Month: June 2011

  • Repointing – done!

    It is with a mixed sense of delight (at having no more pointing to do) and dismay (at having no more pointing to do) that I can report that I’ve completed repointing the barn. There’s still work to be done on pointing the garden walls and the arches over the original windows and doors still…

  • Step 12 = heating – space and water

    What are your input systems? Oh the headaches this one has caused me… The first thing to determine is which is your over-riding goal – keeping costs down or be ‘green’? With mains gas still the cheapest option (at least in the short term) a modern gas boiler is probably still the best choice if…

  • Building Progress ~ May 2011

    Update on building progress during May 2011…

  • Eaves

    One of my last major tasks during this phase of work on the barn is to box in the gap under the eaves. The eaves had been left open and were a haven to birds, who had nested in the roof, being able to easily hop in an out through the ‘porch’ formed by the…

  • It works….

    Sometimes the simplest of words say the most… …If it looks like it works and it feels like it works then it works… (From the song ‘wow’ on the Snow Patrol album Final Straw) Might seem bloody obvious to you, but this phrase says a lot to me. …or as Steve Jobs put it… It’s…

  • Hole in the wall

    At the risk of turning this into some kind of badly shot photo-blog, here’s another recent picture from the barn. I think this picture amply illustrates the thickness of the walls – it’s probably about four feet from the internal to the external surface. From Barn Conversion 2011 The reason for making this mess was…

  • The green, green grass…

    From a barren waste a grassy knoll appears… From Barn Conversion 2011

  • Steps and stuff

    With lots of work going on outside I’ve been taking a particular interest in gardens and all things garden related. Here are some pictures that I took during a recent visit to Aberglasney gardens (the gardens are just a few miles away from the barn). From Travel Neat and tidy, I like the two diverging…