When Tammie Imel tells people she lives in a barn, she’s never quite sure of the response she’ll get.

Sometimes, someone will ask why in the world she’d even want to live there. Other times, people have joked that she and her husband, Brian, will be long retired before they ever finish converting the former working dairy barn outside Markle they bought in 1995 into their family’s living space.

Still others ask the obvious: What did they do about that stuff that comes out of the aft end of a cow?

“It was a working barn, but fortunately, it had not been used for a while. … So we didn’t have to deal with anything like that,” Imel, 52, says. “Honestly, it had no smell. It didn’t smell bad like a barn.”

And that, she swears, is the straight, um, poop.

Seeing possibilities

Imel, who works with her husband in an auction business, says living in a barn was the last thing on her mind when her husband, 53, found out the structure next to the farmhouse in which they were living at the time was going up for sale.

Sure, the farmhouse was getting a little cramped, what with their two growing children, she says, but she had just redecorated it and wasn’t too sure she was up for any more remodeling.

But he prevailed, seeing a solidly built structure with a ton of space inside. Because the property’s original barn had burned in the late 1940s, Imel says, the couple was actually buying one of the more modern wooden barns in Wells County.

Brian Imel could see that, by pouring a concrete slab, installing drywall and cutting holes for new windows and doors, the structure could become a suitable shell for a home with all the modern conveniences – and he was handy enough with plumbing and electrical work to do a lot himself.

“Basically, we were able to build out from the inside,” Tammie Imel says.

“Brian and I were, are, always very visionary. We could see it. He could tell where everything could go, and I could see that this is the kitchen and this is where we’re going to put the island, and the bathroom goes here.”

The work took about 2 1/2 years to get started, and about 18 months to finish. The family moved in just before Christmas in 1998. Today, the barn is a showpiece of architectural and decorating ingenuity.

Old over new

Imel, who’s in the process of redecorating the barn’s first floor, calls her style a mixture of contemporary country and shabby chic. She’s repurposed a number of items she’s found at auctions and garage sales and uses old farm implements as objets d’art.

An old hog scale fills a corner of the dining room – turned around so the back of its wooden box fronts the room; Imel likes to point out the piggy weight calculations scribbled on the side in pencil.

An end table in the sunroom – the only add-on to the original structure, which maintains its silo, red siding and green roof – used to be part of the equipment in a creamery. A metal sign in a den/TV room advertises Hoosier hybrid corn, posted above a nearly 12-foot long, 4-foot-high multi-drawer oak credenza that had been used in a pharmacy.

Brian Imel reused old woodwork salvaged from the rectory of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Fort Wayne for the dining room, and white-painted cabinets in the sunroom came from Fort Wayne’s Scottish Rite building.

“With Brian and me working at auctions, we’re always looking … I am always on the lookout for things I can get and recycle. I always prefer something old over something new,” Tammie Imel says.

“We’ve pulled in a lot of farm-type things, like corn shellers and grain seeders and picks and rakes and forks, implements that you’d use on a farm (for décor purposes). … And I’m always updating rooms and changing things out.”

The first floor’s interior color scheme is crisp cream and black with red accents. a reddish leather sofa that anchors the den, which was carved from the area that once held cow stalls. The den utilizes one of the few interior walls in the barn.

A colorful exception is in the former milk house, which the Imels have turned into a sitting room off their master suite. Decorated with antique white wicker furniture, it features greens and yellow and pinks, and Imel says she designed it as a playroom for future grandchildren.

The couple’s children, now grown, took over the second story as their living quarters. An open staircase just off the center-front entry leads to a loft-like sitting area.

A family room and two bedrooms are on one end of the barn, and at the other end there’s a large room with a one-hoop basketball court where the kids entertained friends; now, the space is mostly used for storage.

Feeling at home

Imel says her next big project is converting a granary building on the property into a guest house. Her husband had it moved in two pieces from one spot on their property to another, she says, and while its exterior is finished, the interior is still only roughed out.

Now that she’s spent 15 years living comfortably in a barn, Imel says she’s looking forward to the next 15.

“People come to our house and say they always wanted to do what we did. They say, ‘That’s always been my dream, to convert an old barn.’ But believe me, that had never been something I ever wanted to do,” she says.

But, she adds, “I don’t think we’ll ever leave.”

rsalter@jg.net