Building a barn with living quarters

[KsOTTBs]

So I’ve been perusing through the threads on this topic, but I would love to hear your do’s and donts from those who have built a barn with living quarters. We are looking to move in the next couple of months and rather than buying a house, we are looking at just doing a barn w/ LQ on the land we plan to build a house on in the not too distant future. We’re looking at a 1 story 40x60 pole barn with 40x46 for 4 stalls, wash rack, and feed room, and a 40x24 house section inside. 2 bedrooms and baths with the tack room being inside as a combined mud/laundry/tack room leading into the barn. We’ll be there for the next 5-10 years until we pay it off and build a house. Although honestly once I live in the barn I may have to be dragged into a “real” house :lol:

For those that have done this- pros, cons? Things you’d do differently? I’d love to hear them all! Thanks In Advance!

[ryansgirl]

Check with your insurance first. A lot won’t cover you due to the fire hazard - which honestly sucks (& is understandable) - i’d love that kind of living arrangement!

[OneTwoMany]

And check with your township regarding your local zoning codes. Many municipalities won’t permit a “residence” in an agricultural structure.

[soloudinhere]

In my town where we are in the process of building now, attached living quarters like this get taxed as if you’re living in the entirety of the barn - eg you are taxed on a 2400sq ft home and not the 960 of living space.

Also, have you ever been in a 2br that is 960sq ft? I am not one for big houses, but unless you are planning to have an incredibly small kitchen and living room, your bedrooms will be very small. That is a very small living space for 10 years. I say this as someone living in a home with 3br on the main living floor of 1200sq ft. Chopping one of those rooms off would not be a very big space at all, especially if part of it is a “mudroom/tack room.”

Also, the resale or rental value of this barn with this is going to be zero.

You might really be better off for insurance, financing, and resale, by just putting a 900sq foot mobile home on the property instead. A friend got a 30’ Jayco travel trailer that has a master bedroom and an office and is living in that while waiting for her house to be built. It’s probably nicer than my actual house is.

[KsOTTBs]

Thank you all for your input! We’ve checked with insurance and zoning, everything is clear there. We have not officially applied for the loan yet, as we haven’t gone ahead and gotten quotes for everything, but we are 99% sure we won’t have any issues there either. As for the living space, yes I am aware it will be pretty small! We have a 1300 square foot house now, it will basically be the equivalent of losing the front portion of our current home. The master bedroom in the plans we are looking at now is a 12x15 and the kitchen is 8x12, if that gives you an idea. That said, I really prefer the idea of an attached house-barn over a trailer. I would like to limit the number of buildings on the property as well as have a nice guest house or place for family/friends to hang out. Plus, if we were to sell the trailer, we would lose not only the guest home but also $40,000+. We are building on family land, so resale is really not an option we have to worry about, thankfully! We hope to build our home within the next 6-7 years, once we are at a place in our lives where we know what we want/need our forever home to look like.

[OneTwoMany]

Might want to check and make sure your zoning allows for two residences on a single property.

[clanter]

We are building on family land, so resale is really not an option we have to worry about,

Do you have title to the land?

[Bluey]

By any measure, building a barn and house together is always a bad idea.

Now, as a horse person, it makes perfect sense to want to live in a house with a barn attached.
That is the way people have lived for centuries, is what made sense in many places.

Doesn’t really make sense today with what we know, as far as building, safety and hygiene concerns.
Even the aesthetics of such can be questionable, although that can be helped with excellent design.

Now, it is our house, our barn, we can do what we want, even if we know there are better ways, because that is what we want.
Just recognize that such is not a very good idea, for very good reasons, even if we will love the results for ourselves, warts and all.

I will say, I agree with the OP, is what I wanted to build but decided to be sensible and have house and barns separated, as per every professional that knows recommended, down to the fire department.

I am glad now I didn’t built it all in one, but have some separation, little that is.
When others are using the barn, if attached, I would not be able to get away or have privacy without being rude and making personal space off limits when everyone is right there.
Have talked to trainers with that problem that would never again live connected to a barn, after they had to continuously put up with people infringing on their personal space and time, with requests that they could not ignore, living there.
The same would go for family, if more than the one living there uses the barn.

I still would have liked to have an apartment attached to the barn, even if it is a very bad idea all around, sigh.

Just more to consider.

[ElementFarm]

I’ve contributed to other threads on this topic several times in the past, so what I’m saying here is probably not new.

I LOVE the attached barn/house concept, and it’s very popular where we are.

My notes on your plan:
If you eventually plan to build a “real” house, I’d probably prefer a huntbox (living quarters on top of the barn), but if you’re set on single level, then I’d do the barn in “front” and put the living quarters in the back. Then when you eventually have the real house, you’re not having to go through empty space awkwardly to get to the horses every day, and if you rent it, the renter isn’t ‘front and center’ on the property, if that makes sense. If you don’t intend to rent the space when you’re done living there, try to design the space to serve as dual purpose for whatever you would want to do with it.

Another option would be to just plan to keep the attached apartment as your main “real” house. If (probably) budget constrains prevent you from building large and perfect (thus the intent to eventually build a second home), then maybe instead design it to serve as part of the ‘real’ house, and build an addition to it later. Have a plan for the eventual footprint and design the smaller piece to fit with that plan.

I will agree with Soloudinhere, that proposed house size is TINY. We rented a place (attached to a nice 3-stall center aisle) that was not much bigger than that. I swear we almost got divorced because of it… TOO SMALL. Even with a rented storage unit in town, we never had room for guests, or for private space, or even storage of all our stuff. I would try to make the living space a little larger, even if it means waiting another year or so to save up.

Other thoughts:
think about storage solutions. A small house and a small barn will both require a lot of “stuff”, and planning ahead for that will make a huge difference.
The mud room between the two spaces should be a little larger than you think. you’ll have different “sets” of clothing: barn boots, going out in public boots, barn coat, barn rain coat, barn warm coat, and then equivalents that are suitable for going out in public and being seen and smelled by non-horse people. DH will need all those versions too, so again, plan ahead for maximizing space. I can’t imagine trying to fit all that into a tack room. I have a generously sized tack room that is also used for feed (grain only) and it’s FULL, with a ton of overflow of tack and blankets in boxes in our house.

Like all barns, attached to houses or not, put a lot of forethought into drainage and mud management (and snow management if you live in a northern climate). Also where will manure be stored? hay? Shavings?
It sounds like you’re not planning on starting this for several years, and priorities and situation can change a lot in that time. But it also gives you lots of time to plan, get grass established, walk the land in all seasons and after hard rains and kind of get to know the property. Good luck!

[2DogsFarm]

From your sig line it seems you are in the Midwest,

Me too & I DREAM of attaching a 500SF house to my indoor arena, which in turn is attached to my barn.
I have the acreage to do so & my neighbor to the North has done me the favor of petitioning & getting zoning to add a 2nd house to his 5ac property - thus setting a precedent.
I have even had my barnbuilder do a CAD of such a house using one of the Lowe’s Katrina Cottage models.
Having the 60X120 indoor separating me from the horse-occupied part of the barn solves a lot of problems.
While the Huntbox idea is nice, I am old & I can see the constant up&down stairs becoming an issue.
The only caveat for you is I live alone, so the tiny house would work for me just fine.
All I really use now of my 1200SF is the LR, BR, kitchen & bath.

So OP, if all zoning & permit issues allow, I say go ahead! :encouragement:

[apprider]

We just built a five stall barn with a studio apartment attached on a single level. We intend to build a house once we retire and use the apartment as guest quarters, for now it does duty as a vacation home. Thar apartment is small (28’x24’) but livable for my husband and I. I love being able to check on the horses so easily. We may end up renting it in the future, but more for the folks who come to show in the area.

[KsOTTBs]

@ElementFarm thank you this is all super helpful! We are in the North side of the road so the barn will run North-South and be open on the South side, house on the North. I also plan to have runs attached to the stalls as I don’t like to keep them locked up except for injuries or bad weather, so there will be plenty of airflow. My parents also have a 4 stall barn across the road where the ponies live now, that will be used for storage, as well as two separate hay and equipment barns. We do have the title to the land, but have no intentions of ever moving off of it, we’ll be the third generation to live there. We did think about expanding the house, but I’m fairly sure we will just want to build close to the barn when the time comes. However, I do intend to expand the barn South and add on four more stalls at a later Time. It’s definitely tiny, but it’s all the space we use now anyway, and we’re rarely in the house except to eat and sleep. It’s also just the two of us, although we’d like the second bedroom for a nursery and also for use as a guest home later on. Drainage is a main concern of mine as the land is on a gradual slope. We’re out in rural Oklahoma where it snows/Ices once a year, but we do get plenty of rain! However, there are basically no zoning requirements.

[LookmaNohands]

Building a barn with a house on top is a GOOD idea if you are a horse person! There are many around here. Local code here requires 2 layers of drywall between barn and house. An inside stairway to barn requires fire doors top and bottom. Since you may want to keep the barn fairly open for ventilation, you will want to make sure their is plenty insulation in the ceiling/floor. I would avoid tile as a flooring in the house.

[TMares]

I have a pal with a house/barn combo she loves- it’s oriented to catch breezes in the barn hall (4 stall barn, 12’ aisle, 2 stall on each side with tack on one side, hay/feed on the other). so the barn part is 36 X 36.

The barn T’s into the middle of their T shaped home, like this

---------|--------
The barn is on the left (west side) then a 16’ wide covered breezeway, then you walk into their mud room and can turn left and there’s a half bath and laundry and storage room. Turn right and you step into the kitchen. From the kitchen you look into a small dining area, and on into LR. Their MBR and MBA is off to the right of the dining area. The front door is the east-most point. THere’s also an office and 2nd BR and BA off of the LR. WHen you are in the house you would never know there’s a barn attached.

[ladymcts]

Just tossing an idea out there, because you’re getting great advice already. There was a property for sale around here recently that made lots of sense to me. It was geared more toward an airplane owner than a horse owner. But basically the set up was a mobile home (as in RV-style home) that had a pseudo-permanent residence in the barn. Or in this case, an airplane hangar. With the square footage you’re talking about for living space, that might not be such a bad option. An RV is already pre-built with all the amenties of a home, and you have the added flexibility of taking it out on the road whenever you want.

[PeteyPie]

For what it’s worth… 60’ - 24’ = 36’

So if you can either have a barn which is 40’ x 36’ with a house which is 40’ x 24’, or…
you can have a barn which is 40’ x 46’ and a house which is 40’ x 14’.

The place where I board used to have a large barn with living quarters inside and although I did not see it, people who were here back then say that it was really nice.

I think you are smart to have the living quarters on the ground floor, and one nice thing is that after you build your house, you could always use the living quarters for a barn worker or trainer.

I’m totally intrigued with the idea proposed by @ElementFarm wherein you would build a new barn later and expand the living quarters into the existing barn, making a really nice big house. That would provide several advantages; two ideas come to my mind right away: you could finance the building as a house and just not mention that the attached bonus room or garage will house horses for the next ten years. The high costs of building a kitchen and bathroom can be a one-time expense since you will not have to build another kitchen and bathroom in a new house down the road. Interesting idea.

I hope you keep us posted with what you end up doing. I just love it when people do barn and farm projects and post photos of their progress.

[talkofthetown]

@ladymcts

Just tossing an idea out there, because you’re getting great advice already. There was a property for sale around here recently that made lots of sense to me. It was geared more toward an airplane owner than a horse owner. But basically the set up was a mobile home (as in RV-style home) that had a pseudo-permanent residence in the barn. Or in this case, an airplane hangar. With the square footage you’re talking about for living space, that might not be such a bad option. An RV is already pre-built with all the amenties of a home, and you have the added flexibility of taking it out on the road whenever you want.

I was thinking about this as well.

[Bluey]

@ladymcts

Just tossing an idea out there, because you’re getting great advice already. There was a property for sale around here recently that made lots of sense to me. It was geared more toward an airplane owner than a horse owner. But basically the set up was a mobile home (as in RV-style home) that had a pseudo-permanent residence in the barn. Or in this case, an airplane hangar. With the square footage you’re talking about for living space, that might not be such a bad option. An RV is already pre-built with all the amenties of a home, and you have the added flexibility of taking it out on the road whenever you want.

There is a fellow here that worked for a farmer taking care of his cattle.
They had a big barn where they processed incoming cattle and he put an RV in there and that is where he lived for about 6 years, in a corner of that big barn, with horse stalls and pens right along the side and cattle working pens in front.

He still wish he had stayed there, he loved it, since all he used the RV for was to sleep anyway.
He had to move to a house after he married.

[Palm_Beach]

I think it’s a great idea.

[Equibrit]

I think it would be helpful to have a covered breezeway between the house section and the barn. It would mean that you’d get less flies and smells in your back door. You could also drive through and unload stuff to either house or barn more easily.