Resources: Barn house bibliography

The following books are ones that deal specifically with barns converted into homes or other uses. There aren't a great deal of them. This list is by no means exhaustive, although I have yet to find others as good as the best of these. After each entry I have included some annotations. This bibliography will be updated as needed. If anyone out there has additional books to recommend, please add a comment and I will see to it!

Barn House Bibliography

Bradbury, Dominic and Mark Luscombe-Whyte. Barns. New York: Harper Design International, 2004.
The barns featured in this book are of a distinctly modern character. Many of them have ceased to even resemble the barns that lie at their cores. Interiors are predominantly white, fixtures are all contemporary, and there is little wood, save the frame, that is employed. I think there IS a way to merge antique and modern. More on this in another post. There are some very good ideas (and some terrible ones) in this book.

Cobb, Hubbard and Betsy Cobb. Your Barn House. New York: Holt and Company, 1991.
This is the only book I have come across that approaches being a "how-to" guide to building a barn house. There are few pictures and they are small and not in color. As a visual resource it is lacking. However, it details a number of diverse barn projects and was a useful resource during the early stages of planning. Hard to find; try an online used book seller.

Endersby, Elric, Alex Greenwood and David Larkin. Barn. New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1992.
This is a SPECTACULARLY illustrated, large-format book by the partners of The New Jersey Barn Company. Endersby and Greenwood have been saving and restoring barns for as long as anyone (25-30 years, I believe) and they are a vast storehouse of knowledge about this type of building and this type of project. The majority of the book is devoted to an introduction to barns as working structures, but there are a number of excellent examples of successful barn-house converstions at the end of the book. This one and the next are the cornerstones of my collection.

Endersby, Elric, Alex Greenwood and David Larkin. Barn - Preservation and Adaptation. New York: Universe Publishing, 2003.
This is a follow-up to the previous book and it is similarly illustrated and highly valuable. Many excellent barn house projects are detailed making this an indispensible resource for your research into barn-house conversions. Another must-have.

Rooney, E. Ashley. Old Barns - New Homes. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2004.
If the previous two books are a catalogue of the BEST examples of barn-house conversion, this book is a catalogue of some of the WORST (there are a couple of good examples). Sadly, many people who attempt to convert barns into homes are infected with the "Country-Kitsch" decorating disease (sorry, I am revealing my bias here!) Many of these homes are decorated by hanging antique farm tools and quilts on the walls...do you know what I mean? By and large they are marred by over-use of plaster and drywall on the interior and the exteriors are often indistinguishable from any other "country home." Still, it was a useful resource, if only to confirm in my mind what I DIDN'T want my barn to look like.