r/barndominiums

Wanted to get the local community's thoughts and experiences on buying a metal or wood building in Southern Maryland. Getting pricing from the local third party farm stores, and they are 2/3 times more than new builds during covid- and those times were crazy enough! Any folks have buildings erected lately that can give feedback? Looking for a 40x60x14 (maybe). Thanks!

Hello all! I am in the beginning stages of building a L shaped barndo. The living area is going to be 30 x 50 and the 2 car garage is going to be on the right. The living area is going to be 2 full stories so essentially we will have around 3000 sq ft of living area. Does anyone know of a free online program that I can use to create the floor plan? Id like a master suite on the first floor, a pantry, mudroom, home office with it's own entrance. Living room/ dining room/ kitchen all on the first floor. The second floor will essentially be the kids floor with 3 bedrooms and a play/game area. Thanks in advance!

Trying to decide on the best way to set my posts for a DIY pole barn
I’m getting ready to build my own post frame building and I’m kind of wrestling with how I want to do the posts.
Right now I’m leaning toward doing Sonotube concrete piers with Sturdi-Wall wet-set brackets and keeping the wood completely out of the ground.
I’ve also considered doing full concrete piers in 48” deep holes and setting the wet-set brackets into the concrete. Someone mentioned that if I go that route and don’t bell the bottom of the hole, I’m basically wasting a bunch of concrete because the concrete pier would just be straight-sided. I get the idea behind that, but I’m not really sure how practical it is to actually bell a 48” deep hole myself.
Then there’s the other option of just setting the posts in the ground and either pouring concrete around them or doing a dry-pour method. I normally wouldn’t consider dry-pour, but some pretty big post frame companies apparently do it that way, so obviously it must work.
I’m basically trying to figure out what makes the most sense for someone doing this themselves.
I’m mainly looking at Sonotubes with Sturdi-Wall wet-set brackets, full concrete piers with brackets, posts set in concrete, or dry-pour posts.
My biggest things are ease of doing it, longevity, and how much of a pain in the ass it is to actually build.
The Sonotube/bracket setup seems nice because I’m not putting my wood posts in the ground, and I feel like it would be easier to get everything plumb and at the right height. But obviously it adds more work and concrete.
I’m not necessarily looking for the absolute cheapest method. I’m more interested in what would be the easiest method for one guy building it with minimal help while still being something I can feel good about 30 or 40 years from now.
This is my first post frame building, so I’m trying not to overcomplicate it, but I also don’t want to take shortcuts just to save some time and regret it later.
For those of you who have actually built these, what would you do if you were building your own?
And if you’ve done Sturdi-Wall brackets, full concrete piers, posts in concrete, or dry-pour, I’d really like to hear how the actual installation went and what you would do differently.

My wife and I have been considering building a home using a pre-engineered steel building as the base structure for a barndo. The idea is to have a slab poured, then have a 24X50 steel building built on it. We'd sprayfoam the underside of the roof, then frame out the interior walls with 2x6 studs and something like Rockwool insulation.

We'd hire the plumbing out, but I'd do the electrical myself (I was an IBEW electrician in my younger days). HVAC would be a mini-split on each end, and we'd seal the slab for the concrete floor. One of our ideas is to have a glass panel garage door at the front of the great room that opens onto the deck/patio for an indoor/outdoor living space.

I'm sure other people have done this, so I'm wondering if anyone has any tips or warnings when taking this route.

We're in Western North Carolina, so there are a lot of steel building companies within a couple of hours of the property. If anyone has any recommendations for a good company, I'd love to hear it.

We already have septic and well permits, and there's power on the site.

We've completed the exterior red iron shell. Now planning interior framing. I'm considering steel framing. It'll be 2 floors. Relatively open floor plan. The span will be 20' floor truss/joist.

1. Are there places you can give drawings to and they give you a framing package? We did this for the exterior and I'm interested if we can do the same for the interior.

2. is the cost much more for steel vs wood? Example: were going to need 27 - 20ft floor trusses and 27 - 17 ft floor trusses. What the cost difference between these? The difficult part is I'm not finding steel trusses for sale, like I can find for wood. Do you know of any places that sell this in the Inland NW?

Thanks for the help!

We have floated the idea of building a barndominium but have to clue where the start. We’re in the foothills of North Carolina and already have land. We’re could sell our current home and walk away with $180-200,000 in cash. Is it feasible to build a 3-4 bedroom, 2 bathroom barndo and come up with little to no mortgage? The land would need a driveway, electric, septic, and well. Not much if any clearing. We don’t want anything fancy. Open floor plan with maybe a loft. Is this feasible? Where do we start? Thanks

I am seriously considering building two of these on my free and clear owned property for my adult daughter and I to live in.

I need pros and cons.

What issues can arise.

How structurally sound are they.

Are they energy efficient?

I'd like realistic pricing if you've built one.

What you would do different or same if you were to do it again.

I know some people think they're ugly. I am not worried about esthetics i want to know the dirty truth

Hey! So I'm planning on building a barndominium or a shop house here in the near future and I'm currently thinking about building a floor system on top of the slap instead of running all my drains & water lines in the slab, mostly to make it easier to reconfigure later on down the road if I need or want to. Right now I'm basically planning on building a large shop and building a living space in part of it. Currently I can't really think of any reasons not to build it this way, but would like some opinions on it. Thanks in advance!

Hi everybody! Long time lurker, first time poster here. My wife and I are considering building a barndominium on a small lake. What are some good websites to take a gander at plans? I'd be the GC on this project with a background in construction and will do or attempt most of the work.

I know it will take time to build on our own, but we have a camper to live in full time once the garage, we'll and septic are in, along with 50amp service.

Looking for plans with 4bd 3bath with a Master Suite. Three car oversized garage for the camper.

Thank you all in advance!

Does anyone have experience with a textured paint option. I'm building a 36x56 w/ 14' sidewalls. There is an option for textured paint on the siding and roof. In the sample, it looks a lot nicer and I think it would make the building shell look nicer vs. the smooth steel - but for roof and siding combined it's a $1700 upgrade. That seems like a lot of money for a slightly different paint finish...but I'm guessing visually I'd like it a lot more.

I'm using 26ga metal on both the siding and roof.

Does anyone have experience with the texture (or better yet both texture and smooth) that can give me an opinion on whether the aesthetic value is worth the cost? Thanks!