough made into a wreath for a holiday twist. The client is already looking forward to creating and collaborating with New Energy Works in the future: “I’d work with your crew and you guys anytime. This is my family’s legacy barn, but let’s build some more of these timber frames here in Colorado together.”
Timber Frame: New Energy Works
Architect: CF Design
Photography: New Energy Works
