If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve got two builds going on at once. A house and a garage/apartment both are built in the barndominium style… which is actually post frame building.

We started assembling the garage first. It’s definitely a different style of construction. For those who doubt the strength, durability, and sturdiness of these buildings… go check one out before the “framing” is covered up. These barndominium post frame construction buildings are going no where!

The guys started with placing the 6×6 posts in all the wet set brackets. These post are huge and loads of fun to lift!

We got the whole family in on assembling the trusses, we moved them from our middle pasture up to the garage slab and we got started! They were way heavier than we imagined and we rode them up in the back of Alan’s truck two at a time.

Once the trusses were up near the slab we were able to get started. First, we had to double them up… two trusses per placement except for those on the ends of the barndo. Then we worked through adding joist hangers to both the tops of the trusses and the lower portion (future ceiling). This took a lot of time and nailing! I think we dug out every hammer we could find so we could all help.

Once the trusses were assembled, we used to hand crank lifts to lift them into place. Also quite interesting, two people had to crank the lifts simultaneously so that the truss went up evenly… all with the glaring sun in our eyes!

Once the trusses were up we were able to easily set them in to the previously notched posts and bolt them in.

Finally, we had to start with some of the girts just to stabilize the trusses that we had installed. There was no way we could finish that in one day, but we put enough in to make sure the trusses were level and plumb and going nowhere.