Tiles On + the rear porch and courtyard

Now that the new roof structure is in place it has been time to get cleaning all those old tiles...

As the old utility roof was dressed in pan tiles though, and we were planning to marry the new roof up with the others (all dressed in triple roman tiles), we were missing quite a few. So, after making some calculations, we decided that it would be cheaper to lift some from the roof of the barns (during their development they are going to require pan tiles and not triple roman) and use these rather than source some from a reclamation yard. It also feels quite nice being able to borrow from one bit of the site and feed another.

It was good to get a different perspective of the barns this way too:

These were then all cleaned and put into place:

and once all up - they look great!

Next it was painting the fascia boards - we're really enjoying the teal-y/grey that we've found:

The back door of the new kitchen and the porch area have been left as a bit of a 'who's responsibility is this?' sort of job for a while now:

As it's been the meeting point of both building teams and their respective roof lines it's been a little tricky to work out who should claim it... Steve won the coin toss though - and so began work on fitting it all together:

We started by taking the oil tank out:

Then the old backdoor frame was readjusted for it's new home:

I think Mike approves (or he's just getting fed up with my camera...?)

And after the wall of the plant room had been repointed

- the courtyard is now looking pretty neat and tidy:

Ready for Reclaim

We have a huge interest in reclaimed materials and are blessed with the house and barns that they offer us a plethora in which to choose from. There is a lot of work to do to get the pieces up to scratch, but that's very much part of the whole process with this project. We are interested in celebrating what the buildings were and have been. It was sad that so many of the properties we looked at during our search had been stripped of their past. This was the #1 attraction of Clayhill - so much to celebrate! So much untouched!

We are on the hunt today for a door to replace the old woodstore:

Looking over in the barns we found a few that are able to be reclaimed: 

This is the one that was the ideal fit, so we will be stripping it back and getting it ready to install in the next few weeks:

There are endless possibilities that can be achieved with reclaim. I have lots of inspiration over on my pinterest boards and this is very much the aesthetic we're hoping to achieve over in the barns. We are big fans of Salvage Hunters and recent subscribers of SalvoWeb too. Somerset also has some *fantastic* salvage & reclamation yards. Our favourites locally are: Wells and Glastonbury.

The chicken shed is becoming quite the holding pen (ahem, excuse the pun!) for our finds of late - all of the wood we found left by a local farmer ready to be burnt - Noooooooo! We saved it from the rain and will be spending the sunny days soon knocking all the nails out: