Barns for Sale

Finding barns for sale online is more difficult than you might expect. There is only a hand full of places listing barns for sale and most of those are not high-quality sites. There are many resources listed here to help you find what you are looking when buying or selling a barn.

Top Reasons You Find Barns for Sale

To help you in your search (and give you some ideas for search phrases) here are the top reasons you will find barns for sale. The reasons a barn is being sold usually falls into one of these categories:

• Profit – The barn was built (or bought) to be sold for a profit
• Moving/Relocating – The owners are simply moving or relocating a home or business
• Wood Reclamation – Old barns may be worth more when sold as reclaimed wood than as barns

Barns for Sale for Profit

Building and Selling Barns: Selling barns for profit is straightforward and simple. Just as with any real estate flip a barn can built on property to add value and that property can then be resold at a greater price to take the profit. Similarly, property with an existing old barn can be bought and the barn and property can be fixed up and resold at a nice profit.

Old Barns for Sale: There is also a market for antique barns that have been photographed, dismantled with the pieces marked, and stored so they can be sold and rebuilt on the buyer’s lot. This is a really interesting transaction altogether and a great way to maintain the heritage many people behold in old barns. There is actually money to be made selling old barns.

Barns for Sale Because of Relocation

Cheap Barns: You might find an excellent deal on a barn if you run across just the right situation. With that, let’s include death and estate sales in this reason for selling barns. Be on the lookout for bargain barns for sale and you might get lucky. Further, while I hate taking advantage of sticky situations, divorces are another reason for relocation sales. The lesson for this paragraph is to be on the lookout for divorce sales or estates sales that might include barns.

Barns for Sale as Reclaimed Wood

Old Barn Wood: Selling barns to break them down into the parts is sometimes profitable (not usually) but is often done as a cheap way of clearing the land. There are companies that buy old barns in order to carefully take them apart to sell the lumber as reclaimed wood, reclaimed lumber, antique lumber, or other such names. Common uses for the used barn lumber include reclaimed timbers for timber trusses and beams, siding, flooring, and furniture lumber and it is sold at an absolute premium.

Barns for Sale Online

(NOT sponsored listings)

Equine.com has barns for sale and their listing change fairly often.

Historic-Architecture.com lists barns for sale that have been dismantled and are ready to be rebuilt on your lot.

Timbermeisters.com builds, restores, and buys and sells vintage barns. They have a great inventory of barns for sale.

IowaBarnFoundation.org lists barns for sale and for donation because its mission is to preserve historical barns.

Barnsetc.co.uk has barns for sale in the UK “and abroad.”

Property.org.uk lists barns and other agricultural building for sale in the UK.

1st-for-French-Property.co.uk lists barns for sale in France.

Decks are easy to build. You level an area, throw down some joists and stringers for a deck foundation, screw deck boards to the top of all that, and trip finish by trimming it up. Sure, it’s easier said than done but – still – it’s not hard. For some reason, though, this question comes up repeatedly as a sticking point for weekend warriors: “How do you build deck stairs?”

How to Build Deck Stairs – It’s Easy

Deck stairs are built just like the rest of the deck. To add deck stairs onto your existing deck, you simply fasten deck boards (steps or treads) to the tops of decks stair stringers and attach the stairs to your deck. You can make the stair stringers yourself or you may be able to find pre-made stair stringers but even the pre-made stringers will need some customizing based on the height of your deck. Now, let’s build some deck stairs.

Calculating How Many Steps Your Deck Stairs Need

The easiest way to figure out how many steps your deck stairs stringers will need is to use the very simple rule of dividing the height of your deck by the riser height of your steps (and round to the nearest number). Risers are usually 6 to 8 inches high. The height of your deck is measured from the ground to the top of the deck boards (where you step onto the deck).

So, if you want 7 inch risers and the height of your deck is 48 inches then 48/7 = 6.86 steps. After rounding, you will build 7 steps into your deck stairs.

Materials Required to Build Deck Stairs

The two main components required to build deck stairs are stair treads and stair stringers.

The treads, or steps, are made from one of the following:

• side-by-side 2×6 or 5/4×6
• 2×10
• 2×12 (my personal preference)

The stair stringers are almost always made from 2×12′s, which are actually 1.5″x11.25″. You might want to use pre-cut stair stringers to ave yourself some time on measuring, layout, and cutting.

Other materials you may need to build deck stairs include:

• Coated Screws (Primeguard Plus are excellent screws)
• Metal Angle (for treads)
• Lag Screws (for treads and/or connecting stairs to deck)
• Hex or Carriage Bolts (for connecting stairs to deck)

Building and Attaching Deck Stairs – Build Deck Stairs from the Ground Up

It is easier to build deck stairs on the ground before attaching them to the deck but they get heavy once all of the stair treads are attached to the stair stringers, which makes them difficult to properly and safely maneuver into position at the deck. The best compromise is to attach your stringers together first and put only a few stairs treads on before attaching the stairs to the deck. Make to use strong hardware such as lag screws or hex bolts when attaching deck deck stairs as the consequences of failing stairs can be disastrous (hopefully this is obvious).

All I have done above is try to prepare you for a few of the sticking points that might make a deck stairs project less fun. Hopefully, by knowing those basics, you will be able to get through your building project a little faster. There are a million places online that will tell you how to build decks and how to build deck stairs. I listed the best of the best below for you.

Great Resources for How to Build Deck Stairs

Step by Step Plans for How to Build Deck Stairs: Installing Deck Stairs

How to Build Deck Stairs: Laying Stringers and Attaching Treads

How to Build Deck Stairs: Design, Layout, and Assembly of Deck Stairs (this is the best how to)

How to Build Deck Stairs Video: Video from This Old House About Building Deck Stairs