Here is my pole barn in Upper Michigan. You will note on one of the closeups the name "Lone Oak". This is what we named our property after finding only a single large Red Oak on the entire 160 acres, which was somehow missed by loggers before we purchased the property in 1994:
Built the log cabin in 2000 and then the pole barn in 2003: After building the cabin, we never wanted to go home. We lived only 20 miles away and we started using the cabin more than we did our home. Finally, in 2003 we decided to sell the home in town and move out to the property so this is where we now hang our hats.
By 2011 we knew we needed more room so we added the lean-to, insulated the entire barn and started on the man cave inside:
Here is what it looked like as we were finishing up. It has a loft over the man cave for cold storage. The barn itself houses the farm tractor, no-till drill, snowmobile trailer and sleds, my truck, my wife's car, the Gator and ATV, etc. The majority of the implements are still parked outside but we have room for some in the lean-to as well.
The "buck pole" had moved from a tree...to the wood shed over the years but we wanted something a little more convenient as we aged. One of our camp members purchased an electric hoist and we moved it into the lean-to in 2012:
It seems there is always a lot of high level discussion going on in the man cave so it was appropriately named the "Situation Room":
It is an "L" shaped room which is 768 square feet. The long section is 12X40 with a 10' ceiling and the other portion is 12X24 with an 8' ceiling. We installed a new kitchen in the cabin a few years ago so we were able to move the old cabinets and appliances to the Sit Room. We can cook here if we want and we also finish off and bottle our maple syrup here:
We covered the concrete floor with rolled rubber flooring which you see in most of the community work out gyms. It serves us very well and is fairly easy to keep clean. I also installed an overhead track for hanging deer and other critters for skinning and processing in cold weather, and we have a stainless steel table below it.
The primary heat source is a Vermont Castings wood stove - circa 1970's but it does a great job of keeping the room warm - even too warm at times. We also installed an electric "milk house" type heater on the ceiling near the door which is thermostatically controlled to maintain some heat until we fire up the wood stove:
What would a man cave be without a reloading bench:
And a gun cleaning/shooting equipment bench:
My wife even has her own workbench for wood carving and other things. We finally added the large screen TV so we could check on football scores over cocktails as soon as we got in from our hunts.
Of course the room is loaded with photos, mounts and other trivia. The largest shoulder mounts and deer horn plaques are in the cabin but there are enough in the Situation Room to make it feel like hunting camp. Overall, I couldn't be happier.
Forgot to mention ... the original barn was 54' X 72' with 15' high walls tapered down to 11' on the west side. We added the lean-to which is 16' X 72'. We owned a large boat for our charter fishing business at the time so we built the barn big enough to house the boat. As it turned out, we always stored the boat in indoor heated storage near the marina so the boat was never stored here. We did store a large 5th wheel trailer with an A/C unit on the roof for a friend for a couple of years but other than that, we could have got by with a lower ceiling.
Let's see your pole barn & man cave
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