Bucks County Timbercraft

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• By a user in Trenton

  September 6, 2017

  repurpose antique barn

  $30,000

  We hired Sean Tracy of Bucks County Timbercraft to disassemble and preserve a circa 1820's barn . According to him , the barn was in very good condition for being almost 200 years old and well worth the expense to repurpose it . According to him, it was "A Dutch-English hybrid, very unusual and special" .After the Phase 1 disassembly and preservation process, Phase 2 was to recreate the exact same barn frame ,incorporating it into a new house . He seemed sincere and we had done some research into his previous barn conversions , liked his past work ,so we hired him . Almost from the start , however, questions arose about his promise to do what he said he would. I am the kind of person who is respectful of other peoples time. When someone is chronically late for, or cancels appointments, this is a real problem. Sean , unfortunately was seldom punctual . When we first hired him , he stated that "I will hand you the keys to the new house by Thanksgiving 2016. In fact , he did not even start the new house until December 2016 ! The disassembly process was somewhat chaotic - ancient barn boards were in some instances simply ripped from the frame - broken - instead of workers taking the proper amount of time to salvage them. The boards were also not de-nailed - this is something you learn the first day of Carpentry 101- very dangerous . I had to pick up 100's of nails left on the property . These were a hazard to anyone walking around and a few tires were punctured as well. The real issue revolves around how this one of a kind, irreplaceable barn frame was stored improperly. According to an article about Sean, it said that " Sean either refurbishes them on the spot, or dismantles them piece-by-piece and carefully transports them to his shop in Bucks County. Then, he restores their materials, turning the old structures into ultimate, one-of-a-kind barn homes." Sadly, the frame was neither refurbished on the spot nor carefully transported to his shop .Instead, timbers were piled up , several directly touching the ground, uncovered. We had to remind him that he promised to preserve the frame, cover everything , until the new structure was ready to accept this antique frame. Many of the timbers lay exposed in the hot sun, rain, snow, wind and ice for many months. Allowed to disintegrate . When he finally started to work on the frame this past April, the damage done was painfully evident . Parts of many timbers had simply rotted away. Sean then hired workers to attempt to salvage the ruined timbers, cut up some of the undamaged timbers and use parts of these to piece together into the rotted ones. All in all, a very unsatisfactory experience. Caveat Emptor

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