When I was in Bristol I used to have a rather nice tandem garage, which was great for working on cars. Unfortunately when I move back to the Diamond Hell I couldn't stretch to a house in an acceptable location, with a garage. Absolute f*cking travesty, I know but there - you can't have everything you want.
As a result I've been working in an unfronted barn at my old folks place, with a container in it and some open space. This has all got pretty depressing and cold and sh*tty, too as the crud and dust on the yard blows into the barn and whirls around you - not good.
I've got the old chap's permission to sort it out into a sensible space to work in, with some provisos.
This is the barn as it's been for the past year:
First things first - DannyP is a completely amazing guy who I've worked with on this so far - we've done a lot of stuff together and I cannot thank him enough for helping me out with this - coming down from oop norf periodically to give things a kick up the arse is fantastic.
So, the barn It's got power in it (3-phase DannyP and I ran down to it) and there's water nearby and a drain area at the far end (tea facilities are important!). What we're going to do is divide it into two, so the workshop space I'll have will be 45'x30' - fronted in, with a full wall down the middle and doors across a bay to provide pedestrian and vehicle access. I've put a shout out locally and there's a couple of guys who want workshop/storage too who are coming in to share the space, which should give a nice nuclear community of goons to muck about with cars.
Danny and I went and cut down about 20 mature oak trees in some of the woodland on the farm:
Note two saws in the trunk - the tree trapped the first one, which then had to be cut out. Ooops!
These were then bought closer to the farm, where they were chopped up into planks and posts. The posts were for frames and the planks were to make foot-wide shiplap to board and weatherproof the front of the barn.
Meanwhile I laid a sleeper wall in the first bay:
Ironically I did that one and had to cover it in wetted cardboard to stop it going off too quick in the heat of the summer. The second bay I did the day after boxing day and had to add frost-proofer to the mix and cover it to protect it from the worst of the cold.
Over the past few days we've gone right into it. First we closed in the simple bay, using complete planks. You can see not only is there the sleeper wall to keep out drafts, there's also a heavy-duty membrane behind the boards:
Then we closed in the end bay, which was a touch more complex, as we didn't have any whole-lengths and there was a step at the end, where the concrete wall is:
Then we needed to start the doors for the middle bay. These needed a top to the frame, so we scrounged an old bit of C-section from a barn that was taken down some years back. It was transported using the nearest available load-bearing vehicle:
Thankfully there were a pair of trailer silage doors that were obsolete as we no longer make silage. These had the steel chopped out of the middle of them and were cut down to make a 5' door and a 10' door. The hinges were stepped out on the doors and the frames, so the doors will be able to be opened 180 degrees once finished. At close of play we'd got the big frame finished:
and then hung, with the hinges welded to the barn frame:
The funniest moment was seeing whether the New Holland engine crane would fit in the new door. We hadn't measured it, as it wasn't around when we were setting the door frame:
Next up is to re-organise the containers in the barn (there are two) - they need swapping round, then laying a sleeper wall across the barn and putting studwork across the WHOLE frame, which is going to be another huge mission! Once it's sealed we need to insulate and wire the unit up for light and power and get a sink into it!
It's gonna be a busy few months ahead of us but as Danny said 'given what we've acheived in the cold and wet, what the hell are we going to be able to do in a nice, dry, warm unit?! I guess we'll see once the unit's nice and dry and warm!
