Restoration Road (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - Apple Valley Home - full transcript
Clint gets his hands dirty taking on a pre-Civil War barn from Northern Ohio that's carefully deconstructed, moved and rebuilt to create a stunning custom home in a lakeside community.
Just south
of Lake Erie, quietly plowing
its way through time,
is the tiny farming community
of Republic, Ohio.
With a population
of just about 600 people,
the town motto is "Small
in Size, but Big in Heart."
It's a part of Ohio
a few people ever get to see.
So I consider myself lucky
to be exploring this hidden
American treasure.
Today, I'm meeting Doug Morgan
from Mount Vernon Barn Company
to get hands-on
with his latest project,
turning a historic barn
into a beautiful custom home.
I'm Clint Harp,
and I'm traveling America
to shed a light on
some incredible restorations
and transformations.
Get hands-on with some
of the builders bringing
these amazing
places back to life.
And make sure
these new stories live on
for years to come.
Whoo!
Ain't she a beauty?
This is Restoration Road.
- Doug.
- Clint.
How are you, sir?
I'm great. A little cold.
- Man.
- Welcome to Ohio in the fall.
Yeah. The fall. Good grief.
Welcome to western Ohio
in the fall.
- Yeah.
- Where the wind blows
like crazy,
maybe like down Waco, Texas.
It gets windy down in Waco,
but not this cold.
Well, it hasn't blown down
this barn yet.
- Wanna take a look?
- Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Doug is a man on a mission.
He spent
the majority of his life
as a successful attorney.
But his heart
was in the hand-hewn beams
and trunneled peaks
of old barns.
So he turned his passion
into a full-time profession.
It's his goal to restore
100 barns,
and he's already
halfway there.
Oh, yeah, she's standing tall.
This is kind
of a classic hybrid
of an English
and a Dutch barn.
Barns like this would've been
1840 to 1860.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So around
the Civil War.
Very old.
These barns today,
they're pretty much obsolete
for all modern
farming purposes,
so that's why they're letting
them fall down.
What we've realized early
on when we started
- saving barns...
- Yeah.
The best
way to save barns
is to make them relevant
for the 21st century.
- Right.
- -So, this is gonna be a home.
Wow. It's a nice barn.
Well, come on.
Let's go see the real
special part inside.
Oh, baby. Yeah!
This was
a threshing barn originally.
- Right.
- They would've threshed
small grain,
wheat, barley, oats.
This is what we call
a four-bent, three-bay barn.
Okay. Four-bent...
Four-bent, and a bent
is all the timbers
like in this section
right here.
- Okay.
- So there's a bent
- over there on that wall.
- Okay.
Here's a bent
And there's a bent
on the far wall.
Okay.
Ohio had
the greatest barns ever built
in the history of the world.
No.
- I know. Hear me out.
- Whoa.
Wait a second.
That's a statement.
It is, and I can back it up.
The barn builders, these guys
lived with broadaxes
in their hands every day.
They were cutting them
down by hand, hewing them
with broadaxes.
Yup.
Doing the mortise
and tenon joinery all by hand.
And then, re-erecting them
by hand, with the help
of their neighbors.
And then, of course, we had
the greatest hardwood floors
probably in the history
of the world.
- White oak...
- Okay.
...chestnut, beech, walnut,
maple, hickory.
Including these
white oak beams right here.
Exactly.
They say that the state
was so densely forested,
a squirrel could go
from one end of the state,
to the other, and never
get out of the trees.
Oh, my goodness.
And they were massive,
they...
And all of this,
just hardwoods,
virgin hardwoods everywhere?
- Right. Exactly.
- Sure, sure.
If you get up
a little further north,
the trees
didn't get quite as big.
- Be more conifers, pines.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Uh, hemlock.
You got a problem
with hemlock, Doug?
No, I love...
Because that...
You're talking trash
- about hemlock now?
- I love hemlock.
It's a great landscape tree.
Oh, my! Wow!
This is getting rich, man.
- This is...
- Oh, O-H!
I got it. I got it.
Doug, like many
Ohioans, has some serious
pride in his home state.
And when he claims
that Ohio's barns
were the best ever built,
I have to say,
he makes
a pretty convincing argument.
These are works of art.
They're handmade sculptures.
No two timbers are alike.
Especially this one
right here.
It's got this
beautiful sort of curve
all the way through it.
I love it.
Bark's still on them, I mean,
that's a tree up there.
They're used as joists,
they're from the original
log house,
that it was the first dwelling
on the property.
Wow.
Most of the frame itself
is mortise and tenon joinery
with the wood pegs
you can see up there.
Now what
I'm noticing here,
everything is uniform.
This is the mark of a really
amazing hand-hewing craftsman.
The tree would've been
laying on the ground,
they would've taken
a felling ax,
they would've snapped a line
then they'd stand
on top of it,
and would cut down to that
line with the felling ax.
Then they'd take the broadax,
they'd go on the side.
And then, they just chip off
those pieces.
Okay.
It is a sculpture
that is gonna make
a magnificent house.
The best houses
in the world?
Is that...
I would live up to that.
Yeah.
This tall roof here,
this is majestic.
I really am starting
to capture the majesty
of this barn.
You're starting to back up
some of that big statement
you dropped earlier.
Best barns in the world.
There is some
really interesting angles,
and stuff going on up there.
In one-third of the barn...
- Okay. Okay.
- ...we'll put a loft,
But the rest of it
will be open,
so you'll be able
to see up to the rafters.
It'll be a really cool space.
Let's figure out
how we're gonna get
- this roof off and get going.
- Yeah.
Turning a centuries-old barn
into a custom home
is an ambitious project,
one that can take
the better part of a year.
So today,
we're taking the first,
and in some ways,
most crucial step,
by carefully
deconstructing this frame,
timber by precious timber.
First thing,
we have to get everything
stripped off this frame,
inside and out.
This siding might be
the only thing holding up
this one bent back here.
This is a nice little find.
It's beautiful pine.
With the knots and the age.
Old, old.
This is a nice board.
That's a good haul.
- I take photographs...
- Yeah.
...send it to one
of my lawyer friends.
"Hey, how do you like
my new office?"
Yeah.
Getting a chance
to deconstruct
a piece of living history
like this is always exciting.
And like Doug, I definitely
feel the responsibility
to honor the legacy
of the amazing craftspeople
who built this barn.
Hey, boy.
We're carefully
numbering every timber,
so this barn
can go back together
the same way it was built.
This thing
is front purlin D brace.
Yeah, there we go.
- This is red elm.
- Yeah.
And you have these rays
emanating out.
- Right. Right.
- The medulla area raised...
I'm hopeful
that we have enough
to make flooring
for the whole house.
Oh, my gosh.
That would be amazing.
That is gonna
swing back in now.
That is a sweet piece of wood.
Look at how wide that is.
Wow!
Probably shouldn't have
been standing right behind it.
It's just a dangerous thing
- to take these barns apart.
- It can be.
of Lake Erie, quietly plowing
its way through time,
is the tiny farming community
of Republic, Ohio.
With a population
of just about 600 people,
the town motto is "Small
in Size, but Big in Heart."
It's a part of Ohio
a few people ever get to see.
So I consider myself lucky
to be exploring this hidden
American treasure.
Today, I'm meeting Doug Morgan
from Mount Vernon Barn Company
to get hands-on
with his latest project,
turning a historic barn
into a beautiful custom home.
I'm Clint Harp,
and I'm traveling America
to shed a light on
some incredible restorations
and transformations.
Get hands-on with some
of the builders bringing
these amazing
places back to life.
And make sure
these new stories live on
for years to come.
Whoo!
Ain't she a beauty?
This is Restoration Road.
- Doug.
- Clint.
How are you, sir?
I'm great. A little cold.
- Man.
- Welcome to Ohio in the fall.
Yeah. The fall. Good grief.
Welcome to western Ohio
in the fall.
- Yeah.
- Where the wind blows
like crazy,
maybe like down Waco, Texas.
It gets windy down in Waco,
but not this cold.
Well, it hasn't blown down
this barn yet.
- Wanna take a look?
- Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Doug is a man on a mission.
He spent
the majority of his life
as a successful attorney.
But his heart
was in the hand-hewn beams
and trunneled peaks
of old barns.
So he turned his passion
into a full-time profession.
It's his goal to restore
100 barns,
and he's already
halfway there.
Oh, yeah, she's standing tall.
This is kind
of a classic hybrid
of an English
and a Dutch barn.
Barns like this would've been
1840 to 1860.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So around
the Civil War.
Very old.
These barns today,
they're pretty much obsolete
for all modern
farming purposes,
so that's why they're letting
them fall down.
What we've realized early
on when we started
- saving barns...
- Yeah.
The best
way to save barns
is to make them relevant
for the 21st century.
- Right.
- -So, this is gonna be a home.
Wow. It's a nice barn.
Well, come on.
Let's go see the real
special part inside.
Oh, baby. Yeah!
This was
a threshing barn originally.
- Right.
- They would've threshed
small grain,
wheat, barley, oats.
This is what we call
a four-bent, three-bay barn.
Okay. Four-bent...
Four-bent, and a bent
is all the timbers
like in this section
right here.
- Okay.
- So there's a bent
- over there on that wall.
- Okay.
Here's a bent
And there's a bent
on the far wall.
Okay.
Ohio had
the greatest barns ever built
in the history of the world.
No.
- I know. Hear me out.
- Whoa.
Wait a second.
That's a statement.
It is, and I can back it up.
The barn builders, these guys
lived with broadaxes
in their hands every day.
They were cutting them
down by hand, hewing them
with broadaxes.
Yup.
Doing the mortise
and tenon joinery all by hand.
And then, re-erecting them
by hand, with the help
of their neighbors.
And then, of course, we had
the greatest hardwood floors
probably in the history
of the world.
- White oak...
- Okay.
...chestnut, beech, walnut,
maple, hickory.
Including these
white oak beams right here.
Exactly.
They say that the state
was so densely forested,
a squirrel could go
from one end of the state,
to the other, and never
get out of the trees.
Oh, my goodness.
And they were massive,
they...
And all of this,
just hardwoods,
virgin hardwoods everywhere?
- Right. Exactly.
- Sure, sure.
If you get up
a little further north,
the trees
didn't get quite as big.
- Be more conifers, pines.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- Uh, hemlock.
You got a problem
with hemlock, Doug?
No, I love...
Because that...
You're talking trash
- about hemlock now?
- I love hemlock.
It's a great landscape tree.
Oh, my! Wow!
This is getting rich, man.
- This is...
- Oh, O-H!
I got it. I got it.
Doug, like many
Ohioans, has some serious
pride in his home state.
And when he claims
that Ohio's barns
were the best ever built,
I have to say,
he makes
a pretty convincing argument.
These are works of art.
They're handmade sculptures.
No two timbers are alike.
Especially this one
right here.
It's got this
beautiful sort of curve
all the way through it.
I love it.
Bark's still on them, I mean,
that's a tree up there.
They're used as joists,
they're from the original
log house,
that it was the first dwelling
on the property.
Wow.
Most of the frame itself
is mortise and tenon joinery
with the wood pegs
you can see up there.
Now what
I'm noticing here,
everything is uniform.
This is the mark of a really
amazing hand-hewing craftsman.
The tree would've been
laying on the ground,
they would've taken
a felling ax,
they would've snapped a line
then they'd stand
on top of it,
and would cut down to that
line with the felling ax.
Then they'd take the broadax,
they'd go on the side.
And then, they just chip off
those pieces.
Okay.
It is a sculpture
that is gonna make
a magnificent house.
The best houses
in the world?
Is that...
I would live up to that.
Yeah.
This tall roof here,
this is majestic.
I really am starting
to capture the majesty
of this barn.
You're starting to back up
some of that big statement
you dropped earlier.
Best barns in the world.
There is some
really interesting angles,
and stuff going on up there.
In one-third of the barn...
- Okay. Okay.
- ...we'll put a loft,
But the rest of it
will be open,
so you'll be able
to see up to the rafters.
It'll be a really cool space.
Let's figure out
how we're gonna get
- this roof off and get going.
- Yeah.
Turning a centuries-old barn
into a custom home
is an ambitious project,
one that can take
the better part of a year.
So today,
we're taking the first,
and in some ways,
most crucial step,
by carefully
deconstructing this frame,
timber by precious timber.
First thing,
we have to get everything
stripped off this frame,
inside and out.
This siding might be
the only thing holding up
this one bent back here.
This is a nice little find.
It's beautiful pine.
With the knots and the age.
Old, old.
This is a nice board.
That's a good haul.
- I take photographs...
- Yeah.
...send it to one
of my lawyer friends.
"Hey, how do you like
my new office?"
Yeah.
Getting a chance
to deconstruct
a piece of living history
like this is always exciting.
And like Doug, I definitely
feel the responsibility
to honor the legacy
of the amazing craftspeople
who built this barn.
Hey, boy.
We're carefully
numbering every timber,
so this barn
can go back together
the same way it was built.
This thing
is front purlin D brace.
Yeah, there we go.
- This is red elm.
- Yeah.
And you have these rays
emanating out.
- Right. Right.
- The medulla area raised...
I'm hopeful
that we have enough
to make flooring
for the whole house.
Oh, my gosh.
That would be amazing.
That is gonna
swing back in now.
That is a sweet piece of wood.
Look at how wide that is.
Wow!
Probably shouldn't have
been standing right behind it.
It's just a dangerous thing
- to take these barns apart.
- It can be.