October saw the start of the next major phase of the project - the interior.
Work started with the arrival of the project's joiners, Ian Oakes (01538 723258) and his assistant, Phil, who immediately set about installing two huge rolled steel joists (RSJs) which support the upper deck floor. This floor is wholly supported by the RSJs and floor joists with no load borne by the blockwork partition walls on the ground floor. This should make any layout changes easier in the future (heaven forbid!).
We had decided that the entire ground floor would be covered with natural Dovedale grey slate apart from the bedrooms which would have solid, wide-board, European oak flooring. We also decided that the first floor would be in solid oak and so to enable the oak floor boards to run down the length of barn, a sub-floor would have to be laid, in pine, onto the floor joists. After much searching for reasonably priced, high quality oak, we discovered the solution right on our doorstep in Onecote! Adrian Plant (01538 304584) at Peak Oak showed us his range of solid oak flooring and we were amazed by the great value. We ordered the flooring straight away for delivery in the New Year, allowing plenty of time for the oak to acclimatise in the barn before fitting.
At this time, we arranged for connection of services to the barn as we had heard this could take a few weeks. We were subsequently shocked and infuriated when Severn Trent Water and Central Networks eventually took six months to get us connected!