My Barn Conversion … musings in small-house, off-grid, architecture, design with smatterings of art, history and literature

As I’ve already mentioned I bought a chandelier from Scavengers. It looked great on the web: My Chandelier Not too fancy (if that can be said of any chandelier and I think I’m having second thoughts on that one), classy (well I thought it was when I bought it) and in pretty good condition. When…

I wrote about the Lammas ecovillage back at the start of the year. At the time, I aired my feelings of ethical support, but real-world unease. Now things have moved on and the development has been granted planning permission not by local planners, but in an act of centralised government colonialism, by the Welsh Assembly…

From, often painful and time consuming experience, whilst not claiming to any kind of authority, I suggest the following sequence to tiling (others may have differing guidelines): Tiling Tips Get a level consistent floor. (More below…) [optionally] Skip this step if using glazed tiles. Seal / stain-guard tiles. If expecting a really messy job, or…

Having dabbled in all sorts of areas of building and do-it-yourself that I really have should left alone, I thought I’d record (should I ever dabble in these areas again) and share some of my experiences, mistakes and (sometimes painful) learning. The aim of my new “Starter for 10” series of posts is just that.…

As promised on my update for July, here are some early pictures of the downstairs tiling as it goes in. The main room started… Very early days in the kitchen. I rather like this arty shot of the floor taken as you come down the stairs. The floor has been grouted by this stage. Strange…

On into the rainy damp Summer of 2009.. My bathroom tiling continues. I actually finished it once, but being unhappy with the grouting decided to regrout! Not quite as barmy as it sounds. I’m using white grout as I thought it would look cleaner in a bathroom, but mistakenly I rather carelessly sealed the tiles…

I like some of the headlines coming out of the Low Carbon Transition plan. The two that catch my eye especially are: Financial incentives for home generation. Paying for the creation of woodland. I’d love to be able to commission a wind turbine (so long as it was quiet) or get some photo-voltaics up and…

So, June… Tiling two bathrooms, both floor and shower enclosures has taken far longer than I predicted but on the whole I’ve enjoyed the work and the end product should be okay. The main progress this month has been in getting the solar panels and heating system up and running. It all went pretty smoothly…

I came across this quote from one of my favourite authors on architecture and design, Christopher Alexander, author of A Pattern Language in a book about software design – ‘Patterns of Software – Tales from the Software Community’ by Richard P. Gabriel (‘Patterns of Software’ is worth a read in its own right if you’ve…

We’ve got the heating and hot water system up and running! It took a couple of attempts. The first time at the start of the month, with the stoked up stove blazing away devouring my wood supply, there was a load cracking noise (sounded like the glazing in the stove doors cracking) and a fairly…

May has been about two things – painting and tiling. The main bedroom needs finishing and then the second bedroom and dressing area need painting – and that’ll be it, first coat done! Coverage upstairs doesn’t seem as good as down, not sure if that’s to do with the plaster or the off-white paint, but…

You (still) can’t beat a good list (see the bottom of this post for the previous ones) – this is the current position: In Progress Flooring and tiling We’ve bought slate wall and floor tiles for both bathrooms and travertine for the ground floor. Finally, we’ve also selected oak flooring for the first floor. No…