Oliver, definitely take JKJ's advice and read that book. As a fellow horse husband I sympathize with you My wife and I have built stalls for our two small barns, however, she's great at figuring out exactly what she wants and executing it, so I've only been there to help with the construction and not with the choice of materials... but here's my advice:

Rough cut is great, stronger and cheaper, however, we used kiln dried 2x6's just because of availability. We've always just nailed in the boards, makes it easier to replace pieces when broken/eaten through.

Some horses just love to chew (our two remind me of beavers occasionally), once you've finished with the stalls treat them with some sort of chew stop (there are clear treatments which are quite effective). It's amazing how quickly they can turn that beautiful new stall into something ugly (they will tend to eat just more than the top board...)

As hardwood mentioned rough cut is heavy, our 2x6 kiln dried stall doors are heavy enough, I can only imagine them with the extra weight. Since you're in Mass, door hardware (tracks and hangers) are available at your local Home Depot (look for Stanley hardware) or try your local feed store.

One thing to note before doing the construction, if you're considering stall bars be sure to decide on a manufacturer before starting/finishing construction. We were limited since the barn wasn't quite as big as we wanted, so we have slightly odd stall sizes which meant that we'd have to order custom bars which meant several thousand $$$.

I love tractorpoint.com, however, you may consider posting to a more equine oriented forum (and then perhaps update this thread with your findings), my wife is addicted to the Ultimate Dressage forum - very active and informative group.

Maybe I can get my wife to post, she's the one you really want to talk to

Congrats on moving your horses home! It'll save tons of money and if your wife is anything like mine, it'll make her happier to have them where she can see them all of the time.

HTH,
- Sergio

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