Business ProfileforMike's Barn Painting

We hired this company to replace one-half of a roof, some siding, and a few sill pieces and a rafter plate on a 140-year-old barn. The roof and siding repairs were acceptable, but the work on the timber framing (sill timbers, rafter plate and rafters) was not acceptable. There are well-established standards in timber framing, and the owner and his crew completely ignored them. When only a portion of a timber is rotted, it is reasonable to replace only that portion, rather than replacing the entire timber. Scarf joints, which involve overlapping the new and old timbers, are standard practice for replacing a section of a timber, as these joints provide the greatest strength at the joint. Simply butting together two pieces of timber and supporting it with screws does not provide sufficient strength, but that is what this company did. When questioned about the lack of scarf joints, the owner said that overlapping the timbers creates more surface area for water to penetrate the joint. This makes no sense. Scarfing has a long history in timber framing, and water entry is not a problem. In response to my concerns, he reinforced one of the butted joints with metal gussets. But, he did not follow through on his written commitment to add an extra support under a poorly constructed joint in the rafter plate repair, even though he came to the barn to add the gussets and said it would take no more than an hour for both repairs. Instead, he claimed he could not get his ladder into the barn, which seems disingenuous given that the barn door was not locked and nothing prevented the access he needed. We are disappointed that the owner has walked away from an incomplete repair, saying in an email that he had unilaterally decided “the job is done”. This company appears to be competent to do acceptable work in repairing a roof or replacing siding on an old, historic barn. Unfortunately, they appear to be incapable of repairing a barn’s timber framing using time-tested best practices.