my barn conversion

Building Progress ~ October 2009

mbc — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:02:52 +0000

Ah, October - seems like a long time ago now… I’ve stalled in finishing treating the untreated oak stairs and banisters the banisters along the landing have all been whitened & waxed, but the stairs themselves along with the banisters still need finishing. I managed (mistakenly) to wax one of the posts before whitening it and [...]

Slack

mbc — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:11:00 +0000

Sorry, I’ve been very slack in updating the site over the last few weeks - very busy at work (my proper job) at the moment with a system implementation. Rest assured my usual slow and steady service will be resumed shortly… If you enjoyed that post, then read these...British Summer Time on August 12th, 2008There's a [...]

Yard Window

mbc — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:11:26 +0000

Picture with measurements of the yard side window. Click on the picture for a larger version hosted by Picasa. Share This

Logs

mbc — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:56:00 +0000

I’ve really enjoyed Roger Deakin’s ‘Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees’, the book takes you on a gentle journey, part biography, part manifesto, part travelogue. As I expect to be spending substantial amounts of time sourcing, collecting, cutting, splitting and stacking logs to keep us warm over the winter, one particular quote struck me as good advice [...]

Building Progress ~ September 2009

mbc — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:38:19 +0000

Straight in this month, no excuses and no delay… I’ve managed to spread the load on finishing the untreated oak stairs and banisters having roped TC into treating the stairs with white foundation paint prior to waxing. I completed sanding and filling last weekend and the bannisters along the landing have all been whitened & then [...]

New bed

mbc — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:12:08 +0000

Somewhat in anticipation of being able to take up residence we’ve bought a great new bed for the barn. King sized, so an extra six inches for the baby to spread out in during the middle of the night whilst his mother and I teeter at opposite edges of the bed. Ours is a Snowdon organic [...]

Island Micro Grid

mbc — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:14:58 +0000

Whilst way beyond my own humble aspirations for energy self sufficiency, the fantastically named Island Micro Grid just commissioned at the Centre for Alternative Technology is an interesting development. I was shocked to read: The developed world’s centralised electricity system wastes around 65% of energy through heat loss in power stations and transmission lines, before reaching our [...]

Building Progress ~ August 2009

mbc — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:14:03 +0000

The rainy damp Summer of 2009 continues … damply … I’ve completed regrouting the grubby bathroom tiling at long last. I’ve not fully cleaned them yet as I’m trying to avoid spending any more time on tiles at least for the next few weeks. The travertine floors downstairs have been completed and look great. I’ll publish some [...]

Chandelier

mbc — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:04:19 +0000

As I’ve already mentioned I bought a chandelier from Scavengers. It looked great on the web: My Chandelier Not too fancy (if that can be said of any chandelier and I think I’m having second thoughts on that one), classy (well I thought it was when I bought it) and in pretty good condition. When it arrived, [...]

Lammas ecovillage update

mbc — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:03:04 +0000

I wrote about the Lammas ecovillage back at the start of the year. At the time, I aired my feelings of ethical support, but real-world unease. Now things have moved on and the development has been granted planning permission not by local planners, but in an act of centralised government colonialism, by the Welsh Assembly [...]