DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Daniel "Dano" Goodrich sells barn plans via the Internet. Behind him and below is his home, a showcase of his designs.

Room to roost

Marketing his plans for barn
residences online lets a Waimanalo
man make hay rain or shine

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By Nadine Kam
nkam@starbulletin.com

There're no cows, horses or goats on the Goodrich spread in Waimanalo. No ducks or chickens either. Nope. Nothin' but a couple of humans and a couple of pooches, both sets of critters in their respective barns.

"Why? I always loved barns," said Daniel "Dano" Goodrich. "I grew up in Northern California, and they were all over the place."

He loved the massive size of the structures and the dual-pitched gables of the gambrel roof, also associated with Dutch Colonial, Colonial Revival and Georgian architecture.

As he tells the story on his Web site, www.barnplans.com: "I'd see a really nice-looking one and wonder, as a boy, Why would the people want to live in that crummy little house instead of that great big beautiful barn? ... Well, I've grown up since then. ... NOT!!"

Goodrich isn't the only one who ever wanted to live in a barn. He built his first barn residence in 1977 in Napa Valley, "and within six months I'd sold plans to perfect strangers who'd drive up to ask about it," he said.

DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Goodrich's home, a showcase of his designs.

In Napa he did carpentry, drove trucks, raced cars, worked as a heavy-equipment operator and even produced his own barbecue "Q" sauce for sale in the Bay area - in short, he tried just about everything but tending to barnyard animals.

He came to Hawaii on April Fool's Day 1991 and started Windward Renovators, creating custom kitchens and bathrooms. He later met his wife, Ermie, and the two settled into a small house in Waimanalo.

Well, 568 square feet of living space can make a person who loves living large feel claustrophobic, so, in renovating his home, Goodrich decided once again to supersize the homestead and put up a barn.

"It cost me $1,800 in engineering fees and $400 for permits. Before I even started building, I had more than $2,000 wrapped up in fees, but I had these plans, and I wanted to figure out how to recoup some money," Goodrich said.

Help came in the form of a neighbor, Cory Meredith, whom Goodrich describes as "a brilliant computer guy."

"At the same time, my wife bought me a computer. At first I was afraid of it, but I asked Cory about setting up a Web site to sell my barn plans online. He said, 'You're crazy. Nobody's gonna to want to buy barn plans on the Internet.' But I believed in it. I did my homework, and I found there's not much like this out there."

DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM In the upper floor bedroom of Goodrich's barn house, the walls slant inward, following the slope of the gambrel roof.

In 1998, the year he put up the Web site, he sold 81 plans. The number has increased every year since then. This year, he's expecting to sell 600 to 700 plans (exterior shell only), which range from $35 for a cupola or doggie barn, or $150 for a 16-by-24-foot gambrel barn house, to $235 for a 36-by-60 foot gambrel barn house. Different sizes can be combined to increase living space.

Maps of the world hanging in Goodrich's second-floor office pinpoint his success in blanketing the globe with barns. Colored pins stuck into the maps represent sales in all 50 states, with large clusters in Vermont, Northern California and Washington, and in every province in Canada, plus Japan, New Zealand, Europe, South America and the Caribbean.

He's sold about a dozen plans locally, mostly on Maui and the Big Island.

For the longest time, though, he could not make a sale in South Dakota, and after a year of looking at the empty spot on the map, he finally made an offer.

"I put a note up on my Web site, 'Hey, South Dakota, what's up? Here's the deal: The first person who buys a barn plan from me gets a set of cupola plans free.'

"A woman living in Montana four miles from South Dakota asked if she qualified for the free plans, saying, 'You can move the pin if you want to.'"

TWO YEARS AGO, Goodrich was able to leave the contracting business behind to concentrate on his Web site full time, coaching do-it-yourselfers over the phone and online.

"Everybody needs a gimmick, and for me the gimmick is the engineered truss," he said of his barn roof, designed to transfer lateral forces downward onto its side walls. This means interior walls are non-load-bearing, giving home owners the freedom to create any floor plan.

"You can almost see the light bulb going on in peoples' heads." Goodrich said. "One guy said, 'You mean I can put wheels on the walls and change (the floor plan) every week?'

"Well, yeah."

Gambrel roofs are not the most practical when it comes to utilizing second-story space, but Goodrich's design maximizes what space there is to be used as small bedrooms or offices, though air conditioning is a must.

WWW.BARNPLANS.COM Harley, pictured, claims ownership of this doggie barn but he sublets to Daniel "Dano" Goodrich's other poi dog, Hoku.

For those worried about the barns' sturdiness, the plans have been engineered to comply with California's strict earthquake codes, as well as 80 mph winds and a 50-pound snow load.

He claims that DIYers on the mainland have been able to put up the building shell for $10 per square foot in material costs, but the unskilled will have to consider the costs of labor, electrical wiring, plumbing and finishing the interior.

Nevertheless, in a place where termites can reduce homes to a box as brittle as a wheat cracker in a few decades, a barn might be a practical option for homeowners in search of no-fuss shelter.

Yet, no matter how simple the plans, some people can't help but fuss. Just as Winchester Rifle heiress Sarah Winchester kept working on her Victorian mansion for more than 38 years in an attempt to cheat death by continuing to build - resulting in strange staircases going nowhere and doors that open to blank walls - Goodrich's home has been the guinea pig for new plans for garage-size barns, sheds and lanais.

"My neighbors love it," he said, as his home has grown to 2,740 square feet. "They're watching their property value increase, too. But I think I have to stop. People here are starting to call me Mr. Winchester."

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