Savannah's Horse Barn for Christmas

My youngest daughter was very much into horses when she was at home. We had 14 Acres in New Jersey and probably had horses for around 15 years or so. After High School was over the horses disappeared and the horse barn became a lumber storeroom.

She got married and about 6 month ago her in-laws gave her some riding lessons as a birthday gift. The horse fever caught on again. This time she has a young daughter. For some reason girls and horses seem to go together.

Missy sometimes takes Savannah with her for her riding lesson. Well so now Savannah is building up a horse collection that she plays with.

I got an e-mail suggesting that she might (yea right) like a horse barn for Christmas. They were down for Thanksgiving and her dad, Kevin and I headed to the shop to see what might get started.

We started building some fences. (pictures disappeared so new one’s need to be created). We build three sections of fence and after we got that done, we figured that the same design could be used for stalls and gates for the stalls. So here is what we came up with.

The wood is resawn Sapele, in 1/4” thickness. The top and bottom board are 1” wide and all others are 1/2” wide. I drilled through the edge of the board 1/8” from the end with a small drill and inserted a hardened steel piece of metal. The metal I got from a lumberyard and is was a “stay” to hold insulation in between studs. I had to cut it with a bolt cutter and hoped the pieces didn’t fly too far. I threaded the wooden pieces over the steel wire and glued the ends with Epoxy. The pieces pivot on the wire.

Made 3 – 7.5” gates and 5 – 4.5” gates each side is 22.5” in width.

I started to glue up the stalls doing the bigger ones first. I used a 1/4×1/4 strip on each side of the stall wall to make the glue joint stronger.

I started to put the sides on the barn.

I put glue blocks at the back of the stall 1/2” x 1/2” so that I’d have a stronger glue joint than just the plywood edge.

I also used 1/2” glue blocks on the ends.

I put a taper glue block that will match the roof line and also supporting braces on each side of the stall walls at the back of the stall. They also give a decorative touch.

Now it was time to start on the 4.5” side. I was having a problem keeping the fence at a 90 deg angle so I finally made some braces that I used a paper clip to hold it to the end of the fence.

So i worked my way down the 5 sections of the smaller stalls.

Put in the glue blocks.

And the other back wall.

I put a small 2nd floor for storage. These pieces are glued in and give strength to keep the ends straight. A 2nd piece will be added on the edge, but will not be glued so that small hands can easier reach into the stalls and move and play with the horses.

Glue blocks were added at the roof line and the center block was glued in so that the two halves could be aligned for storage.

This is my Dallas Cowboy Stadium view of the horse barn. The roof has not yet been cut and installed nor has the mechanism for attaching the two sides together for storage.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †