Inspired by my first outing onto YouTube and dazzled by the 143 people who’ve so far taken the time to watch the minute long tour of the ground floor of the barn that I’ve subjected treated them to, I thought I’d give it another go.

This time I’ve gone for a more abstract yet focussed piece of work – I hope you don’t find the star of the show too wooden! (Sorry!)

One solution I’m considering for the seemingly porous stone gable-end wall is to repoint and dub-out the joints between stones where necessary then whitewash it to provide a greater degree of rain protection.

What I’m wondering about this is how much work this would save over a time consuming hack out of damaged or cracked mortar and then repointing. The joints have already been pretty well dubbed out, although I suspect not properly hacked back before hand to give enough depth of mortar to provide better water protection (which is where the problems arise). So the sound areas of pointing could remain, repairs made and then a wash applied, rather than a more thorough overall repointing that may well leave differing coloured patches of mortar and potential problems in joints between old and new pointing.

Must admit, I quite like the whitewash idea but it’s not something I’ve used before and there must be some catches… any opinions?

The feel of the barn has moved on again as now the openings for the two windows that we’re adding to the gable end of the barn have been completely punched through.

Whilst it’s hard to get a proper appreciation for the view they provide as they are currently covered with old aggregates bags and frames, lintels and sills need to be added that will change the openings drastically, two things are apparent. One, that they’ll provide some additional, useful light from a roughly southerly direction and two, they’ll open up the view across the valley to the hillside beyond. The existing windows provide attractive views of the ‘garden’ behind the barn, but these new windows will open up a new, more distant vista.

The windows also bring to mind the interior of a church. With the two smaller off centre windows and the full height up to the roof the main room of the barn is currently like a chapel without an altar. As the first floor is completed I’m sure this impression will change, but for now, there’s a certain holiness to the place.

In my haphazard stumble through the world of architects and architecture, I came across Robert Venturi. Whilst not perhaps directly appreciating his work when seen on the page in print (his emergency service building for Disney World in Florida is a Fire Department HQ straight out of a Mickey Mouse cartoon), I do appreciate and agree with his concept of “vernacular” architecture. In simplistic terms it entails taking the building and design trends of a country or locality and using them as an architectural guide.

In his 1972 work “Learning from Las Vegas” he highlighted the common architectural features of neon lights, advertising hoardings and false shop fronts found in LA and advocated them as an alternative to sometimes stilted architectural rationalism.

As can be seen from Mickeys fire-station there is a degree of irony, humour and a powerful sense of appropriateness in his work – all of which appeal to me.

The tying of architecture to the reality of a place, rather than some idealised or fictional notion is what appeals to me. There is a view of how agricultural buildings should be converted to dwellings that is sometimes at odds with my own sensibilities. Rendered walls with stone dressing, gravel drives and varnished window frames present a disneyfied view of the countryside and don’t represent the true beauty and sense of place that I seek. Venturi’s vernacular architecture recognises this and presents an alternative approach.