We called a halt to the build last week for Christmas, whilst finishing
the downstairs was subcontracted to eco-renovations, Adam, Barbara and I have
been working upstairs. We’ve finished the boarding out and, for the first time,
the roof lines and the exposed A frame roof timbers are properly visible. The
look (though I say it myself) is very elegant, especially in the bedrooms and
the mezzanine area where the ceilings run right up to the ridge line.
When the barn was first cleared out the full artistic splendour of the
roof was apparent – wavy old purlins and chevrons looked great but were not
suitable to construct a roof on – at least one that wouldn’t leak. This view
was confirmed when Adam and I stripped off the roof timbers and put our feet
through several parts of the chevronage. Two hundred years and a rich variety
of wood-boring insects eventually do that to your roof.
(One thing I find myself doing is mixing the English and French terms
for things. So, if you aren’t an expert at roof construction, purlins (English
- Bastaing in French) are the big
timbers that run horizontally along the roof and chevrons (French – rafters in
English) are the thinner timber sections that run from the walls up to the
ridge).
However, that left us with a stylistic problem as the inclined roofs
wouldn’t have any timber visible – a huge plane of flat ceiling running up to
the old timbers wouldn’t look right. So – in a move that might have Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs sucking the air in through his teeth in that annoying
way he has – we’ve faked it. Adam found a huge bundle (“fagot” in French) of
offcuts at the local sawmill; these are the last cuts at the edge of a trunk where
the round shape of the tree can’t be cut into a straight plank, where the wood
has a knot or inconvenient split or where the saw operator just wasn’t paying
attention after lunch (more common than you might think). This is normally sold
off as firewoord but was perfect for our purposes and so we bought all 1.2
tonnes of timber and had it delivered to site. After a quick sort, some
chainsaw work and some enthusiastic “distressing” with an axe we have a set of
1cm thick irregular timber lengths that, when fitted to the clean plasterboard,
look all the world like 200 year old purlins that the ceilings have been built
around. We’ve even had fun doing faux scarfe joints to make them look as if the
original carpenter had joined lengths together.
One problem that plagues barn conversions is head height, often it’s
necessary to dig out the ground floor to get enough headroom. One of the things
about LBC that was apparent from the first time we peered into the gloomy old barn
is that we don’t have any problems in that area. As the build has progressed
we’ve (nearly) met the architect’s original specifications for roof height –
our actuals are 2m40 downstairs (that’s 7ft10 in old money), 2m70 (8ft10in) in
the bathrooms and 3m50 (11ft 6in) to the highest point of the bedrooms. Of
course plastering and decorating at that height pose their own problems. I
still haven’t quite worked out how we are going to change lightbulbs in the
hanging light in the open mezzanine area which will be at least 5m (16ft6in)
above the ground floor.
So, for the record, as we finished we’ve completed boarding upstairs
(apart from half a bay where the second woodburning stove’s chimney will go)
and we’ve plastered four of the seven bays. The false purlins are fitted and
the big wall above the open mezzanine has been constructed. Amongst other
things we’ve consumed 31 bags of UK plaster (three quarters of a
tonne), 85 sheets of plasterboard (250 square metres), three quarters of a
kilometre of jointing tape and over 8000 screws.
If we didn't know before we know now - it’s a big job!
