Around an ongoing barn conversion project, this website draws together advice, information and references to aid all would-be and current barn and non-residential building converters and renovators.
Our approach takes on board 'healthy house', sustainable, ecological & environmental concepts to as great a degree as timescales and budgets allow.
I wanted to minimise the use of steel in the building and I like the texture and appearance of untreated hard woods - that led to the importation of two eastern European oak beams for use in the barn.
That long journey (let’s not worry about carbon footprints for now) and a few weeks sitting outside on my yard left their marks on the beams. Both were water stained and blackened and in this state were installed into the barn and the first floor was built ‘on’ them.
Based on a combination of hind-sight and time earned experience here is the MyBarnConversion guide to cleaning oak (hardwood) beams.
If at all possible, clean the beams with a pressure washer prior to installation, that will save a lot of effort later.
If you’re unable to clean the beam before construction, then get out the elbow grease.
Wash down and scrape the beam to remove surface dirt and mold.
Use a steamer cleaner to open up the grain and clean into the beam, this will also have the effect of sterilising the wood. A wall paper steam remover will work fine.
Steam cleaning will begin to bring engrained dirt to the surface. You will find that badly stained wood will need to be scraped to remove the worst of it.
Using a combination of scraping and washing down (preferably with warm water and detergent) your beam will slowly become clean.
Rinse and repeat…
The wood may take some time to dry out, you’ll not be able to tell the final colour and finish until it’s dry, so don’t panic yourself into unnecessary cycles of the cleaning process.
Sand to remove particularly deep stains, splinters and scruffs.
[UPDATE]
I’ve read in a couple of places that sugar soap works well. Will give it ago as I have some other beams that need cleaning.
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Oak Beams? ~ You must be barking! on May 14th, 2007 When working through the detailed design for the barn we decided to use oak beams to support the first floor rather than steels.
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Oak floor adrift on the high seas... on December 24th, 2009 I ordered solid European oak flooring and associated underlay, fixings and tools from a flooring company (who will remain nameless for now) back October [Corrected].
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VAT for barn convertors - Update March 2009 on March 8th, 2009 It's been a while since a VAT update so I thought I'd review the current position, especially in view of the pre-Christmas credit-crunch fuelled reduction...
The bath I bought doesn’t quite fit into the bathroom if it’s placed along the same wall as the shower…
It does fit if placed across the corner as in the picture, so the question is corner bath? Does it say badly planned bathroom or boutique hotel?
Corner bath?
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Building Progress ~ March 2009 on April 16th, 2009 (Oh no I've done it again; my March progress report is late just like February's was - sorry)
The two main developments this month are the...
Please excuse the slightly pompous title to this post - guess I’m pretty happy with way this aspect of the conversion has gone.
The initial design was a little bit strange, with two doors through an internal wall that didn’t really have enough space for them and an over-large en suite bathroom that was a waste of space.
After a fair amount of thought a new plan was decided upon and after some juggling and guess-work started to be put into action.
Entering from the landing
So now, with the walls and doorways in place and the finishes beginning to be applied the layout begins to emerge and pretty happy I am with it as well.
You enter through a door from the landing - ahead is a storage / dressing area, to the left the bathroom and to the right steps up to the bedroom.
View back to the bedroom
I really like the ‘view’ back from the bedroom as it takes in the only piece of exposed stone wall that we’ve left internally and both old and new wooden beams.
To provide you with a whole interactive experience, I’ve even uploaded a video to YouTube.
If you enjoyed that post, then read these...
Stove - Flue - Chimney on April 1st, 2009 Hey, in the words of the song, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
Stairs on April 13th, 2009 Pleased to say that the stairs are now in, which changes the whole feel of the building - makes it start to feel like somewhere...
Having spent much time pawing over VAT documentation in preparation for my VAT reclaim I discovered that the HM Revenue & Customs definition of items ‘ordinarily’ incorporated in a building makes for interesting reading and may suggest a few VAT free inclusions for your design.
In short, you can claim for building materials that are ordinarily [...]
The barn lies just outside of the South Wales Coal Field.
Our heating system will comprise of solar thermal water heating (from in-roof panels) with a multi-fuel burner as the ‘primary’ heat source (& a backup electrical heating coil in the tank)… [Read the background to that]
(I’m still not sure if [...]