Restoring a Historic Oregon Barn

by Client Services Manager Jeremy Gould.

Greetings all, I wanted to take this chance to introduce everybody to the Shipley-Cook barn restoration project. Arciform founder Richard De Wolf has vowed to remove one building from Restore Oregon’s “Endangered Places” list each year, and the Shipley-Cook barn is this year’s choice. Past projects include the DAR cabin in Champoeg, the Smokehouse in Dayton and the First Congregational Church in Portland.

One of the many cool things about this project is that since this barn is on the historic registry, Adam needed to use “period correct” lumber and construction methods. This means we had to special order “circular sawn” lumber from a saw mill out of Idaho. Circular sawn means that the lumber was cut with a very large circular saw blade (as opposed to a band saw) that measure three feet in diameter. These blades give the lumber a curved striation on the face. Because different sized blades have been used throughout the years, you can actually judge the age of the existing lumber by measuring the curve of this striation.

The barn was partially collapsing because the siding was missing which allows rain to access the interior. This project is basically replacing one of the main foundation/mud sill beams that has almost entirely rotted out.

This will be no easy task since the beam is approximately 12” x 12” and a little over 30’ long! The lumber company tells me the beam weighs almost 2000 lbs. On top of replacing the beam, project manager Adam Schoeffel and lead carpenter Eric Delph needed to raise that end of the barn approximately 6” or 7”, replace all the siding there and some of the framing members (perlins and posts).

Rick Cook is the owner of the Shipley-Cook barn and as you can tell from the name, this barn has been in his family for awhile. He currently is a teacher for West Linn High School and is incredibly grateful for Richard’s help in making this project happen as well as Brandon with Restore Oregon. The project is being funded by a grant that Richard and Brandon helped Rick attain. Here is a link to a really cool video showing the barn with footage from a drone http://restoreoregon.org/event/barns/ . Click on the video once you follow the link and also look for the barn to be mentioned in future Restore Oregon events and advertising. You can also look for Eugene Wine Cellars wine made with grapes grown on the Shipley-Cook property!