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.

oak beam before cleaning

oak beam being steam cleaned

cleaned oak beam!

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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The bath I bought doesn’t quite fit into the bathroom if it’s place 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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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.

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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 [...]

Now here’s a conundrum…
First the facts:

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 [...]