La Basse Cour: Renovation or Conservation ?

One of the questions Adam Farndon asked us was whether we wanted to renovate or conserve the barn. We hadn't thought of the question before let alone the answer - we'd always used the term "renovate" to cover all options. It's been an important question this week however as the initial clearance and demolition work turned to putting things back into the barn.

Renovate or conserve came up as soon as we climbed up to assess the condition of the major transverse beams - there are five of them being kept in the finished design - and we had our suspicions when we first bought the place as one of them had a very permanent and solid looking oak beam propping it up. The state of beams in French country properties should be, and for all I know already is, the subject of a book and there are lots of opinions around. Ours each have an individual character so let me introduce them to you, counting from the house:

Number 0: This one is coming out - an increasingly wise decision by the architect when we saw the condition of the end by the existing door/ lucarne window!
Number 1: this is oversize at nearly 35cm square, in very good condition and well squared off.
Number 2: Standard sized at 30cm square, solid with some worm but square
Number 3: This is the one that is propped up, the top of the beam at both ends has been hollowed out (we thought it was rot but it's much too precise a shape). The north end has quite a bit of worm attack and is flaky wood, the prop beam is directly under a complex knot.
Number 4: I call this one a cranked shape as it twists about 25cm over its length. This also has hollows on top of the beam - something to do with how the roof was put up? - and looked solid at first glance. Deeper inspection showed that it has a couple of long and deep cracks through it of unknown provenance. This beam has had the ignominy of deep slots being cut in its top to adjust the floor for the wayward shape of beam 5.
Number 5: This one appears to have been installed from a completely different building - it's a different shape to the others, twists down significantly over its length and is fitted into the wall at least 15cm below the others. Current theory is that this one was added after the others - either it's a Breton bodge or we haven't worked out its purpose yet.

So the weakest beams are 3 and 4 - the two beams that will be taking the main load of our two first floor bathrooms - not good.

So do we conserve by rescuing the beams or replacing them (not an easy task when the span is nearly six metres) or restore by allowing modern building techniques to give us and the old building a hand. We went for restoration and on Friday morning CMB delivered three 6.5m steel beams to go into the walls to support the floor loads upstairs. Adam had prepared the walls and knocked through a gap on the north side to allow us to "post" the beam through from the outside. Sounds easy doesn't it? Here's how we did it in pictures: