Building a Replacement Barn

It took just one night of gale force winds to almost ruin Val and John Armstrongs' lifelong dream of building their own home. They had found the perfect spot - a ruined 300-year-old stone cow barn ripe for conversion standing in a secluded haven high on a Northumbrian hillside, with spectacular views across four counties and plenty of land for Val's dogs and horses.

"It had everything we wanted and we fell instantly in love with the place," says Val. "We sold our house in a nearby village and, with our three young children, bought a caravan so we could live on site, and set to work."

But disaster struck within a matter of weeks. The couple had spent two months clearing the barn, removing the roof stones which had been secured with sheep's vertebrae and moving galvanised water tanks before John surrounded it with scaffolding and re-pointed the gable end. But as they lay in their beds one dark, stormy night, 100mph winds howled across the hilltops and rocked the wall to its foundations. When they awoke the next morning, the wall had been partly demolished and the rest was deemed unsafe by building inspectors, who ordered the barn to be levelled. In a single day the Armstrongs watched their dream being demolished by a JCB.

"We were absolutely devastated," says Val. "We'd already worked so hard on it, and suddenly we were taking huge steps backwards." Worse was to come. Tynedale Council insisted that the Armstrongs would have to reapply for planning permission as the proposed conversion had suddenly become a rebuild in a green belt area.

"We had sunk all our money into this project and now we weren't even sure that we would get permission to rebuild the barn," says John. "We decided to appeal to a local councillor who understood our predicament and realised that we weren't cowboys trying to work the system, but honest people who had fallen victim of nature."

Their application to rebuild was eventually passed and work began again, with 200 tonnes of soil and rock taken out for the foundations which was used to lay a road leading up to the house. As the blockwork went up, helped by a five-strong team of friends - Thomas and Mattie Carr, Stewie Ward and Dennis and Andrew Connelley - John sorted through the huge piles of stone to find the heads and sills, before grading the stone by size and condition. Even the original arrow slits in the walls of the barn have been reinstated and turned into double glazed windows.

John lined the new block and stone cavity walls with two layers of Arleflex 2L2 insulation, bought from a Dutch firm for £99/50m roll. Widely used by housebuilders such as Barratt, 2L2 is a bubble wrap type material, sandwiched between two layers of reflective foil. He later lined the roof using the same material, inserting six inches of polystyrene between two layers of Arleflex 2L2. "As a result its never cold in the house, even though we're very exposed to the elements," says John.

"One of our big worries was that the house wouldn't be big enough, as its quite long and thin. But we discovered one benefit of the original disaster in that when we rebuilt to the original layout, we were able to gain a couple of feet because the new cavity walls are considerably thinner than the original solid stone walls. And by using A-frames in the roof we were able to gain more space with a second storey."

The original stone roof tiles were sorted by hand into diminishing courses, ranging from less than one foot at the ridge, to four feet pieces at the eaves. Unfortunately they could only salvage enough to complete one half of the roof and they had to buy a further 16 tonnes of reclaimed slates from a firm in Bradford.

Then came the kitchen cellar. Using a 360° tracked vehicle, which cut through layers of rock like chocolate cake, they went 2.75m below ground, layering the base with four inches of concrete and using rubber damp proofing on the walls to seal it. After pumping out rainwater which had filled the cellar like a swimming pool, John laid a new block and beam floor over the top forming the floor of the new kitchen above, built on the site of an old cart shed adjoining the barn at right angles.

John and Val reused the original archways of the shed and turned them into panoramic windows and doors overlooking the hills. On the kitchen roof they used Spanish slate roof tiles from Jewsons, which were a fraction of the price of similar looking new Welsh slates.

The central heating and hot water come from an oil fired Alpha range in the kitchen. The house is heated by radiators throughout, with the exception of the kitchen which has underfloor heating below the tiles. The couple have also installed a whole house mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery.

The result of rebuilding the barn is a highly energy efficient building, but there is one niggling drawback - the Armstrongs have no mains electricity supply. Instead they have to rely upon a diesel generator. "We would love to connect to the mains, but for 150m of cable we've been quoted costs of around "10,000, which we just can't afford," says Val. "As a result we have to be careful about having too many electrical things on the go at once - there was a stage when we couldn't have the TV on and use a hairdryer at the same time."

Now a 1kW invertor feeds 15-year-old Julian, 12-year-old William and 10-year-old Harriets' televisions and Playstations upstairs and Val and John rely on candles when they go to bed at night, though that too nearly ended in disaster.

"I went downstairs one night and left a candle burning in the bedroom," says Val. "The wind blowing the curtains must have knocked it over and when I went back up the room was filled with smoke and the furniture had caught fire. It could have been a lot worse, but were getting to the stage where we desperately want to get electricity to the house."

But Val and John have no regrets about the build. "We live in one of the most beautiful spots in Northumberland in a house we have created ourselves," said Val. "We have a big kitchen for family living, the character of an old place with most modern conveniences, and we have achieved a lifelong dream.

"There were times when we were sitting in our caravan in the middle of winter wondering whether we had done the right thing, and we certainly thought we'd end up homeless when the barn came down in the wind, but we've overcome each problem as we were faced with it and now we wouldn't swap our home for anything."

Further reading:

• A Converted Barn with a Contemporary Twist
• Converting a Listed Stone Barn
• Extending a Barn

Find out more about converted barns in The Book of Barn Conversions from Homebuilding & Renovating