Transforming The Old Cider Barn

Having earmarked the old Cider Barn as our office for the business, we made an agreement with the builders to both batton, insulate, plaster and lay a new floor. So, in advance of their arrival it was a case of clearing out the room. Having taken the press down last year, we were left with the large wooden blocks, still in the steels, so after a bit of wriggle, Mike, Martin and Rick moved the blocks out into the garage:

We were of course going to save everything and find some future use for it all, including the old tray..

Once the big items were removed, I got in and had a good rummage with the remaining. There were lots of treasures to be found (which I have since squirreled away into the chicken shed):

I had a good sweep out and left the place tidy ready for Sully to come in and batton the room out for plasterboard:

We decided to leave the gable end as an exposed stone wall, so doubled up on insulation in the roof and floor:

The walls were boarded out and a new window put in

 (the old one came dislodged in a recent storm and was only single glazed):

And we had already run pipes and electrics into the room, which then fed under the drive to connect to the chicken shed at a later date:

The walls and ceiling got a coat of plaster:

We retained some of the old fixings:

The flooring was laid (a gift from Patrick after he was left with excess from an old job):

And we really liked the way that the old and new worked together throughout the room:

The attention to detail around the old step is brilliant:

And the new door

 (modeled on both the old stable door and those over in the barns)

- is just fab!

Now all we need to do is paint it, connect the electrics and we will have a fully functioning office!

Woodburners

Now that the fireplace had been opened up in the lounge and the floor in the kitchen/diner has almost cured, it's time to book in the installation of the woodburners...

We had a chimney sweep visit to clear the chimney in the lounge - I don't think it had been done for years, but they were in and out in no time at all. We had sourced some reclaimed quarry tiles to fit in the hearth and secured these ready for the burner:

A day of installing and the first burner was in:

For the dining room, we had been advised that we could continue the reclaimed timber wall the full length, so I reconfigured the timbers:

and made it good to fit the back wall:

We then laid a reclaimed flagstone (from the old kitchen floor):

And after a couple of days installing this was burner number 2:

There were a few more technicalities with this one, as their was no chimney and the flue needed boxing in the room above (the bathroom). But they both work great and we are very happy with the colour Welsh Slate Blue. It works brilliantly with the reclaimed tiles in the lounge and the picks of blue in the reclaimed timbers - it's like they were made for the space!

Resurfacing the Drive

Work is due to start on the barn development this coming April and due to the need for a link to the new water supply we had to run a series of pipes along the drive. Whilst we are digging it makes sense to resurface/hard landscape and clean up anything else we might want to do in the future regards piping for power and water. We had local company R W Gale coming to help us, and to make things clear from the beginning, we prepped the site with some marker paint:

Service duct required laying from cider barn to chicken shed:

Chopping out the driveway to establish a new planting space and relaying tarmac to create more functional access to garage:

Establish a new drain on the corner of the cider barn:

Run 3 new water pipes down the length of the drive to connect to the updated supply and

ensure that the run off from the new drain connects with the existing land drain on the lower drive:

Establish a set of steps from the dairy door up to the drive and created new planting areas either side of this:

Employ additional drain and run off from the outside of the downstairs bathroom:

Phew!

So.....

 work began in earnest on a VERY COLD monday morning, with the chopping in and grading of the bank where the old leylandi trees were:

Amazed by the speed at which these machines got the work done, the old driveway was dug out in a mere afternoon:

Pretty scary seeing the place look like this, but we felt in very safe hands and by the end of the day you could really get a sense of how it was going to look:

Foundations were dug and laid for the new steps the following morning:

The water pipes laid:

Drainage and run off established from where we had requested:

 And the top layer compacted by the close of business: 

Due to the very nature of earth removal, the surplus had to go somewhere. 

Because we had already talked about some plans for landscaping the garden in the future, we thought we may as well start a bit of the process now. RWGale did triple check with us that it was ok to drive all over the lawn, we were fine about it and by the end of the day it looked quite the state:

We had slightly underestimated just how much surplus subsoil there was going to be and soon we had a small mountain in the back garden:

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

A worry for another day, but it was all worth it as we now had water pipes to service clean filtered water over to the barns:

A new set of steps up to the drive:

And a well graded, wider driveway leading up to the garage:

So another job done!

And all of that achieved in 1 whole week - well impressed!

Frozen Pipes!

It was REALLY COLD  this morning:

Sunrise looked fantastic:

And the frost on the ground - WOW!

But with freezing temperatures comes frozen water pipes - and as all of ours are above ground and sparsely insulated we had no running water from the caravan when we woke up!

Luckily, there was a tap running freely in the pumphouse, so we used that to fill the kettle and coax our pipes into action... it took a bit of time, but we got there in the end and managed a cup of tea for our efforts:

There is something quite magical about frost in the morning:

And when the sun peeks out - WoW! You forget about all the difficulties and just soak it all in...

New Neighbours

Mike spotted something in the field earlier today...

It looks like we have some new neighbours!

They were just as curious about us and we were about them:

Though I'm not too sure how the cats will react...

It looks like these guys are going to be quite the 

entertaining herd of lawnmowers for us this next month or two:

Let's see how they get on...