Window dressing

I've just realised that we are coming back to the UK next week, and I haven't updated the blog for a while.

We are mostly working on the ceiling still, and are now about 9/10ths of the way through it at the moment, but there are other bits and pieces we have finished.

Tina has pointed all of the stonework around the windows and doors in the barn, and I have built up the stonework under one window, and made some mantle shelves from old bits of wood.

Before

After

As you can see, it is a bit of a transformation. It also cuts out all the draughts, so you don't have to worry so much about brain freeze any more.

I've also managed to finish connecting up the lighting circuit in the barn and test it fully. It took a while, as the two double switches needed nine different connections in a big junction box, which took some working out.

The testing took forever. There were a couple of loose connections at first, but after they were sorted out, I still couldn't get a reading through the double switches. I tried various combinations, to no avail. In the end, after two hours or so, I decided that it must be the switches, so I tried the circuits with single switches instead and it worked.

I don't now what is wrong with the double switches. I fitted some new ones and the worked straight away. I think it might be that they got filled up with plaster dust or something like that. The morale of the story being, don't fit delicate equipment before you finish sanding, and always test things straight after you fit them, so you can take 'em back if they're broke.

We haven't put a live supply in the barn yet, but we still managed to test them out with an extension lead.

The limestone for the floor has now been delivered , so Tina and I spent a fun afternoon shifting it from the garden into the barn, all 3 tonnes of it!

Hopefully, when we get back from Blighty, we can finish the ceiling, paint the walls and finally start the mammoth task of laying it all out.

HIDE THE BREEZEBLOCK !

I know what you may be thinking, but I am not referring to some bizarre sexual practice but am, in fact, talking about a new building technique that we have mastered.

When Mr H the builder replaced the barn roof, he had to put in lots of new timbers, and in places he had to build block work and fit wooden wedges to straighten out the roof. Some of the block work is now covered up with plasterboard, but this left us with some breeze blocks showing at the top of the pointed wall.

In the picture above you can just see some block work near the chimney. There were also lots of gaps between the beam at the top of the wall and the ceiling, which needed to be closed to seal the room.

I asked Mr H about the best way to disguise the block work and he suggested covering them with thin slices of stone, glued on with tile adhesive. We also decided to use some old planks that had formed the old hay store to fill in the gaps at the top of the wall.

Gluing on the stone was fairly easy, as the tile adhesive worked a treat, but chipping layers off of some of the large stones from our rubble heap proved a bit tricky. I took a while, but I managed to get enough stone without smashing my thumbs too much with the hammer. There was also a gap under part of the beam at the top of the wall which we filled with more stonework and the next day we were able to point them up

The woodwork proved a bit more time consuming, as we had to scribe round each joist, as well as trying to meet the pitch of the roof. This involved a lot of measuring, cutting, taking the wood up and down the scaffold, remeasuring, re-cutting and planing the wood to get it right.

It was a lot of work, as a lot of finishing tasks are, but we think it has been well worth it.

Even after all the measuring, there were still the odd small gap, but these have all been filled now with either strips of wood, decorators caulk and rock wool.

Hopefully, the room is now sealed up ready for the winter, and we should have less of a problem with brain freeze this winter.