This Home Gives New Meaning to "Barn Style"

Most equestrians have to trek to the barn to saddle up for a ride, but this timber home owner doesn’t have to leave the house – he shares it with his horses.

The home is clad in Ponderosa pine with a rough-sawn finish — a detail that gives the exterior its elegantly rustic appearance. The working barn portion of the structure is twice the size of its living quarters.

Written by Donna Peak

Photography courtesy of Sand Creek Post & Beam

Barn-style houses have been all the rage for the past few years. In some cases, an old barn is given new life as a refurbished residence. In others, a new home is designed to look like it had once been an antique barn. But have you ever seen a house is also an actual working barn — horses and all? You have now.

The owner of this northern Arkansas house has such a love of horses, he didn’t want to schlep out to a barn on his 130-acre property to visit his animals. So, he designed a timber-framed house/stable, complete with three stalls and a tack room. The size of the living quarters is modest — only 1,536 square feet. By contrast, the barn portion totals more than 3,000 and includes a two-bay garage for his cars, another one for his mowers and farm equipment and third bay that he uses for his shop.

He got the idea for his unique plan from an ad he saw for Sand Creek Post & Beam, a Nebraska-based timber frame company. After poring through their catalog of plans, he found a lot of great ideas but didn’t see exactly what he was looking for, so he took a trip to their headquarters, met with their design team and came away with the ideal plan for his barn abode.

The interior post-and-beam employs beautiful and strong Norwegian red pine, which also serves as the tongue-and-groove that panels the ceiling. Farmhouse-inspired details can be found throughout, from the Z-style barn doors to the X-brace detail on the classic white beadboard cabinetry in the kitchen. Even the enormous ceiling fan is a genuine, reclaimed windmill that found new purpose in the home.

There’s an obvious question that comes to mind when you think of living in a working horse barn: Isn’t there an … odor? “Absolutely not!” according to Sand Creek Post & Beam marketing director Cody Wortmann. “The way he designed is really slick. They’re connected but separate. The connector is the laundry/mudroom, which has a double-door system that creates an air-lock of sorts. If you weren’t told the barn was part of the house, you’d never know it was there.” Now that’s the sweet smell of successful design.