Building the Dream at The Barn Yard
Whether it’s a barn, cabin, pavilion, or home, this Connecticut-based timber frame specialist will make your dream a reality. And build it to last.
By Yankee Custom Editors|Mar 10 2024|
Clean, modern style meets rustic timber frame charm in The Bradway Barn: a landmark timber frame party barn by The Barn Yard.
Photo Credit:Sponsored by The Barn Yard.
Take a look around The Barn Yard’s showcase locations in Ellington and Bethel, Connecticut, or click through the stunning project photos on its website, and it’s clear this family business has come a long way. When it was launched by Everett Skinner III and his father, Bill, in 1984, they were selling simple, sturdy sheds. Fast-forward 40 years, and The Barn Yard is now a leading timber frame builder whose own designs grace properties across the country and as far away as Europe.
The company is led today by Everett’s two sons: Everett IV, who serves as president, and Chris, vice president. Growing up, the brothers learned every part of the business. In high school they worked on construction crews and delivered sheds, and even picked weeds around the company’s yard. They also absorbed a philosophy that has stuck with them, Chris says. “My father and grandfather taught my brother and me a long time ago that if you work hard at what you’re doing and build something right, you’ll always be successful.”
The brothers would eventually take their places in the company, bringing a wealth of knowledge and some fresh ideas with them—including expanding into timber frame construction. Up to that point, The Barn Yard had built a number of conventionally framed barns, but timber framing would mark a big leap into the past and the future, simultaneously.
Harking back to New England’s early days, timber frame construction relies on wooden joints and fasteners, rather than metal ones, to hold the structure’s beams together. Around New England, Chris notes, people tend to think of this as “post and beam” construction, though that style doesn’t necessarily have the wood joinery that is the hallmark of timber frame craftsmanship.
“We take tradition very seriously,” he says. “We want our clients to experience a structure that is constructed in a way it would’ve been 200 years ago. We like all wood-to-wood connections; we like exposed oak pegs. We like the traditional joinery—the mortise and tenon, the half-laps, the dovetails, the scarf joints. We try to incorporate all that into our standard buildings because, honestly, it’s what our clients deserve.”
But cutting all the timbers and joints the old-fashioned way—by hand—would be a staggering time expenditure. “With a business model like ours, it’s not about building one or two barns a year. It’s about crafting more than 250 barns a year,” Chris says. “So the only way to get to that scale is to invest in technology and capacity.”
And that’s where The Barn Yard’s cutting edge lies. It uses Italian-made CNC machines (CNC is shorthand for “computerized numerical control”) to precisely cut the building components. This advanced technology not only makes short work of cutting wood, but it also helps enable The Barn Yard to embed steel within some of its wooden structures to support, say, an unusually big open span. The company pairs its innovative production with modern design features, such as CAD (“computer-assisted design”) software that lets The Barn Yard’s engineers and designers bring a client’s vision to life.
All of this powers The Barn Yard’s core series of customizable timber frame barn kits that range from the classic New England carriage barn to the rugged-but-handsome gambrel barn of the western U.S. It’s been a popular product line from the start, though Chris says they’ve seen some differences in how clients are using their barns—especially in terms of rethinking them as spaces to live and play.
“There was a period maybe 10 or 12 years ago where it seemed like everyone was having a barn wedding. People would go to a venue and be in a beautiful barn, and say, ‘Wow, this is fantastic—I’d like to have a space like this at my home!’” he notes. “And overall, I get the sense that the typical American in the past 25 years has just felt like they want a little more luxury in their life.”
Some clients are having their timber frame barns designed for storage but also leaving room for cozy touches like sitting areas, TVs, and fireplaces. Others are going full-out for the “party barn,” purpose-built for entertaining and recreation; it’s a relatively new offering at The Barn Yard, but the examples so far are stunning.
Take the Bald Hill Barn, a 3,600-square-foot custom project in the monitor barn style. It was built to hold all kinds of amenities—full bar, gas fireplace, bathroom, LED chandeliers, walk-in cooler, radiant-heat flooring—but for Chris, what makes it special is the variety of materials The Barn Yard was able to work into the design. The exterior siding incorporates old corral boards from Idaho; the interior features reclaimed barn wood from New England and the mid-Atlantic (some boards are so old they still have 18th- or 19th-century carpenter’s marks on them). There’s stonework, copper gutters, twisted steel railings—“a combination of textures that I feel makes it really impressive,” Chris says.
Another spotlight custom project is the Bradway Barn. In a testament to The Barn Yard’s design versatility, the attached three-car garage is a classic New England carriage barn, but the main entertainment space evokes the tall, narrow tobacco barns that were once common in Connecticut. The wide-open interior was made possible by precision-cutting massive Douglas fir timbers to form two arched supports called sling brace trusses. “You wouldn’t have had something like a sling brace a hundred years ago,” Chris says. “So we were taking the shell of what you would have seen historically and introducing some new design elements on the inside. It really made for a stunning building.”
Modern and traditional elements work together throughout the Bradway Barn. A classic cupola brings natural light into the interior, but so do state-of-the-art sliding glass doors by NanaWall. The warm, rustic look of reclaimed barn board is paired with white shiplap walls and an eye-catching accent wall made of Pennsylvania fieldstone. A gallery-style loft provides a unique recreation and relaxation area, not to mention a terrific vantage point for seeing the whole grand space at once.
Custom party barns aren’t the only new way The Barn Yard is putting its timber frame expertise to use. The company has developed a line of outdoor pavilion kits that fit right into people’s embrace of outdoor living, post-covid. Open on all sides, they can be a poolside shelter or a cooking and entertaining space or, really, whatever a client can dream up. There’s a new series of tidy little cabins, with names like Yellowstone and Allagash that give them a heritage feel. Need more space? The Barn Yard has, yes, actual two-story barn home kits ranging from about 1,500 square feet to nearly 3,000.
It’s a broad catalog of offerings that is matched, Chris says, by The Barn Yard’s expanded sales territory. “For 25 years, we were just a New England company—you wouldn’t see our products in Kentucky or Florida, for instance. But because of the CNC machine-cut joinery, every week we’re shipping products that we crafted in our shop to California or Hawaii or the Bahamas. We can send an entire barn frame kit across the country and the client can put it together with their local contractor, because everything is so simple and cut so precisely.”
Of course, if you live in New England, you have the option of booking The Barn Yard’s own expert building team to construct your barn, garage, or pavilion. It can be an awesome sight, and one that reveals the beauty of timber frame construction inside as well as out. “One of the most impressive things for the client is that literally the second day we’re on their site, we’ve got the whole timber frame up,” Chris says. “It’s just the naked frame, but people always say to us, ‘Wow, that looks amazing. I almost wish it could just stay like that!’”
To see more of The Barn Yard’s timber frame kits and custom projects, and to learn more about its mission to build quality while providing an unmatched customer experience and preserving the values it was founded on in 1984, visit the company website at BarnYard.com
