Coincidental timing on this thread as I am frantically trying to finish my bus barn before snow. We live in a farming community with 2-acre lots on the edges of farms so I wanted the barn to really fit in with the architecture of the the area. I also Googled a lot of bus barn pictures and most look really tall and skinny so we decided to add a section on one side for our cars. The asymmetric design is a lot like "crib sheds" which have room for a tractor in the tall part and corn storage in the smaller shed part. Someone in the next town had the Amish build a nice car barn that I liked so I re-used a lot of the design ideas. The first picture is the finished car barn in the next town. The second picture is the front view of my 90% finished Bus Barn. The next shot is the view from my house. The barn is a 16 x 50 Bus section and a 10 x 40 car section. To be historically correct, the front of the barn is 1 x 12 pine board and batten siding. The sides and rear are matching Hardie cement board and batten for low maintenance. The one visual trick I did was to disguise the fact that the entire front of the bus barn opens up with 14' tall double doors hinged at the side posts. The white trimmed doors a fake applied trim. I notched the battens which run over the real hinges to further hide the hinges. You can see that in the last photo. I will apply one more batten nailed only on one side of the remaining seam you see, and the batten will open with the door and be a weather seal when it is closed. I need to fabricate the faux "ventilators" as the Amish call them (the louvered windows you see in the first picture). I have 50A service. Wanted but did not install a pit as I was advised the code inspectors go nuts about pits with Osha safety and hazardous waste type concerns. Plus, our whole neighborhood is a huge limestone ledge so you can't plant a tulip without dynamite it seems some days.
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