Barn goes from something old to something new

Barns and churches don't usually have anything in common, but one man saw the connection.

Dick Kearley, who owns FloridaSun nurseries and greenhouses, has taken the remains of University United Methodist Church, which was torn down to make way for University Corners, and turned it into a horse barn near Hawthorne.

The barn is about 90 percent complete — "we still need to build the stall fronts and complete the tack room," Kearley said — and sits on 87 acres where Kearley keeps 30 horses, about half of them caspians, a rare breed whose origins date back about 3,000 years.

The idea for a church-turned-barn came when University Methodist was being torn down and local photographer Randy Batista decided he'd like to salvage some of the church.

Batista took the gothic-style archway that served as the church's entrance with the idea of using it someday as a sculpture of sorts.

Batista asked Kearley to help him move the archway, at which point Kearley expressed a fondness for the church's architecture.

Kearley happened to be thinking about building another barn, so why not utilize some of the church to construct the barn?

"If I didn't do it, they were going to crush" the church, Kearley said.

The church's pieces took three weeks to disassemble, and the barn took six weeks of eight-hour days, five to six days a week to reconstruct, with Kearley and two co-workers working together, Kearley said.

Much of the reconstructed frame was complete by the fall of 2006.

Since then, it's been a steady but slow process toward completion.

The barn is far from a replica of the church.

"It's pretty seriously reconstructed," Kearley said.

The church had laminated gothic arched 50-feet-high beams that extended 50 feet toward the center of the sanctuary, which had to be cut to be transported, he said.

The barn's walls and ceiling are also made from wood taken from the church, he said.

Meanwhile, one of Kearley's employees, a supervisor for his nurseries, Jessie Cubero, needed a venue for his wedding and what better place than the freshly constructed church-turned-barn.

Cubero and Amber Williams were married in a ceremony in the barn Thursday evening.