The Town of Okotoks has enlisted a local company to preserve a piece of local history.

The barn and original homestead in D'Arcy are in the process of being disassembled, but its parts will live on.

After assessing the state of the structures, the town decided the buildings, which have stood for over 100 years, had to come down due to their state of disrepair.

Mayor Tanya Thorn says other options were considered, but they'd come with a hefty price tag.

"We looked at preserving the whole site, both the barn and the house. Council did look at that back in August or July of this past year, but the state of disrepair that those buildings were in just because of abandonment, they've been unattended for about five years now, the cost to the municipality for us to get them to a contemporary standard was about three-quarters of a million dollars, just under that, 700,000 I think was the estimate. And that was just the estimate, anybody that's done renovations knows that once you start pulling things apart, the number seems to climb."

They enlisted local company Two Birds Furniture to reclaim as much brick and wood material as possible, to be used for a new building later down the line.

Two Birds specializes in reclaiming old barns and other structures and repurposing them into furniture and accent pieces.

Co-owner and operator of Two Birds, Clint Pigeon, says the materials themselves do represent some decent value for the town.

"It's all going to be in board-feet based on what we pull out of there. Same with the bricks, we pulled a bunch of bricks off of the house, it'll be a per-brick value. The value will go up depending on what it gets reused for. So you start with your value per raw unit of lumber, and you're going to get more value as it's converted into a valuable product."

A work-in-progress shot, courtesy of Two Birds.

He says he and his team were also uncovering damage and rot that were likely to boost the price tag, had the town taken the restoration route.

While Two Birds produces rustic accent pieces like flooring, doors, and ceiling beams, a lot of the salvaged material from the homestead will hold structural value.

"More of this material will be used in the structural sense... the way this barn was built, it was built timber-framed. There's actually more value than we initially saw once we started pulling it apart," says Pigeon.

They've been able to reclaim an estimated 70 per cent of the materials from the structures.

Pigeon has also been learning of the buildings' long history and is glad to be involved in the next chapter of their story.

"It used to be a thoroughbred racing track, from what I know, before they built the golf course and all that, there were more barns over by the golf course. I believe up until '89, someone told me, there used to be a thoroughbred racing or breeding program in that area. It's kind of neat that it'll come full circle and hopefully we'll have a big community centre or something up there that everyone can use."

The company has labelled all of the materials to signify where they came from in the original buildings, and they're being stored by the town until it's decided what they'll be used for.

Two Birds has been documenting the process with pictures and an upcoming video that can be found on their Facebook page.

 

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