Each of our buildings stands as a unique testimony to the forgotten age of the enduring values of care and hand-craftsmanship.

I think perhaps we each remember a favorite barn from our past. Maybe we only ever drove by it. Or maybe we spent some time getting to know it from the inside out and can still recall the earthy fragrance of old wood, past harvests, and new-mown hay, reliving the feel of its weathered timbers, worn smooth by the winds of countless winters past.

Looking back, our barn work began in the ancient Catskill Mountains over fifty summers ago, when up the road from our place at the top of the hill stood an old, abandoned barn. On summer evenings, we never tired of walking the half-mile up the hill to explore that old hand-hewn barn, a timeless place of old oak and hemlock beams, ancient stone walls and forgotten notes tacked to the wall by a farm family that once cherished this land and its barn as their own. They paid the price for it by clearing the dense forest and field stones and building their homestead.

From that barn you could look southward across the valley all the way to Overlook Mountain and beyond. Some evenings we would end the day lying on the bed of an old hay wagon parked inside the barn, staring out through the open doors at the glowing summer sunset and watching the swallows soar and dive in great arcs in and out of the loft as the barn owls woke from their daytime slumber and began their hooting, as if to tell us to go home for the day and leave them to watch over the barn till sunrise.

Over twenty years ago, with thoughts of that old barn occasionally resurfacing in my memories, I embarked on a search for another timber-framed barn to restore for our handmade furniture showroom. And this search took me back to a farm not far from that old barn on the hilltop in the mountains. And not long after completing that first barn restoration, folks began to ask if perhaps we could find another old barn to restore into a special home for them, too.

One thing led to another, and now, years later, we have built many unique homes and buildings, not only from old barns, but also from a wide variety of historic houses and other historic buildings, for folks who also came to appreciate the timeless and simple beauty that these structures possess.

And in the process, we've learned a lot more about these forgotten monuments to the roots of America's agrarian past and the craftsmen who built them. Of the hundreds of barns and historic buildings we've saved, no two are exactly the same. Each building stands as a unique testimony to a forgotten age of the enduring values of hard work, care, and hand-craftsmanship.