$10 Windows for the Barn

After we put the skylight in the milking room roof, I found myself wondering if we could use the same translucent roofing panels to let even more light into the goat barn. Dan isn’t crazy about those panels, so he suggested we take a trip to the builders surplus warehouse to see what they had. We bought all our new energy efficient windows for the house there at a huge savings.

We looked around and found door windows for $10 each. Some were for doors and some were front door sidelights. We found a small window that would be just right for the milking room.

It was perfect.

Then we started discussing the hay loft. I have a small solar shed light to put at the top of the stairs, but I would prefer to save the battery and use natural light during the day. Dan had the idea to install sidelight panels horizontally along the top of the hayloft wall.

We headed back to the builder’s surplus and bought two sidelight panels. They were also $10 each.

The length of the barn loft is 16 feet. By using the windows, Dan needed only two sheets of plywood instead of four.

The opening above the plywood was 16.5 inches. The windows were 9.5 inches wide. 2x4s are 3.5 inches wide. So the window and two 2x4s were perfect to fill the opening.

Hayloft posts are four feet apart, so each window had run in front of one post. After the 2x4s were screwed to the posts, however, there wasn’t room to accommodate the vinyl window trim. Dan cut it so that the window could fit snuggly against the post.

Together, the windows cover 13 feet 8 inches of the 16-foot opening. That meant there were some gaps to cover.

Dan had a few 3.5-inch thick scraps lying around to fill them in.

Now I have plenty of light in my new hayloft!

The amazing thing is that all of this worked out providentially. We couldn’t have pre-planned it this well! Step by step we’re getting closer to goat-moving-in day. 😊