The barn was until some time ago a working agricultural building with its own electricity supply and meter. As part of the conversion we'll be having to get the electricity company to come and move the meter. At the moment we have a temporary builders supply rigged up from the existing overhead connection to the meter.
View of the studs on the west side from inside the barn. They look terrific, don't they.
More studs
South projection roof rafters exposed. Insulating about to commence.
Steel bracing to hold the corner joints together. Our engineer is having a great time dreaming up bits of metalwork. And our friendly local steel fabrication company is also very happy.
More bracing
Lest we run away with the idea that steel bracing is a recent innovation, here are some bits of old metal removed from the frame.Gotta be worth something on Ebay, no? I can just see these bits turning up on an antiques TV show. What do you think this one is? An instrument of torture, a piece of Victorian surgical equipment or a weapon? Answers on a postcard please to ...
The central east projection and door window - we've decidied to keep the studs and cross pieces there. We'll put a window in front. Should look great.
From the inside -
From the outside -
We've now got window openings in the OSB cladding. Beginning to look residential. Be ages before the weatherboarding and window frames go in, but still, it's progress.
Window openings inside from the inside -
We'll be keeping frame studs and diagonals across the window openings wherever possible. Might look a bit strange but that's what you get with a barn.
Door opening on the north end into the utility room, or what will be the utility room. You can see the blockwork on the inside and the facing on the outside. Obviously the blockwork will be insulated and plastered in due course.
Found a bird's nest with young in the frame. Unfortunately it was just where they were about to start stripping the boarding off and nailing on the OSB.Looks like a thrush of some sort. Much heartache and searching on the internet for duration of time in the nest till the fledgling fly. Eventually decide couldn't wait. One suggestion was to put the nest in a nearby tree but it didn't seem likely that they would survive. So decided to move the nest, chicks and all, to another place in the barn where the stripping and boarding were finished. And hope that mummy find her chicks.
And she did. Phew!
Some people who do barn conversions chose to live on site. We couldn't face overwintering in a caravan or a mobile home, and it didn't seem to be that cost effective either. So we've rented a small house not too far from the site. Around 8 o'clock we drive to site to talk to the builders and get our shopping list for the day. Here's a view of St Mary’s as we see from the road, you can also just see it from barn.
Been a good year for poppies at the side of the road
And finally
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