Wayne Kirchoff of Atlantic built a scale model of the 75 foot long by 45 foot wide hausbarn. The model is fairly accurate as to how much it looks like the real thing.

Kirchoff said he worked on building the model during his spare time over the past 3 and 1/2 months. and finished it on Wednesday, August 14, just before he took it to Manning to display.

The model is built on a scale of 3/4 inch to the foot. Even at that size, the model is quite large.
Kirchoff worked off blueprints of the hausbarn which were prepared by college students in Germany. He also used some pictures of the hausbarn which were supplied to him. At one point, he noticed that the pictures from one batch didn't match up with the pictures that he had been using. "I had to figure out which ones were right, and then I had to tear out some walls that I had put in," he said. "That was kind of frustrating, but I got it right."

Kirchoff notes that some of the rooms may have been added to the original hausbarn, and may not be rebuilt when the hausbarn gets to Manning. Since he was working off the current configuration, he put in all the rooms that were currently there.

He left the thatched roof off the model, in part to help people see what it looks like inside, but also because he didn't have enough material to make the thatched roof look like the original. He said he would continue to get the material needed for it.

He has done several other projects, but none quite so big, he said. "I've done 40 buildings, and this is by far the largest," he said. "And I've still got all the rest of them. This will be the only one I don't have."

After having made the scale model, he can attest that putting up the original haus-barn will be a large project. "It took me two and a half days to lay out the floor of the model," he said. "It takes time to figure out where everything goes."