Rob Gamache reported this story on assignment from the Bradford Journal Opinion. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
Meet the Pettyboro and the Old Scott barns — once modest homes for farm animals that can, their owners hope, serve as settings for love stories and laughter.
The two old barns — the former in Bath, New Hampshire, the latter in West Groton — have undergone sawdust-sprinkled transformations in recent years from creaky rundown structures to rustic venues well-suited for merrymaking.
Couple Lisa and Rob McHugh had always admired the Pettyboro Barn, built in 1816 and owned for decades by Rob’s parents, who’d bought it in 1968 from a family that had lived there three generations. The parents had wanted to open a livestock farm but logistics didn’t work out, so they used it as a vacation home instead. But over the years, said Lisa, “it just deteriorated.”
She and her husband knew they would want to buy the property if her in-laws ever wanted to sell it — she felt it could be something more, she said. Rob’s father, Robert McHugh Sr., grew ill around 2010 and began selling parcels of the property, she said, and between 2020 and 2022 Lisa and Rob bought the barn and the farmhouse across from it.
“When you see the pictures of what it used to look like, it was falling down,” she recalled recently, yet her vision was clear — a future where the barn could once again be a cornerstone for people to gather around.
The couple has spent two summers working on the repair so far and plan to keep at it this summer. First they patched up holes on the building’s exterior, then painted it — using over 94 gallons to coat the whole barn, Lisa said.
This summer they plan to tackle the inside.
Neighbors rallied around the effort, Lisa said, admiring the barn’s pivot from a fading structure into a lively gathering space. “People would drive by every day and see us back and forth with buckets and boots, and they would stop and say, ‘You guys, this looks fantastic. This is just great what you’re doing,'” she said.
Lisa’s motivation extended further than repair; she saw the barn as an intimate wedding setting, drawing on her late mother-in-law’s legacy of creating floral arrangements.
The family is still restoring the property but plans to open it by 2025. Her idea is to create a space for “micro-weddings,” or intimate and relatively inexpensive celebrations. “I made it affordable,” she said.
The couple is looking to be open from May to October in 2025 and hope to host up to 50 weddings that inaugural season. The venue could also host vow renewals, memorial services and other events.
Just over the state line in West Groton, the Old Scott Barn tells a similar tale of resurrection steered by Martin Klein. He isn’t completely sure on the details but believes it was built in the mid-1800s and had once been part of a small dairy farm.
He bought the barn in 2014 and two years later began renovating it. The passage of time was the main driver in the building’s deterioration, he said.
“There were trees growing next to it, so I cut those down when I first got here,” he said in a recent interview. “Then it looked like crap because it had this old rotten particle board on the side of it, so I scraped that off next. Then it was a lot of structural work, then re-siding the exterior and replacing the windows, and then I painted the whole thing.”
The two-year construction process involved significant structural work completed by Groton Timberworks, replacing the truss, posts, frames — you name it. “The barn was leaning over,” Klein said, demonstrating with his arm at an angle. “We pulled it straight and tied everything together. It should be good for another 100 years.”
Along with Groton Timberworks helping, he contacted a couple other expert neighbors for help with the exterior siding, window replacements and interior renovations like flooring. “I didn’t do any of the heavy lifting, but I will say I put on 97 gallons personally of stain and paint,” he said.
His approach to restoration brought volunteers from around the globe, including those in partnerships with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a collection of farm stay networks. “I love doing it because there have been so many good memories made here and just so many happy faces; I love it — that’s the best part of it,” he said of the process.
From the outset, Klein was determined to respect the barn’s original 1800s architecture while updating it for contemporary use. “I’m just trying to keep it original,” he said.
He wanted to preserve the barn’s rustic appeal and equip it with modern features. The downstairs lounge and bar area of the venue, for instance, features lumber sourced from the surrounding land, tying the renovation back to its local roots. There’s a dance floor made from Finnish spruce. He installed a stereo system around the lounge room. He’s also got a projector setup with a drop-down screen to watch movies. He enjoys having his friends and neighbors come up for a drink and music.
Klein said he made sure not to gut the building completely, pointing to the bar. “Before there was a full row of stanchions (for the cattle), but I cut a few of them out in the middle to build the bar,” he said.
The pandemic has made growth slow over the five or so years his venue has been open. Ceremonies have mostly been for local folks, maxing out at 150 attendees. But he’s got a good feeling about the future. “I feel like this year coming up now will be the first really normal year, and it’s sort of going gangbusters,” he said.
It’s easy to see the appeal, for the Old Scott and the Pettyboro alike. Novelty isn’t always about what’s new. Sometimes it’s about repurposing the old. And that might just make the experience all the more fun — knowing there’s a good chance the floor you’re dancing on once had a very different kind of hoof tapping going on.