Converting a Dilapidated Timber Barn

Richard and Paula Brown were undeterred when, after paying £62,000 for a dilapidated, rotting 18th century listed Grade II oak framed barn in a third of an acre they received a letter from their solicitor saying: Congratulations, you are now the proud owners of a rotting pile of timber in the middle of a field.

"We knew very well that it was worth £90,000, so realised that we had a bargain and we were about £30,000 up for a start," says Richard. "We had lived just round the corner for 13 years and I had had my eye on it for much of that time."

Their friends thought they were mad, but the property had all the potential they were seeking - and besides, Richard, a design engineer, had always wanted to convert a barn. "Working with timber was always my passion and I already had quite a lot of woodworking machinery," he says. "I was confident I had most of the skills that would be needed and could source the others locally."

The barn came with listed building permission to convert it into a three bedroom house. The only problem was money. "I am a design engineer by training and was working at the time for a local company. The pay was really bad and we had two children, then aged 10 and 13. Paula was working part-time as a self-employed mobile hairdresser."

Economy was therefore the prime consideration. They had £35,000 to spend after the sale of their Victorian end of terrace house in the village, near Bedford. They then accepted a kind offer from Paula's parents, who live three miles away, to lodge with them while the work took place and took out a £90,000 mortgage with Barclays.

"After the purchase of the land and the barn we were left with a budget of around £60,000," explains Richard. "It was not a lot when you consider that the entire centre bay was sinking into the ground where the sill plates had rotted away and much of the frame was in an atrocious condition."

"When you pushed one of the corners the whole building would sway!" says Paula. "At one point during the project the whole of our future house was resting on four railway sleepers and eight Acro props!"

The key to the project was doing most of the work themselves. Paula's main task was to clean and brush the entire frame whilst Richard mended it. One of the first jobs was to saw off the feet of many of the vertical posts which had rotted away. Bricklayer John Bray constructed an 800mm x 330mm solid brick wall all the way round. On to this Richard fixed a new sill he fabricated from green oak and morticed all the vertical posts into it. Whenever he could, he used the ancient morticing machine he had bought for £20 which went on to make all the oak door frames in the house.

The approved plans had been to convert the adjoining granary into a double garage and add a two storey extension at the rear of the building. The Browns had no difficulty in getting this changed into permission to erect a separate double carport (now home of daughter Laura's small herd of pigmy goats), to leave the granary to serve as a workshop, and latterly a games room for the children, as well as reduce the rear extension to a one storey day room.

Architect Eric Adkins drew up the plans so that as much as possible of the original frame of the oak building was visible, while adhering to the planning stipulation that the outside would be weatherboarded, as it had originally.

This fitted in well with the Browns' thinking. "I had always thought the wattle and daub panels were fine when exposed on one side, but not two," Eric explains. "I prefer to see the timber frame and the panels clad on the outside. That way you can achieve better thermal insulation. In any case, with this building that is the way it was before and it met with the requirements of the listed building consent which stipulated exterior black horizontal exterior weatherboarding. Beneath this we added solid polyurethane foam insulation to the exterior beneath the weatherboarding, giving us very high U-values for a conversion of this sort."

In addition, the Browns added massive double glazed glass panels to the frontage where the door leads into the hallway and the open plan dining room. This goes straight through to the rear, where the entire single storey pitched roof extension also has windows above sill plate level. Windows - there are 36 of them and all were custom made in European redwood and insulation took up a total of £10,300 of their £60,000 budget. Other energy saving measures included the underfloor heating beneath the new oak flooring on both floors.

"From the beginning we were determined not to skimp on materials and make this a quality job despite the fact that we knew we only had about £400/m2 to spend," Richard explains. "We had some amazing deals from Jewsons at nearby Letchworth that we gained by haggling."

Despite this they spent £6,000 on a wattle and daub specialist for the outside walls. Although the daub cannot be seen from the exterior because the house is weatherboarded, Richard and Paula thought it well worth the investment. "I am convinced that daub is a wonderful insulator. It is also a splendidly malleable material," Richard explains. "We just love it - the feel of it is wonderful. It was not part of the listed building consent, so it is a bit of romanticism - our luxury."

The daub was plastered in the traditional fashion against a basketwork weave of hazel. On the inside the Browns created their own infill panels between the oak studs using a lime plaster against a softwood lath.

The timber work throughout is striking. Most of the original timbers have come up well, with lots of loving care from Paula and a coating of linseed oil. Richard not only did all the repairs to the oak frame and made all the elm doors as well as the 15 ash Suffolk latches but also made the staircase from some huge trunks of newly-felled green oak he obtained for £3/ft³.

A 10,000 year-old piece of bog oak forms the huge bressumer above the inglenook in the sitting room with its close studded walls. It cost £10 and came from a peat bog in the Fens. Upstairs several of the original wind braces are still in evidence, as is the queen strut roof.

Richard and Eric came up with a cunning plan to overcome the problem of the low upstairs beams and also to add interest to the interior. Because of the difficulty of getting beneath the tie beams in the roof in order to access the bedrooms upstairs in the first and third bays, he and Richard dropped the middle bay. This simply meant reducing the floor level in the centre bay downstairs, a feature which has given them an interesting step from the entrance hall into the dining hall. This level then continues through the rear into the single-storey extension. A corresponding reduction in floor level upstairs has allowed that vital bit of extra headroom which means they can enter the bedrooms in comfort.

Despite making every possible economy, using friends to do some of the labouring and begging and borrowing many items and services, the Browns still had a £10,000 overrun, which they managed to fund from their reserves.

"Some of our friends who thought we were mad to undertake this have had to eat their words," says Richard. "We are still thrilled with the result because, quite simply, people like us just do not generally do this sort of thing. We were both brought up in council houses and really consider ourselves rather humble people, but the house is now worth around £350,000. I am always looking at other possible schemes. I am game for another one - it would probably enable me to give up work - but the problem would be prising Paula out of this house."

Further reading:

• How to spot the best conversion opportunities
• Converting an oak barn
• A barn-style self-build