(gentle music) - [Jeremiah] This is how ugly the stuff looked.

But then they turn into something like that.

This was dairy barn in Cross Plains, Wisconsin.

These are oak barn beams that are 150 years old and it's gonna be a dining room table for a guy in Mukwonago.

(gentle music) One night just looking on the Internet, I saw a picture of this American flag made out of barn wood, and I just, I just had to have it.

And I thought, Well, it can't be that hard to make.

So I drove around the countryside looking for barns.

I needed a gray barn and a white barn and a red barn.

And I found those three colors.

(gentle music) I don't have any training.

I didn't have any schooling on any of this.

I didn't have a mentor.

My friend taught me how to weld for a few hours once.

But after that it's just making mistakes and yeah, I guess you learn faster from the mistakes.

There's about a half a barn here.

Usually a barn is, you know, 10, 20 tons worth of material.

And it takes about 350 hours to take one down.

Starting with the shingles and then the roofing boards and then the siding and the framing and even the nails.

I save all the nails and put it on a trailer.

I try to use every bit of it.

(gentle music) The majority of what I do is barn wood.

For one, it's, this is Wisconsin, it's what we have.

And the stories behind this material is, run pretty deep.

I've had people from England and New Zealand call me and say, "Oh my gosh.

That was that was my great uncle so-and-so's barn.

And I saw this on the Internet."

(gentle music) This is the original City of Madison flag.

I think I'm sharing history.

I think a lot of this material, well, I mean it would just go in a landfill if I wasn't using it.

Then it's a whole nother thing when you can save the stories as well.

I picked up a bag of litter on a trip.

So all the litter represents where the national parks are in lower 48.

If I can save more than a few other people, then it makes up for the people that maybe aren't recycling and I feel like I can impact a little more than the average household.

(gentle music) I don't know what it's like to live in some other states that aren't that cool, but our state's awesome and people love it.

So it's cool that I'm kinda just showing people what we already have.

Redoing it a different way.

(gentle music) - Hi, I'm Traci Neuman.

- And I'm Brian Ewig and we're the producers of My Wisconsin Backyard.

- You can watch more of our stories and other great local stories.

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