The icing on the cake. The celotex makes the barn look like a Christmas cake. At least it’s not a gingerbread house in the middle of a deep dark forest ... gulp. Mind you, we’ve had our fair share of dragons to slay. I’m tempted to speculate on how a barn conversion is like a Hero’s Journey. It’s got all the main ingredients – the challenge, the unknown territory, the hidden dangers, the helpful mentors along the way. Just looking forward to the triumphant return. I can feel a blockbuster trilogy coming on. Barn Wars. The Planners Strike Back. Return of Chippy.
Sherpa Tensing pays us a visit
The fascia boards, painted black are being mounted on the rafter feet.
The barge boards at the gable ends of the barn are mounted on something which is called a ladder, for obvious reasons.
To achieve the designed U-value we're installing a double layer of 100mm celotex.
Despite the drought in the spring and early summer, the farmer has managed to get some crop from our field. Maybe he’ll be able to cut again in the autumn when we’ve had a bit more rain.
Barley in the field behind the barn is growing nicely, at least to my eye. No doubt the farmer will tell you a different story.
We’ve had so little rain since the project started that a puddle is a thing of interest. How sad is that?
This week we passed another Big Milestone. The internal scaffold – the birdcage – came down.
Now you see it
Now you don’t.
Now you see it
Now you don’t.
The inside of the barn now looks fantastic. Cavernous, cathedral-like, capacious, chasmal, commodious. I could go on, but I’d need to consult a thesaurus.
Trusses and braces and braces seen from below. Still not too sure how they'll look when the walls and the ceilings are all plastered and painted.
The outside scaffold remains and we’re looking forward to dropping that too – but not holding our breath.
A big issue this week has been what kind of doors do we want internally. We've learned the difference between framed, ledged and braced doors. Barns often have ledged doors - simple planks, tongue and groove like floor boards, vertically, and 3 horizontal bits of wood on the back of the door to hold it together. You can't put a normal handle on such a door but instead have to use a Suffolk latch - those thumb latches you see on garden gates. I think they look great - on garden a gate. Ledged and braced means they've got diagonals on the back making up that characteristic Z shape. And framed means, not surprisingly, there's a frame around the edge of the door (not to be confused with the door frame, door lining, door stop, or architrave, of which more anon.) The issue is, in order to have a normal door handle you have to have enough thickness of door at the place where the door handle and lock are situated. You either have to stick a block of wood at the appropriate place on a ledged or ledged and braced door, or you have to go for a framed door. And then there's the question of what kind of wood. Oak, softwood, engineered wood, veneered. Which leads to the ugly question of cost. Do you go for something that looks OK and is cheap or for the real thing, solid oak, which costs an arm and a leg. And we're going to need 16 of them. Doors, that is.
A big issue this week has been what kind of doors do we want internally. We've learned the difference between framed, ledged and braced doors. Barns often have ledged doors - simple planks, tongue and groove like floor boards, vertically, and 3 horizontal bits of wood on the back of the door to hold it together. You can't put a normal handle on such a door but instead have to use a Suffolk latch - those thumb latches you see on garden gates. I think they look great - on garden a gate. Ledged and braced means they've got diagonals on the back making up that characteristic Z shape. And framed means, not surprisingly, there's a frame around the edge of the door (not to be confused with the door frame, door lining, door stop, or architrave, of which more anon.) The issue is, in order to have a normal door handle you have to have enough thickness of door at the place where the door handle and lock are situated. You either have to stick a block of wood at the appropriate place on a ledged or ledged and braced door, or you have to go for a framed door. And then there's the question of what kind of wood. Oak, softwood, engineered wood, veneered. Which leads to the ugly question of cost. Do you go for something that looks OK and is cheap or for the real thing, solid oak, which costs an arm and a leg. And we're going to need 16 of them. Doors, that is.
And finally ,
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