Cashing in on a trend when it’s in full swing can cost you a ton of unnecessary time & savings simply on account of the hype and hotness of an idea at any given time. Who’s to say you can’t use that hype as fuel & motivation to complete your very own dream barndominium. I’d like to show you how using popular trends and ideas online as a roadmap, you can arrive at the barndominium that you’ve always dreamt of for much less than everyone else is paying for essentially the same things, just by putting in a little extra work on the side you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.
When you have the time to stand back and admire the build quality of a beautiful structure like the great pyramid of Giza, you wonder how something of that magnitude was constructed. Nothing of that size and scale can be built without exquisite planning and knowledge of design on the part of the builders. Building off of the ideas that others have already troubleshot and worked through can also save a lot of money and time, by already knowing the potential trouble areas of a project you can take special care when you run into that portion of the build, I’m in the process of planning my own dream barndominium and I’ve noticed myself taking aspects of other builds and attempting to work those ideas into my own.
I get a lot of things done by launching home D.I.Y projects. Instead of buying design elements, I prefer to buy materials and build my own design elements. I get this from my mother. She’s always decorating or doing arts and crafts at home to some extent or another; My dad is the same way when it comes to woodworking and building, so I’ve picked up a few things growing up that I can use while building my first barndominium. I’m sure that you have skills gained throughout life that you can use toward your build that will help propel you down that road even faster than me. Using resources like Pinterest is a springboard for so many awesome D.I.Y projects, you don’t have to limit your search inquiries to only barndominium-related ideas. I’ve even drawn inspiration from color combinations that I’ve run into and taken pictures of while out shopping; your resources really are all around you.
I like taking long country drives to see what people in my area are building, It’s nice to stay current on the local trends as much as national trends because at the end of the day you don’t want your house to stand out like a sore thumb because it looks so drastically at odds with all the local residences in the neighborhood. I always begin my planning process with a good drive to clear my head or even a long brainstorm session alone at my build site can do wonders for me, I can put everything else on the back burner temporarily and have a fresh blank slate to start building my idea from and that’s an important step for me personally and I feel like it helps me set on track to succeed in my project. As well as Pinterest, I like to also tap into the endless knowledge base that is online forums. There are so many great ideas to be gained on forums. I’m a huge advocate of sharing information with others in general and forums are a wonderful place you can go to interact with likeminded people who are most likely doing the same thing you’re doing building their own barndominium. There are forums that are specific to the exact project you’re doing, while some forum categories are more broad and general but my point is you can probably find some ideas on forums that will really surprise you.
Forums are a good place to gauge trends as well. You can ask other readers about specific trends, and what their thoughts are on ideas. It always helps to get feedback from outside sources that are not bias toward you. Forums allow you to do this on a large scale and reach many people in a very short period of time. There are builder-focused forums and sub-contractor-related forums online now that are geared at sharing information between builders with many times posts with step-by step D.I.Y photos and instructions for building projects, anything and everything from the foundation to the roof trusses and everything in between is covered in some of these forums.
Youtube is a less complicated way to find more basic D.I.Y ideas and how to videos related to building your own home, or barndominium-specific projects, whatever it is, you can usually find some content on youtube that will at least cover the topic. Facebook groups are another resource that seems to be fast growing in popularity recently. I’ve noticed barndominium topics showing up all over Facebook, so that tells me barndominiums are still trendy to the masses.
Springboarding off the sharing of information online and how accessible information is these days, we have more resources at our disposal online as owner-builders than most contractors had to work with just a short 10-15 years ago. We have access to all the current trends, the how-to videos, material lists, cost-to-build breakdowns, budget spreadsheets, cost calculators, house plans, consultants, you name it, all of these tools and resources can be easily found online by anyone.
Knowing how to spot trends is another skill altogether; if you look at enough barndominium pictures that others have built themselves, you can start to pick things out, things you would do different, things that you really like, you’ll see these types of things rather quickly, different areas of the country have different trends based on the climate and weather. Sliding barn doors are a nationwide barndominium trend. Florida homes tend to be more colorful and built up off the ground more than other areas of the country. There are hundreds and hundreds of trends you can identify just by looking at pictures of barndominiums built by others, maybe it’s best to even start in your own state or region of the country, just to try to focus on some local trends and building staples that you might not latch onto by simply looking at a national pool of barndominium images.
House plans also have trends, you’ll notice trends in the overall design of a barndominium sometimes you can see where it borrowed certain elements, Buildmax is primarily a house plan company that really takes those trends and design elements and blends them into some really stunning barndominiums that could work just about anywhere in the country with a little personal and regional touches I’m sure. Taking a look at some home plan designs on the Buildmax website, you can understand what I mean. The quality and thought put into the interior layouts coupled with the timeless exterior designs lend themselves to looking great in almost any environment. Take a virtual tour of some of Buildmax most popular designs and browse the many others available; if you don’t see that dream home right away, stay a while and explore more designs, your dream barndominium is waiting.
