Tiny Houses, Barns, and Cabins - highly insulated, on & off-grid architectural gems.
Barns are for Barn Owls of course! That’s the nest box installed, the outer platform built and the door open for business (not to mention the field full of nice fat voles). Anyone got a spare barn owl please?
Lined with pine needles.
With the access door off.
Access door in place.
I decided to use mesh for the platform to prevent the usual drainage issues.
Hay loft doors draught stripped and fully lined.
Finally finished the gable cladding right up to the owl entrance this morning in between stormy showers. That’s all the cladding done so just need a run around with the filler before a final coat of paint. Still got the doors to paint…wait for the colour! and still doing first fix on electrics. Nearly done.
That’s the upper storage area all finished apart from the space above the doors. The plan was to have an owl nest box inside with an access tunnel through the insulated panel. We have not had much luck with the owl box in the poplars which has been up for over three years now but I still think its worth giving it a try…after all - it IS a BARN!!!
Tiny Barn prototype panel construction. The west elevation will have the cladding inset to show the framing details.
The rain screen, fly screen bottom vent construction detail, all ready for the shiplap cladding
The rear elevation is being fully clad and although this hides the framing detail it is actually the hidden side of the building.
insulated panel 100mm cavity filled with rockwool
The frame was drawn in Sketchup then fully cut and jointed in the workshop before assembly. I decided to build the three lateral bents first and there was the advantage that the North end joins on to the existing barn - so this one went up first and was connected to the footing brackets as well as having several through-bolts into the masonry barn wall.
It was then easy to erect the middle bent using two of the purlins to set the horizontal distances and provide propping while connecting to the footing brackets.
Extension to existing 100mm thick slab with rebar then integral 90cm cardboard tube footings for the posts.
690mm tall, these finials were inspired by my love of victorian railway architecture and made for our barn. I hadn’t used the lathe for a long time so it was quite a challenge to end up with two identical forms.
They were turned from lime wood, primed, painted with Jonathan Avery Sabbathday Blue and stuck on with silicon - no mechanical fixings! Why do it? Well they emphasise the structure almost like punctuation!
Barn Finials by Jonathan Avery
