A Suffolk Barn Conversion

Andy Mount and Mandy Robinson describe their 140m² Suffolk barn conversion as having been bought on a whim. “I wasn’t really looking for a property — I had only just finished renovating a small house six miles way in Diss,” says Andy. “But a colleague at work drew my attention to it and Mandy and I went to see it one weekend. It was for sale at £190,000. We put in an offer for £180,000, it was accepted, and that was it.”

They had bought the partly renovated oak frame listed barn with permission to convert from business to residential use. “It had been used as a children’s nursery but the business didn’t last so the building came on the market,” Andy explains.

“We just could not resist the challenge of converting it into a warm, comfortable home, particularly because it is in a beautiful, tranquil rural location with an abundance of bird life, squirrels and deer,”Mandy says. However, their ideas of rural bliss were somewhat punctured a few weeks into the project. They had moved in and were in the throes of buying a caravan to live in during the most intensive period of the conversion when they realised that permission to convert to residential was not the same as Outline Planning Permission.

“Our plans for conversion into a three bedroom house fell at the first hurdle,” Andy explains. “We had stripped out much of the interior and were living amongst piles of rubble, with the caravan about to arrive when we were advised by officials at St Edmundsbury District Council to withdraw our plans and start again.”

The reason was that their three bedroom scheme contravened the council’s barn conversion policy. “Basically we were told that the council would prefer to see a single-storey property where all the frame was visible, as far as possible,” says Andy. “It soon became apparent that we would be allowed one upstairs bedroom, but the planners were pressing for at least 33 per cent of the space in the barn to be left as void.We feared our investment was losing money very fast.”

Eventually their designer, Chris Nall, went to see the planners, and a compromise was reached whereby they were allowed two upstairs bedrooms – one at each end of the building – connected by a long galleried landing. It is accessed by an unusual staircase with twin flights, one of which ducks cleverly beneath a major tie beam to give access to the bedroom at the front of the building.

“The finished conversion looks wonderful. We love it, and so do all our friends,” says Andy. “But the financial incentive of the conversion has been greatly reduced by the lack of a third bedroom.”

The council’s barns policy also worked against them when it came to creating new openings in the building. The two big windows at the front (south) end have become four smaller ones – two on each floor – but they have been permitted only two additional window openings.

In addition they have been allowed no rooflights – they would have liked one on each pitch of the roof – and the en suite bedroom at the north end has had to fit in with a large tie beam that restricts its size. Andy and Mandy had been hoping that access to the large loft would be from an adjoining bedroom, but as this was not permitted they have to reach it via a retractable ladder from their bedroom.

“I have to admit that when we bought it I thought we’d have a much freer rein than was in fact the case,” says Andy. “The actual proportion of the void space in the building is around 50 per cent.” Nevertheless, the couple do not regret what Mandy refers to as their “impulsiveness”. Six months after moving in during December 2005, the property was valued at £300,000, giving them a £120,000 paper profit. And after all the conversion work was complete the price per square metre worked out at an amazing £400.

“We managed the building work using a main contractor for £49,000 — £1,000 less than our budget,” says Andy. “However, council fees, structural engineer’s fees and fees for two completely different internal schemes added another £7,000 to this.”

“Overall we are still pretty pleased,” says Mandy. “It is our first joint project and it has proved a great coming together, as we had both gone through a few ups and downs in our personal lives.” Nevertheless, the six-month conversion was quite harrowing at times. “The most frightening moment was when a man from the council’s rural employment department suddenly arrived on our doorstep and said we had not got permission to convert from business to residential use and the work might have to stop,” Andy says. “We were certain we had the permission and we heard nothing more, but nevertheless it was a pretty low point.”

Life in the caravan also proved very fraught. “It was old and poorly insulated. I only paid £1,200 for it as we were on a tight budget,” Andy says. “November 2005 was a vicious month. We had ice and snow, the water pipes burst and the WC was frozen up.”

Inside the completed barn, however, all is extremely well insulated. There is a thick layer of Celotex insulation between all the vertical oak studs in the walls, which have been plasterboarded and skimmed. Together with ample insulation in the roof and the exterior weatherboard, this provides an extremely cosy building envelope.

The building has also been greatly strengthened by the insertion of an oak frame to support the front south-facing bedroom. Much of the work on this was carried out by Mandy’s son Joe, who worked on the project with builder Ian Logan.

The downstairs layout was altered several times during the lengthy planning process. The horseshoeshaped kitchen has a window – one of the two new openings they have been allowed – over the sink facing into the garden and a separate breakfast bar.

The original idea of a separate room to be used beside the kitchen as a study was dropped, and the area now forms a snug that merges into the dining area and relaxation space. The open plan interior this forms provides excellent entertaining space. “It is a very good house for parties,”Mandy says.

Both Andy and Mandy are full of praise for builder Ian. “He proved an extremely good problem solver and was able to buy in many of the things we needed at extremely good prices and pass on the savings to us,” Andy says. “This meant that, fees apart, we were able to keep within our original budget of £50,000 for the main work.

“We were also fortunate in achieving such a good overall price per square metre because a lot of the work had already been done when the barn was originally converted into a nursery school. For example, we did not need to do any work on the roof or roof structure. It was relatively easy to convert the children’s WCs into our own downstairs WC and wetroom.

“We also went to a lot of trouble to get the best prices for the things we bought ourselves and we made one or two major cutbacks to make savings — for example on the staircases.We were originally going to have them in oak, but for such a large and complicated piece of joinery it was going to cost about £5,000. So now the stairs are in Canadian yellow pine, which the two of us very carefully stained an oak colour, and have oak handrails. This reduced the price of the staircase to £2,500. We also used a cheaper stone flooring than we had originally planned, and made further savings by keeping the utility room basic and sticking to a fairly basic kitchen and worktops.”

Mandy says: “Despite all our traumas and battles with the planners, it has not put us off another project. However, if we were to buy another barn I don’t think we would be quite so impulsive and might do a few key checks more thoroughly before purchasing.”

Further reading

• A Traditional Barn Conversion
• Converting an Oak Barn
• A Guide to Converting Barns

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