A barn into a workshop/man cave build

[EddyP]

Last year we bought a lovely place that had a knackered old barn.
 
Now most people would think barn conversion, turn it into another house, flog it off, make some £££, it had even had planning permission previously for doing this.
 
But that would be a waste of a good barn!, so I had a different plan........
 
Unfortunately the house had to take the priority, so my nice organised workshop from our old place ended up like this:
 

And that was only half of it!
 
This is what the barn looked like when we were looking around prior to purchase, at the time there was a wall blocking off the driveway so the entrance was by driving through the barn!
 

 

 

 

 

 
This was us on moving day, everything had to be carried through to the house as the trucks wouldn't fit through the barn.
 

 
One of the first jobs to do was to get the wall across the driveway taken down and turned into a proper entrance so that I could then close the barn up.
Once this was done a new pair of doors needed to be made for one side of the barn as they were missing, they're big doors too!
Unfortunately the property is Grade II listed, as a result of this every little thing needs planning permission, even if we wanted to change the guttering or fix the roof, we need permission, it's a real pain, but we don't mind. I did meet the local conservation officer before we bought the place and told them of my intentions for the barn and had an OK, if they hadn't been on board we wouldn't have bought it.
 
Once our planning permission came through we could get started on the drive way wall.
 

 

 

 
Picked up some beefy Oak gate posts:
 

 
And just popped them in, 1 metre deep.
 

 
Then the walls could be built:
 

 

 

 
Finished:
 

 
Now time for the proper work to begin:
 

 

 
And then I could finally park a car inside!
 

 
Not for long though as quite a lot of work is about to start.....

Edited by EddyP on Wednesday 4th January 21:38

Edited by EddyP on Wednesday 4th January 21:41

[EddyP]

magooagain said:

None of the photo's are showing/working.

Oops, fixed now.

[EddyP]

C Lee Farquar said:

I see we use the same sawmill! Amazing place.

He was a great guy, bargain price and had some impressively scary unsafe saws! He also put the points on the top of the posts with a chainsaw and they're spot on!

As for the plans, keep a watch of the thread


Once the original pair of doors were closed up I wanted to add some more security so they were boarded up, they won't ever be used for driving in/out. It also adds a bit of insulation and weather proofing.
The little hatches in the boarding are so that I can get to the latches on the gates to open them incase I need to do any repairs to them in the future, they're pretty old and the timber has seen much better days.



Now to start painting, I only wanted to paint the sections that had previously been painted/ lime washed, I didn't want to lime wash as it's a complete PITA but instead I've used a modern breathable paint, it's important with old stone work to make sure that everything can breath, if it can't you end up with damp problems or render falling off the walls.

Picked up an airless sprayer at a bargain price from Amazon last year in the Christmas sales:



And managed to convince the wife that she could help by doing all the fiddly cutting in:















Before and afters:

[EddyP]

paulwirral said:

You know what I mean , but no one needs to worry until the op enquiries about soundproofing !

Funny you should mention that, it could do with a bit of insulation for both heat and sound, can't have my "friends" getting cold

[EddyP]

Made the mistake of parking the TVR against the wall. Bugger




Time to paint the floor!

Start off with an acid etch





Smoothed out some cracks



Got the wife giving it a clean



Getting the primer down





Now time for some top coat





Don't appear to have taken any photos when I finished painting though which was a bit of a mistake.

I did start having a look at some electrics too, got a few sockets to put in



Also started to run some trunking around the top of the walls



Haven't got many other electrical photos, need to take some.

A delivery arrived to distract me from electrics though....

[EddyP]

Accelebrate said:

I was reading your thread on Garage Journal, spotted the TVR and thought I bet he's on PH

Brilliant space, and great additions so far!

Haha.
There's a forum for everything, thought it was right to show the yanks how us Brits do a garage

They have some awesome builds over there though don't they! Lucky buggers.