This is the A-Frame Cabin Kit from The Barn Yard, it’s offered in both kit-build and turnkey variants, with the kit version coming in well under $40,000 USD – that’s quite the bargain in the kit-built cabin world.
At time like this when it seems like property prices are in a never ending upward spiral, build-it-yourself home kits like this offer an alternative – they just require some land, some tools, local permits, and maybe some friends to come help out.
This is the A-Frame Cabin Kit from The Barn Yard, it’s offered in both kit-build and turnkey variants, with the kit version coming in under $38,000 USD – that’s quite the bargain in the kit-built cabin world.
History Speedrun: The Barn Yard
The Barn Yard is a family-owned building company based out of Ellington, Connecticut. Bill Skinner and his son Everett Skinner III founded the firm in 1984, initially selling prefabricated storage sheds. Over the following 40 years, the line expanded to include barns, garages, pavilions, pool houses, cabins, barn homes, ADUs, and event barns. The company is now in its third generation of family leadership, run by brothers Everett Skinner IV, a licensed structural engineer who serves as president, with Chris Skinner, vice president.
In October of 2015, The Barn Yard scaled up its timber-frame work with a new factory in Ellington and a separately branded sister company, Great Country Timber Frames, aimed at custom timber-frame homes, commercial projects, and builder and general contractor work.
This new facility uses CNC machinery to cut mortise and tenon joinery from raw stock, with each piece hand-finished before shipping. The main visible frame relies on traditional wood joinery and oak pegs, though concealed steel plates and structural screws are used where specified, most notably at scarf joints, where steel plates and pins sit behind the pegs.
The Barn Yard has two showrooms in Ellington and Bethel, Connecticut, and they deliver fully-built structures throughout New England and New York. Timber frame kits, which include cut and finished timbers, engineer-stamped plans, oak pegs, and the structural fasteners needed to assemble the frame, ship nationwide for building by the buyer, a local crew, or The Barn Yard’s own crews or site supervisors.
Custom projects have ranged from event barns and residential guest houses to a monitor-style veterinary hospital, two 70-foot clear span octagons built to house carousels, and the 64-foot by 80-foot Copper Mule Barn, a timber frame visitor center for the Copper Mule Distillery in Hermann, Missouri. The company has also been featured on the PBS series This Old House.
At time like this when it seems like property prices are in a never ending upward spiral, build-it-yourself home kits like this offer an alternative – they just require some land, some tools, local permits, and maybe some friends to come help out.
The A-Frame Cabin
The A-Frame Cabin joined The Barn Yard’s cabin model line in May of 2025 as the first cabin the company offers fully finished for nationwide delivery. It also sells as a kit, currently listed at $37,995 USD on sale.
The cabin’s footprint measures in at 12 feet by 18 feet, or 216 square feet, with a 18-12 roof pitch that carries the exterior cladding from the ridge down to the timber sill. A 12-foot by 22-foot variant adds a second shed dormer with enough interior space for a full bathroom.
The structural frame is all post and beam, cut with mortise and tenon joinery and secured by hardwood oak pegs at the outwardly visible connections. Standard timber species is Eastern White Pine with a planed finish, and buyers can upgrade to Hemlock, Douglas Fir, or Oak at increasing cost.
The main members include a 6×8 timber sill, 4×8 rafters joined with tongue and fork joinery at the peak, and 4×4 siding nailers. All oak pegs and Timberlok structural fasteners needed to raise the frame are included in the kit, along with engineer-stamped plans. Siding nails and electrical work are excluded from the kit, and are the responsibility of the builder, as is standard in the industry.
The A-Frame Cabin joined The Barn Yard’s cabin model line in May of 2025 as the first cabin the company offers fully finished for nationwide delivery. It also sells as a kit, currently listed at $37,995 USD on sale.
The exterior siding is Thermory Ignite in a 1×6 tongue and groove profile, a thermally modified spruce cladding that mimics the look of Japanese shou sugi ban charred wood through a flame-free embossing and staining process. Thermory rates the product for 25-plus years of rot resistance.
Trim is Western Red Cedar, and the roof is 26-gauge corrugated metal laid over 1×8 kiln-dried tongue and groove pine V-groove decking. Roof and gable walls use 2.5-inch Huber ZIP System R-Sheathing, a single-panel product combining structural OSB, a taped water-resistive barrier, and rigid polyisocyanurate insulation.
The openings are all Andersen units – a 2’9″ by 6’8″ A-Series full-view patio door on one gable end and a 9-foot by 7-foot 400 Series triangle window on the other. A 7-foot shed dormer with a picture window adds headroom, and the interior fits a queen bed.
Built-in kitchenette cabinets flank the door, and the 18-inch covered porch uses Envision composite decking. Heat and cooling come from a Pioneer heat pump mini-split. On the fully finished version, an included electrical package handles the breaker panel, outlets, and interior lighting – the kit itself does not include electrical work as noted above.
The cabin’s footprint measures in at 12 feet by 18 feet, or 216 square feet, with a 18-12 roof pitch that carries the exterior cladding from the ridge down to the timber sill. A 12-foot by 22-foot variant adds a second shed dormer with enough interior space for a full bathroom.
Interior siding is 1×10 shiplap pine, and the insulated floor system runs 4×4 foundation beams, 2×4 joists at 12 inches on center, 3/4-inch rigid insulation, 3/4-inch pressure-treated plywood, and 1×8 tongue and groove pine flooring.
The A-Frame Cabin Kit is now available to buy direct from The Barn Yard’s official online store here, as noted above they do offer nationwide delivery, and at the time of writing the MSRP is $37,995 USD.
Images courtesy of The Barn Yard
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
