Barn Reno BEFORE

WSandy McCook first purchased their rural, Ponoka, AB, property five years ago, their goals were to use it to fit up their young horses. Sandy and the couple’s daughter, Randi have shown Paint Horses for approximately 25 years, resulting in many memories and awards. These include both World and National championships and although the couple is slowing down a little bit in that regard, Sandy still craved her own, warm place to continue “dabbling” in the breeding, raising, training and showing of her beloved horses.

The property the McCook’s purchased had a house (originally built in 1928,) garage, pumphouse and shop – which they turned into a leather shop. It also had an outbuilding that was used as a barn. The barn still contained an old milking stanchion and a big loft.

sore,” explains McCook. “But also because the building itself was in relatively good condition and so by redoing it, we would prolong its life.”

At the time, they hadn’t considered renovating the inside, however they did reinforce it with a new tin roof. At this point, the McCooks had already re-done the house, garage and new leather shop, so everything was more ‘in line’ with the new look they had created for their yard.

“My husband did a lot of the work, but we also had a contractor named Ken Krause help a lot with the projects as well. Ken is now considered a friend and while he was there doing the outside of the barn, we had asked him his opinion on whether it would be possibly worth revamping the interior,” Sandy says.

“He felt like it was, so then when we got talking about it and Chuck and I felt like, maybe it was just what we needed. I don’t show anymore but still like the babies and working with the youngsters. So, we decided to go ahead with the barn reno.”

Work on the barn renovation began in July of 2022. With Krause’s help, the McCooks repurposed as much as they could from the old structure.

“It had three, home-built stall dividers in it, so when we dismantled them, we saved the lumber and reused it all to rebuild the one divider that we would need [for broodmares and foals]. The rest, we used on the walls of the new stalls and along the alley way. We actually only had to buy approximately $450 worth of new planks, as we had all the rest here,” explains Sandy.

Sandy and Chuck did a lot of the work themselves, but Krause was in charge of the main parts of the remodel. This included the exterior and the construction part of the interior.

“Ken did the reconstruction. Chuck and

I did the SoftStall™ mats, all the staining/ painting, wiring, clean-up, and demolition, etc.,” she relays.

It only took approximately three weeks to get the building reconfigured and put back together. Of course, as it was an older building, the crew did hit some snags along the way...

“We had to shore up the support beam on the ceiling. Then, as the floor was done with old railway ties and when we removed them to see what was going on, we discovered the ground underneath had given way,” tells Sandy.

The group tore it all out, filled in the holes where the ground had sunk in and poured a new cement floor for the entire barn.

The only new materials used on the project were new tin on the ceiling and upper walls on the south-side of the barn, new (to code) electrical / lighting, cement, insulation and the wood for the stalls / tack room