The Silo Renovation

Mar 1

The Silo Renovation was one of our toughest and most innovative projects we have done so far. But this was not the first silo we renovated. When we were in high school, we renovated a fieldstone silo that was in our backyard into a bedroom and lounging space. Jake actually lived in the silo for about 6 years while attending high school and college. This was a learning experience for us because we did not have much carpentry experience at the time, and a silo was not meant to be lived in, so it felt like every aspect of it was fighting against us. We learned how to get creative and find solutions, and these sometimes took us several years down the road to figure out. But we felt it was all in preparation for our next silo renovation, which was on our brother’s property down the road!

The design possibilities are almost endless for these silos, but they will mainly revolve around what the silo’s intended purpose is. We are located in Wisconsin, so a bar and a good time go hand-in-hand. We felt the base of the silo would make a great speakeasy vibe for a bar. For the second level, we wanted it to be a nice lounge area to come in from the upper patio space. We went with a high ceiling on the second floor because we wanted the space to feel open as much as possible with the silo being 14’ in diameter and the only daylight comes from the ladder shoot down the side of the silo. The best floor to design on the silo was the top floor, which required a new roof, so we decided to incorporate wrap-around windows and seating to enjoy the beautiful farmland and skylines. One important design aspect is how each level will be accessible, and in the first silo we renovated, it was one long ladder to get to every floor, but that was not very safe, so we decided to switch it up on this silo. Because space was limited inside the silo, a staircase was only feasible if we added on to the outside with a side structure. We did not want this side structure to infringe on the charm of the silo itself, so we decided to only have it go up two stories, which would incorporate a spiral staircase, and then the top floor would be accessible by a ladder. The last portion of the silo to design was the patio space, which we wanted to be as large as possible to incorporate our big family and have a nice fire pit to gather around. We often got asked why plumbing and a bathroom were not incorporated, but that all came down to the budget, which would have required a well and septic system to be installed, and that is very costly. We felt it could always be an option down the road by adding another small side structure or building it in the barn next to the silo.
This silo had been neglected for several years, so it required a significant amount of clean-up and masonry work. There was even a small tree that took root in the middle of it that we had to cut down. We got a lot of ridicule for not trying to incorporate it into the design or transplanting it. We couldn’t find a feasible way to work it into the design of the silo, which would allow it to survive and continue to grow, and this would have also risked ruining the foundation of the silo from its roots. Transplanting also was not an option because many of its roots were already grown into the foundation, so it would not have survived being relocated. The masonry was in much worse condition than we originally thought, especially after we got the lift on-site to work on the upper portion. In some areas, there were massive rocks missing from the wall. We don’t do much masonry work, but our dad and some brothers are masons by trade, so they gave us some tips on the proper mixture and color to match the original mortar. They also gave us pointers on different techniques, but it required a little bit of practice before we got the hang of it. It took us about 3 months alone just to repair all the masonry on the silo and retaining wall, which was one of the most time-consuming portions of this project, but we managed to get it all completed before winter rolled in. Once the masonry work was completed, the silo was ready for construction.
We decided to focus on the roof of the silo first so we could get it enclosed and keep the elements from the inside when we start building the floors. We wanted the roof to be a work of art and one of the focal points of the entire silo but also still have a rustic appearance that matches the silo. That was achieved by going with a timber frame style and rough-sawn lumber. Designing the roof in detail required a bit of time to layout the exact dimensions, but we knew we wanted an octagon shape to accommodate eight large windows. We then used Shaper 3D software to layout all the necessary timbers and their dimensions. As soon as we had a list of all the needed items for the roof, we got started right away milling the lumber on our sawmill so that we could get it in the kiln to start drying, which took several months while we were working on the masonry. The timing worked out quite well because once the lumber was dry, we had finished the masonry, and winter was rolling in. Our goal for the roof was to have all the lumber precut and test-fitted before we assembled it on top of the silo. We did consider building it on the ground and having it craned on top, but we were concerned about the size and weight of the roof and no good way of lifting it safely. So we precut all the mortises and tenons for the beams in our woodshop and dry-fitted the entire roof in our pole barn using ratchet straps. It was quite exhausting handling the heavy beams, and we had to assemble and disassemble the roof several times to make adjustments on the cuts, mostly because all the lumber was rough-sawn, so the dimensions vary slightly and they are not perfectly square nor straight. After about 2-3 months, we had completed all the components for the roof, but before we could assemble it on top of the silo, we had to build the top floor so we had a solid surface to work on. Construction of the floors is mentioned in detail below. The assembly of the roof required all hands on deck, so we called in some additional brothers to help out and even got a second lift on-site. The most difficult part of the assembly was getting the lower portion of the roof set in place and properly leveled and centered. The silo is not a perfect circle nor flat on the top, so it required a significant amount of shimming and a bit of arguing, but we eventually found a good, happy medium around 1 a.m. in the morning. The goal for the next day was to set all the rafters and king beam in place. Aside from the bitter cold, which was numbing our hands and face, it all went together quite well with no roadblocks. After all the rafters were set, we used ratchet straps to hold everything together until we were able to place the dowels and ledger bolts. Precutting all the 1“ sheathing boards, foam, and metal roofing made installing the rest of the roof quite simple. It only took 4 days to fully assemble the roof on the silo, and once it was all complete, the last step was anchoring it by drilling 12” deep holes into the silo through the base of the roof structure and epoxying 3/4” stainless steel threaded rods into the holes, where a washer and nut were then threaded onto after it had dried. Now that the silo had a roof, we were able to start building the remaining floors.
The very bottom floor, we poured concrete and did a slate stamp pattern. This made a great surface to set a scissors lift on to help build the upper floors. Prior to pouring the concrete, we ran conduit into the barn next to the silo so we could run electrical and gas lines later on. We designed the second and third floor to have an opening in the very center for two reasons: 1 - It would allow the heat to rise from the lower floor to the top floor from natural convection. 2 - We wanted a way to send drinks from the bottom bar to the upper levels using a winch system which was meant to carry a tray for beverages between all the floors. To mount the joists, we used joist hangers and anchored them directly into the silo walls using stainless steel tapcons. A large issue we ran into was drilling into the granite fieldstones which would often melt or snap our diamond-tipped masonry drill bits. In total, we burnt through about 25 of these drill bits and probably snapped 50 tapcons throughout the silo project. 2x8 joists and 3/4” plywood were the main construction material and after blocking was placed every 16” between the 16” spaced joists, the floors were very solid. String pendulums were used to ensure the openings in the floors lined up perfectly. To match the old look, we found some old barn boards for the ceilings and tongue-and-groove floorboards to finish off the 2nd and 3rd floors.
The entryway addition was a new aspect to this silo that we were excited to build. While digging for footings, we actually ran into the original barn footings that must have been torn down many years ago, so we utilized those and poured the concrete slab directly on top of these footings. This provided a solid base for our large timbers that we mortised and tenoned together. We decided to notch the roof rafters directly into the silo because the curvature would not allow any good method to mount brackets or hangers. The silo had very limited natural light, so we wanted to incorporate as many windows as we could into the entryway. This entry would allow us to have a separate entrance that leads to our patio space. The main component for this entryway is the spiral staircase that goes between the first and second floors. We had a very limited space to work with that confined how large the staircase could be. After looking at several metal staircase kits, we felt none of them fit our design style, and the quality seemed lacking for the prices. So we decided to try designing and building our own wood staircase because carpentry was our specialty. We did some searching online and eventually came across some very cool timber spiral staircases on Pinterest that we liked a lot. We had the sawmill and logs needed, so we drew up some sketches and determined a good size timber to use to reach the proper height and also created enough step depth to meet the code. Once we milled up all the timbers from a very large maple tree that was locally sourced from an arborist, we began the long drying process inside our kiln. Monitoring the moisture of these beams is quite difficult because the longest moisture reading pins we have go 2” deep, so we were “guesstimating” the moisture at 4” deep. Once we had a good feeling the beams were 90% dry, we pulled them out of the kiln to start sawing them to length using our large 16” circular saw. After they dried, they had some large splits which disfigure the beams and made them un-square and twisted. Unfortunately, they were too large to send through our jointer and planer, so we had to use a set of hand planers, some levels, and framing squares to manually square them up. To stabilize the splits, we used black walnut bowties, which was a relatively quick process when using the SlabStitcher templates. The assembling of the spiral stacked beams was based on drilling a 1” hole 6” in from the end of the beam that we would send a threaded rod through and epoxy into the concrete, and this would act as the pivot point for all the steps. We would also add ledger bolts to connect each step to the one below it as well, but we dry-fitted the staircase a couple of times to make sure we had the exact placement for each step. This was a quite dangerous process because it was like a tippy Jenga pile towards the top, and any wrong move could cause hundreds of pounds of blocks to tumble on top of us. We took some precautions protecting the windows with plywood and using support sticks, but we were still sweating. The final assembly was a smooth process after doing a couple of test fittings and making some final adjustments. Two features of the stairs we received a lot of feedback on were not receding the threaded nut into the wood step, but we wanted to have it easily accessible to make adjustments to the tension during the different seasons because the wood will expand and contract depending on the moisture in the air. We were also told we should have put a proper landing at the top, but with how bulky these steps were, any landing would have impeded on the headroom while walking up the stairs. Although it does look unnatural on video, it actually feels very normal using the 2nd floor as the landing and stepping directly on the second step down. The railings proved to be difficult to build because we were not sure how well we could build a curved railing out of wood, so we decided to roll the dice and bend up some rebar to match the curve of the stairs and mount them to wood posts. This took a lot of muscle and trial and error, but for our first time, I think we did very well considering the tools we used, which mainly consisted of a farm tractor. In the end, we found the spiral staircase to be one of the most fun aspects of the silo to design and build.
The Silo is surrounded by a changing elevation, so we wanted to utilize the upper elevation, which is next to an old barn and garage. This would allow us to place a second access door to the silo on the second level. Our family is quite large, so we wanted to make this space as large as possible because we love the outdoors and enjoying the scenic pastures and farm fields. Ideally, we would have liked to have done pavers or bricks, but our climate can often take a toll on these during the freezing and thawing in winter. We ended up going with stamped concrete for the low maintenance and durability. We also ran gas and electrical lines prior to pouring for a gas fire pit and exterior lights. We have a large 19’ cottonwood picnic table built and lots of seating to accommodate our growing family. We do not do much concrete work, so pouring a slab this large was a bit of a task, especially because stamping is a time-sensitive process, which is limited by our manpower on hand. It did not turn out perfect, but with the stamp pattern we used, it is hard to spot the imperfections, especially after all the furniture is set in place. Overall, the end result turned out very nice, especially the landscape lighting, but we are excited to see what we can do to add on to this entertaining space in the future. If anyone has some creative or interesting ideas, let us know!
All of the furnishings had to be custom because of the size limitations to get them inside, and we also wanted to work around the curvature of the silo to utilize the space as efficiently as possible. The bar on the bottom, we built a full-length bar top that was cut perfectly around the mortar and stone on each side. All the floorboards and ceilingboards for each level were custom cut and scribed around the silo mortar. We also wanted a natural flame to heat the silo in the colder months, so we installed a gas stove on the bottom level, which required some work to drill through 24” of stone and mortar. We loved how well it turned out so much so that we opted to install a case fireplace on the second floor, which required drilling another hole through the silo. We decided to take on our own upholstery to build custom cushions around the curvature of the silo. This turned out much better than anticipated and allowed us to get maximum seating on the second and third floors. They turned out very comfortable as well, using 6” upholstery foam. The end tables had to be custom-made as well to allow an opening in the center for the tray to go up and down between the levels. The custom furniture definitely gives the silo a distinctive look and cozy feel rather than standard furniture and tables.

Overview: