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

I’ve already written about one of my favourite building design books A Pattern Language – Towns Buildings Construction by Alexander, Ishikawa & Silverstein. I thought it would be worthwhile stating which of the patterns I’ll be paying most attention to in my design. The list is not exhaustive, other patterns will have a bearing, new…

Let the games begin. The first phase of building involves excavation of the exterior ground levels all around the building to provide drainage trenches and ensure that exterior floor levels are below the eventual interior floor level. Internally, the existing flag stone, cobble and concrete floors have been removed and dug out down to the…

The functions of a house, setting aside all other ‘romantic cobwebs’ are to provide: ” 1. A shelter against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the inquisitive. 2. A receptacle for sun and light. 3. A certain number of cells appropriated for cooking, work and personal life. “ Le Corbusier … keeping it simple.

I’ve spent the day practicing my version of precision carpentry cladding openings of my big metal shed. My approach to carpentry is based on one of the many mantra’s of someone of great wisdom who used to work with my father and brother: Measure twice, cut once. I have finely tuned this to: Measure once,…

The original plans for the barn had two largish bathrooms one of which contained an airing cupboard that to my mind was a waste of space. Not being a person who knows when to stop meddling, I decided to remove the airing cupboard, add an ante-room to the main bedroom’s en-suite and move one of…

I’ve been promising these for a while, but eventually I’ve got there. I’d added a whole new set of photographs of the barn to the site that I’ll use as my before photo’s. Hopefully, I can use these to demonstrate progress as the conversion goes on. Some of them are similar to other pictures I’ve…

So, as we have started work, we need to think about all those details that I’ve put to one side until we had a builder. Not liking getting too formal about such things, it seems like a good idea to make a list so: Last update [4th November 2007] Ground or Air Source Heat Pump…

So the time has come to stop skirting around the fringes of this project and crack-on down the path that leads from barn to barn conversion (what a difference a word makes). The builder started work yesterday, although I’ve not seen what’s been done, (I’m retaining a aloof distance for the next few days and…

Being about to pour several tonnes of concrete into the floor of our barn I was interested to read about the environmental impact of cement usage. Apparently, world-wide cement production creates twice as many carbon emissions as the world’s airline industry does. For each tonne of cement that is produced 900kg of CO2 is released…

Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein ~ 1977, Oxford University Press, New York. In 1977, whilst in the UK the Sex Pistols where spreading a message of anarchy and being “Pretty Vacant”, in the USA Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein and co. were publishing three books that would enable us to bring order and thoughtful design to…

The term biomass heating refers to the combustion of plant based organic materials for the purpose of heating a volume of air. Biomass fuels fall into two main categories: Woody resources from sustainable sources such as fast growing trees or subsiduary waste products such as sawdust or recycled untreated pallets. Non-woody resources such as animal…

Firstly, I must apologise for the infrequency of my recent posting. I’ve been away in France for a little ‘R and R’ staying in a barn conversion in Normandy (can’t stay away from the bloody things). The place we stay at now has four barns converted for holiday accommodation. We stayed in the first conversion…