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The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article about Board and Beam.
KENT — An old apple-processing barn in Chelmsford, Mass., doomed to come down to make way for a subdivision, held a surprise beneath its well-worn floorboards.Matt Franjola of New Preston helped remove the 1850 structure in return for building materials from the sill down, including 110 linear feet of square-cut stones in the barn's foundation. But he wasn't counting on the elaborately carved square grand piano, sitting uncovered in the barn's cold storage where apples once awaited pressing into cider and juice.
Most old barns hold secrets, forgotten remnants of generations long past, and Franjola often stumbles across them. He deals in the building materials of a bygone era, recycling wood and stone from 18th and 19th century barns to build the barns of the 21st century. Today's barns, of course, are more likely to shelter expensive cars and house guests than cows or chickens.
It's a trade that puts Franjola, 62, in the contradictory position of both preserving the past and aiding in its destruction. It's a sensitive topic in rural towns threatened by development, especially because of the sentimental attachment people have to landmark barns. They are such threatened structures the Smithsonian has a national traveling exhibit, currently in Kent, devoted entirely to barns that have been lost. The Kent show has been drawing visitors not only from across New England but across the nation.
Franjola argues the barns are coming down with or without him.
"I'd have to say for the most part there's no longer any use to them," he said. "Maybe (the barn) has deteriorated and needs a new roof for $25,000 (the owners) don't want to spend. Maybe they sold the herd and don't need it any more."
Franjola finds most of his barns within a 300-mile radius of Kent by running ads in local newspapers, and in Traditional Building magazine, a Brooklyn-based publication for contractors who are restoring old buildings or building new ones in the traditional style.
"Most of the time, people contact me," he said. "They see my ads one place or another."
These days, the apple barn piano is stashed in the dusky recesses of a run-down industrial building on the outskirts of Kent where Franjola runs his business, Board and Beam Co.