Month: February 2012

As I mentioned in my January building progress update, I've been pointing the internal cracks in the mortar of the exposed masonry internal walls. We to put in two openings, one at ground and one at first floor level, from the main room of the barn into the smaller, two storey section that now houses the kitchen (on the ground floor) and a bedroom (on the first floor). These 'doorways' go through an internal wall that has been left as dressed stone on one side and was bag pointed (that is coated with a thin lime based sand render) on…

Having spent a few hours cutting out tongues (from floorboards nothing more sinister), lifting boards, rummaging around underneath them, padding and separating copper pipes with insulation, rescrewing and renailing, I discovered that in fact the easiest way to quieten down squeaky floorboards was to simply rehammer the heads of the nails that hold the boards in place. The boards had worked slightly lose over the last 30 years and a tap or two tightens them up by the half a millimetre or so needed to put them back into place.

The head torch, #1 in my favourite-tools-in-no-particular-order list. I used to think that head torches were mildly comical, rather strange things for grown men to wear. Then I started laying insulation in unlit attics and lighting fireworks in dark fields and my opinion transformed into a need to have one close to hand at all times to allow me to do mildly comical, strange things in the dark...

I suppose that I've been avoiding writing this post for quite some time, probably since not long after we started work on the barn and this blog. So, cards on the table, time to explore the dark-side(or at least some of the challenges) of barn conversions... There are a whole bunch of troubles that come with barn conversions, some that I've experienced first hand, others at a distance... PLANNING PERMISSION NB: This section is only applicable in certain parts of the country, my experience is in Carmarthenshire, other parts of the country do not have such restrictions. Some time ago…

...finishing touches... Some finishing touches were required to the cabin bed and boxing-in in the second bedroom - here it is in its pretty much completed (there's always something else I want to fiddle with to get it just right) and fully 'dressed' state. From Barn Conversion 2012 I then started work on some of the finishing touches that need to be made to the internal finishes: Cosmetic pointing: Two of the most disruptive things we did to the barn in its conversion were to put in two doorways (one each at ground and first floor level) from the main…

One of the problems with the way that this site has evolved is that I've missed some of the fundamental blocks upon which a site like this would normally be built. One of the most obvious of those is that I've never really described the barn and the conversion that we're undertaking. An email I received a few weeks back (and subsequently lost due to my over zealous spam filter) pointed this out to me and so I've attempted to address the gap and update the About page with some further details. It's been enjoyable and refreshing, reviewing the work…