This banked monitor barn was designed and built in close collaboration with the owner. She was looking for a design that would provide a few different types of storage space, as well as a commonly used, more finished gathering space. We are both happy with what we were able to build within budget constraints, and pleased to add this handsome timber frame barn, built with regionally sourced materials, to the Central Vermont landscape.
A Novel Plan for Affordable Housing in Central Vermont
This building is part of the owner’s larger vision to provide reasonably priced homes in the Fayston/Moretown area. As home prices have risen and housing stock has not kept pace with demand, a growing number of people who have built lives in this area struggle to find housing they can afford. Our client decided to use the acreage she has in Moretown to pitch in, by building six tiny homes and offering them as affordable long term rentals. While tiny home living is workable for many people, two big challenges are a lack of a large gathering space, and how limited the storage is. This timber frame barn was built to address these two issues for the tiny home tenants. The second story of this barn is a 12’x36′ space that is furnished as a shared use gathering space and, because it’s in the monitor, is flooded with light. On the lower level, one 8’x36′ aisle is divided into three 100-square foot sections, each of which is shared by two tiny house tenants. To date in early 2026, four of the six tiny houses have been built, and the barn is working as intended.
Sharing the Spacious Ground Floor
The common space in the monitor and tenant storage in one lower aisle leaves about half the barn for other purposes. The 12’x36′ central aisle on the ground floor, which is fully enclosed, is used for tractor and equipment storage. As you can see in the photo below, sliding barn doors grant access to the long central area, and there are two other aisles on the ground floor. The aisle to the right is the tenant’s storage area, and the the remaining aisle, to the left, is an 8’x36′ shed roof storage space, currently used most often for material storage as the rest of this vision comes to life and gets built. This area will eventually be used to house the owner’s blacksmithing forge.
Settling into the Landscape
Several years into the barn being finished and functional, one aspect the owner is especially pleased about is how well the sitework and landscaping has worked out. As excavation work is underway for a big project like a 1,400 square foot barn – soil in piles around your property, boulders stacked and waiting – it can be hard to imagine what the finished building will look like. This building is banked into a hillside, and surrounded by a tidy boulder retaining wall, in such a way that the second story, where the common room/monitor area is, is even with the ground. This puts it on level with the homesites, making it easy for people to access the common room. The ground floor/storage spaces are most easily accessed from the driveway.
This author would be remiss not to share a few more notable tidbits about this lovely structure. The designer, our former partner Ariel Schecter, was working on a stereotomy project at the time the barn was raised, and that project was incorporated into the building. The project proved his understanding of certain geometrical concepts and precision layout and cutting abilities, and the result was a beautiful, decorative series of interlocking timbers in the ceiling of the monitor.
Also, we decided to hand raise this building with both our Montpelier and Vershire crews, as a way to celebrate the end of a great construction year, and to give our two shops a chance to work on a fun project together. Hand raisings are a blast, and imbue a building with great memories and positive associations, before they are even finished.
