Whoop Whoop! The dastardly slurry tank has gone at last!

We've been looking at this tank since the day we found the barns and have been imagining that view beyond. It's been a long and not simple process to get here, but now at last it's gone! Dismantling it was not the easiest of jobs and at times quite scary watching two guys wrestle with the massive metal sheets from within a shark cage attached to the forks of the tele-handler. Boom! Boom! rings across the quiet countryside as each of the fifty seven 100kg panels crashes down onto the concrete base. Ah yes, the concrete base ... what to do with that? Add a big 'H' and learn to fly a helicopter perhaps? Next year's project maybe...

So what else has changed? Well, it's mostly inside with more insulation getting stuffed into every crevice, as well as miles of pipes for the underfloor heating and reels of wires all heading to the carefully thought through plug socket and light fitting locations. We have a water tight plant room ready to get the ground source heat pump commissioned so it can power the underfloor heating and help dry out the next layer of floor screed when it goes down in a couple of weeks.

The roofers have been beavering away under the cover of the wrapped scaffolding and doing a fabulous job of putting back all our lovingly cleaned tiles. It's looking fabulous! The structure of the long barn roof is STILL not under construction yet, delayed this time by not getting the scaffolding in place when expected. But we've sanded and cleaned all twelve of the massive oak rafters, so they're ready and waiting to go up. We are keeping everything crossed that the scaffolding will go up and be 'wrapped' in the next few days before the bad weather returns. Once it's up then we should be water tight ready for getting the Long Barn looking more like the rest of the building.

As well as re-laying the tiles, the roofers have had to fit the rather excessively large entrance to the "bat hotel". It's a long and frustrating story that despite no evidence of there ever being in the barns, we are having to provide for Lesser Horseshoe bats, who like to "fly in" rather than crawl through very slim front doors, like most other bats! ... I'd be very excited and welcome them if they came, but I think we'll be lucky. I'm sure the reality is that we will be providing some expensive real-estate for crows and jackdaws.

I've maybe not explained before that the whole series of barns we are converting form an L shaped building which is made up of four joined barns. All are now connected having knocked through the very thick walls to allow it to flow. Three sections run east-west and consist of the the Milking Parlour Annex, the Tower Barn which has a first floor level and the third section makes up the Entrance Hall with study and a cloakroom. This then leads straight to the fourth barn (the 'Long Barn') which runs at right angles southwards from the first three. This Long Barn is going to be where our main living space will be with open plan kitchen, dining and sitting area under a mezzanine level and vaulted ceiling, looking out across the southerly view that the absent slurry tank now gives us.

We've had some stresses, as well as many frustrations over the last few months. We've both learned a lot and in hindsight would have done a few things differently, but we are still on course with the dream. Each day I just feel so very thankful to be in a place I love and helping to create something that I hope will be good.