Guys Mills, Pa. — Working from a farm where abolitionist John Brown once lived, Gary Coburn is restoring old homes and barns to help preserve part of America's architectural history.
Coburn's specialty is saving old timber-frame houses and barns for homeowners seeking to achieve a rustic, open feel that he says can only be perfected by using the 2,000-year-old building technique.
Coburn, 45, says it's taken 10 years for him to turn a lifelong passion into a construction business from his 100-acre farm in northwestern Pennsylvania, about 25 miles south of Erie. The self-taught timber framer prides himself on giving old structures new life and salvaging features like bay windows and hand-carved staircases.
"I just loved barns the timber framing. I have good memories of being around barns," Coburn said. Among the buildings he's worked on is a post-and-beam house from 1802 that's generally believed to be the oldest home in Crawford County.
A pair of self-professed history buffs, Coburn and his wife, Donna, 43, moved to the Brown farm in 1992 after Coburn purchased it from his grandfather's estate. They opened a small museum to show Brown's life during the years 1828 to 1835, some 24 years before the abolitionist led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Va., embedding him in American history.
While the Coburns see the farm as a historical site, it's also the headquarters for The Coburn Co.
Gary Coburn said his first job involved taking down a barn at age 15. Shortly after, he was hired by the people who bought his father's farm in Illinois to help build a carriage house. From there, the calls continued to trickle in, mostly by word of mouth.
In recent years, Coburn began focusing on building a formal business rather than just doing odd jobs. He's hired four laborers and found a partner who owns construction equipment to go in on bigger jobs.
A half dozen jobs already line his calendar.
"It's a little change in business practice," he said. "The whole mindset is still saving this stuff and hopefully finding someone who will utilize it."
Rather than nailing two-by-fours in conventional platform or stud framing, timber frames involve using hewed logs so the wood is visible from the interior. The structures are usually custom made, marked by high ceilings, complex roof lines and lofty spaces.
"Besides being beautiful, it's a craft," said Tedd Benson, author of "The Timber-Frame Home: Design, Construction, Finishing."
"Part of the decoration is the structure of the building."
Between 3,000 and 5,000 timber frame buildings go up each year, and just a fraction of those use antique frames, Benson said. Of course, that still means timber frames barely account for the 1.6 million homes constructed in America last year, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Coburn says his clients are often architectural enthusiasts. Many have emotional ties to the structures.
Kurt Kolaja, a documentary filmmaker in Chestertown, Md., hired Coburn to help save his grandfather's barn last year after his family sold his farm in Spartansburg, not far from Coburn's farm.
Coburn estimates he's disassembled about 60 barns during the past 30 years. While he prefers to restore buildings at their original site, he follows a mix and match philosophy, saving parts of old homes like windows, doors and porches for use in other restoration projects.
Donna Coburn says her husband has always worked tirelessly to preserve a piece of history.
"We're not in it to be millionaires," she said. "We're in it to save old timber houses to find a home for these places."
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