MINOT — A family business went up in flames Monday but firefighters from surrounding communities kept them from spreading to the nearby home. There were no injuries.

Just before 10:30 a.m., fire crews from Minot, Mechanic Falls, Hebron, Buckfield and Auburn responded to a structure fire at Solutions by Design, a woodworking shop at 69 Mountain Road.

The fire was in the three-story barn owned by Jim and Katy Sperl, whose home was nearby. A vehicle was stored in the day-basement, with a woodworking shop on the second floor and an office on the third. All of it was destroyed.

On Monday evening, Katy Sperl walked among the smoldering debris. Among the equipment and machinery lost were Jim Sperl’s jigs, patterns and a drafting table that belonged to his grandfather, she said.

“In the back corner was a finishing room,” Katy Sperl said. “They were cleaning sprayers and, you know, it’s kind of like a chemistry experiment — it doesn’t need much. A little fumes and a spark,” was all it took to ignite the fire.

Sperl said her husband was in the house when the worker who was cleaning the guns ran out and said the barn was on fire. She said the extinguisher was in the main part of the shop that had already filled with smoke.

Another extinguisher was retrieved from the home but by then the fire had spread to the workshop and hopes of containing the fire quickly faded.

“He’s super safety conscious and he’s been doing this for 30 years,” Sperl said. “He’s always worried about sawdust — that’s his major concern (because it’s so flammable).” But all the precautions in the world, Sperl said, sometimes just isn’t enough.

Sperl said no one was hurt in the fire and even the resident barn cats made it out unharmed.

“You can replace things, you just can’t replace — his grandfather had tools,” Sperl said. Jim Sperl’s grandfather’s 1967 Bonneville was also in the shop when it burned.

Recent rain worked in the Sperls’ favor as the fire in the shop, nestled in the trees, did not spread to the woods. Several feet away, the vinyl siding on the house looked like melting ice cream.

Sperl said she does not know what’s next for the family or their business but that they are insured and will plan the next step once they’ve had time to cope.

dmcintire@sunjournal.com