Year: 2011

Update on building progress during May 2011…

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…

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…

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…

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

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…

Nearly there – TV aerial to move, a couple of patches of pointing to complete, drainage to tidy up, roof-line to fill and point and Juliet balcony to install then – DONE! (I like the jaunty angle of this photograph) From Barn Conversion 2011 Quite a change from before already: From Before

Update on building progress during April 2011…

I’ve spent countless hours over the last few weeks digging out stones… From Barn Conversion 2011 …and roots and weeds… From Barn Conversion 2011 …to give a my new lawn a chance of being green and luscious… From Barn Conversion 2011 Grass seed and fertiliser went down last Saturday and it’s rained plenty since then…

I’ve often been accused of never finishing things that I start – I’m not a completer-finisher my wife tells me. So I was particularly pleased to read number 7 of the ‘Makers Rules’ published recently on Wondermark.com. PROJECTS ARE STACKABLE. It’s not that I’m starting something new before finishing something old – I’m nesting the…

With a small patch of woodland containing mainly young ash trees, a patch of willow around the pond and plenty of hedges I’ve long been interested in the potential for burning ‘home-grown’ biomass, from chips, through twigs to logs. So I thought a review of the domestic biomass boiler options was in order… There are…

Since spending far too long for my wife’s liking queuing for fresh pizza from a small portable clay pizza oven at the Abergavenny food festival, I’ve fancied one of my own. The Eden Project sell one for £600 and apparently Jamie Oliver tries to flog one for over £3000, but you can build one from…