(light music) - We live in a 80-year-old barn that was on my parents' property that we have converted. When my parents first bought the property, there was horses in here, and we used to come in the hay loft to climb around. We put up a basketball hoop,
so we would kinda hang out. Growing up here and seeing it as a barn, I could never imagine
this old dusty, dirty barn transformed into a nice cozy home. (light music) - We both grew up here in Medina, Ohio. It's like your classic Main
Street, USA type of town. We met when we were in elementary school, we dated in high school. After college we moved back to Ohio because both our families are here, and we got married and had kids. - It's a great place to live,
especially if you have kids, 'cause you can send them
outside and they can play in a creek or climb
a tree or whatever, and that's kind of how I grew up. - Andrew's parents, they
own 50 acres of land here, and on the property when they purchased it was a farmhouse and this barn, so when we moved back to Ohio, the farmhouse was available, and it's everything you
can sort of hope for for moving back to your hometown. - Then the first kid came and
things got a little smaller, then the second kid came
and it got even smaller. - Our first instinct was to build, and when that seemed like not realistic, Andrew's mom was like
well, why don't you guys renovate the barn? (light music) - [Andrew] We knew the barn
was structurally pretty sound, so we're like okay, we can
envision how this would work, but ultimately all the
steps along the way, no. - We started off with a
family friend, architect, to help us just get the process started, and we started changing
direction a little, so we wanted to find somebody else who had a lot of experience
working on barns. - They found us because
they went on Houzz, and they saw one of our projects, which is our home and office, which is a bank barn built in 1810. - Tim's profile on Houzz, it was so-- I guess it was just compelling because we knew he had done it before. - [Tim] For decades we have been doing historical structures,
farmhouses, old buildings. - Everyone said that he
did really amazing work. He had really great reviews. - What do we want? - We showed him our plans that we had, and he instantly said
yes to this, no to this. This is gonna work, this isn't gonna work. And yeah, I think that was
the point where we knew okay this is possible,
and I think we've found the person who can make
this happen for us. - First we analyze if the
structure is sound enough to be converted into a home,
and we felt that it was. That was step number one. Step number two, we went
through the design elements we had done before with
Crystal and Andrew, and recommended we wanted
to bring it to their barn, and they liked that. And then number three,
it was the design layout of what they wanted. And then number four, how do we keep the structural integrity of the barn and yet still make it look
the way that they want? For example, with this structure, the large windows that we
have at the one gable end took a lot of engineering. - [Andrew] We wanted to make it feel like the access to the outdoors
was right at your fingertips. - This barn, it is extremely
unique with its bracing that holds it up. It gives it integrity and beauty, and we had to be very careful as we cut into these braces, how do we make it work
to still keep it strong? For the design concept,
we collaborated by using the photographs from Houzz, and they have their idea books. They share those with me,
and then we start going back and forth, and back
and forth with that. - One of the things I loved about Houzz was that you could filter by your style, so being able to narrow down
different looks was helpful. - So they were coming back
with this very open design, rustic and yet a contemporary blend, so when we started designing
railings and the windows, and the kitchen, et cetera, et cetera, it all started following that pattern. - I essentially wanted what we have now, a kitchen that leads into the dining area, that leads into the family room, so if I'm in the kitchen
I can talk to people. - You have to realize with a barn, everything has to follow
the scale of the barn. That's with the windows, the doors, the lighting, the kitchen, so the trick is how do we get the rooms
to be a comfortable size, keep them in proportion? - We added the loft in the barn, one, just for more living space, but also to enclose the
kitchen because we felt like if there's not a ceiling, where do things end? - We wanted to have something
where multiple groups could hang out together
and still be together but have different sort of seating areas. We have the reading nook, which is it's a place that is separate
from the main living space, but it's still connected,
so you still feel a sense of togetherness with people who are doing different activities. (light music) - So we always knew that the
bedrooms would go downstairs, and it's pretty simple down there. We knew we didn't want a big
bedroom or a big bathroom. We don't hang out in our bedroom. We hang out up here. That's the kind of part
of the house where-- Well, if you look at our stairs, our stairs are right in front of the door. It's as if to say to a visitor, just go upstairs, you know? Like down here is kind of like for us. - With the entrance stairs,
they basically float. Those are recycled timbers. We like that grand look. A stair in a typical
home would be too small. That stairwell has to be
in scale with the barn. - Andrew and my style is sort of eclectic. I mean, we wanted it to be more modern, just in terms of how the finishes were just because it's a barn, and
we don't want to overdo it with the rustic look, like
we got it, it's a barn. We also like a lot of natural finishes, so we kept the natural wood floors. - We knew we wanted to
keep the floors in the barn just because they're unique. Plus they're laid at an angle, which we always thought was
a little bit more interesting just visually.
- They loved the look of the old, so we figured
out ways to work around it with the radiant heat
and the added insulation, and they get the old
true look to the barn, which is what they wanted. - Tim really helped with
energy usage within the house. He was very adamant about
doing radiant heating just because to do forced
air in this huge loft space would have been so expensive
and not very efficient at all. He had a plan what to do with the roof. - My favorite part of
the house is actually the framing that holds up the roof. When I first crawled in here
and it was a dirty mess, and I got up on these rickety
stairs to the main floor, and I looked up and saw the structure, it was phenomenal. Not many barns are like this, and we knew right then and
there we had to preserve that, so we ended up putting insulation panels over on top on the outside, and then built a new roof on top of that. So they have all the energy efficiency, but they still have the big look inside. - [Crystal] He knew what were
the important things to us, so that he really tried to okay, if this is the most
important thing to you, here are other areas
where you can cut down. - First and foremost, Tim thought about the practical side of stuff, not just the aesthetics of it. - [Tim] This barn originally
did not have a bank, so it is not known as a bank barn, but Andrew and Crystal wanted a bank. - [Crystal] I guess one
of the biggest challenges was access to the outdoors
from the second floor. I just didn't like the idea,
especially with small children, of looking out the window
and seeing them out there and needing help, and having to go run down the stairs to get outside. - We came up with a way of making a wall, back-filling it, putting sandstone on either side, and to this day it looks like that bank has been here forever. (light music) We're very excited because it turned out the way that we had planned it, and of course that was the collaboration with Crystal and Andrew. - The build process itself, you just have to have a lot of patience. I feel really proud of it. I mean, it was a big undertaking. - The saving of the wood floor, the grand stairway, the
unique heating and cooling that we did, the bank, you put
all those elements together and it really makes this truly-- This is a one-of-a-kind barn/home and it will never be duplicated. - [Crystal] It's nice to know
that we had this big goal for a really long time and
that we made it happen, and also that we have a space
that we can make our own. - After high school, I moved away, and I kind of thought
that I would stay away. I never thought that
I would come back home and build something that I
knew I was gonna be in forever. I guess there was just
something that drew me back. It feels like home. It's like I've been running
around the same fields for you know, 20-some years. I do like to think that
maybe one of the kids will live here one day,
and I have plans to plant a bunch of trees
that I'll never see grow, but hopefully they will. (light music)
