Pulborough · 2022
An old storage barn converted into a two-bedroom annexe with a bathroom: new oak cladding outside, fully insulated, and oak windows, doors, stair and floors made and fitted to a frame that was left on show.
Tennant Carpentry & Building converted this old storage barn in Pulborough into a two-bedroom annexe with a bathroom. New oak cladding outside, fully insulated, with oak windows, doors, staircase and floors made for it — and the frame it was built around left where it stands.
It was storage. That is worth saying plainly, because it sets the size of the job: a building put up to keep weather off things does not have insulation, it does not have services, and it does not have any of the things that make a building somewhere to sleep.
All of that went in. The shell was insulated throughout, and the electrics and the plumbing were run through a structure with nowhere to hide them.
A barn is worth converting because of what holds it up. Cover that over and you have an ordinary building with an unusual footprint.
So the posts, braces, tie beams and rafters stay visible, and the panels between them are filled and finished flush. That is the decision the rest of the job answers to. There is no plasterboard void to run a cable through and no lining to hide a junction behind, so every socket, every switch and every place where new timber meets old is in plain sight and has to be right rather than covered.
Where that shows here is at the junctions, and the photographs are the argument. The bathroom door is hung inside the old opening rather than inside a new lining squared up within it. The glazed screens are cut to sit under the beam that was already there and against the post beside it, so their heads follow the timber rather than a level. The plank door on the landing is hung against a standing post, not against a stud put in to give it something straight to meet.
Each of those is a decision to fit to the building instead of correcting it. The cladding was treated the same way: it went on before the window openings were cut, so the openings follow the frame as it stands rather than a drawing of where the frame was assumed to be.
The cladding outside, the casements and their ironmongery, the plank doors on strap hinges, the staircase with its handrail and spindles, and solid boards on both floors.
The new oak went in pale against timber that finished darkening a long time ago, and the detailing here leans into that rather than trying to disguise it. The black ironwork does the work: strap hinges laid across the boards of the bathroom door, a thumb latch, the curled window fasteners. Set against pale new oak they read as chosen. Against the dark old frame they tie the two together, which is what carries the elevation through the years the colours take to close up.
Tile, glass and water want a flat, stable, square substrate. A frame that has stood for centuries offers none of the three, and here it is on show in the bathroom as well, so there is no stud wall to take the difference up in.
The glazed screens are made to sit against the beam and the post that were already there. The tiling works to a level while the timber around it does not. The drain is set flush into the floor rather than standing proud of it.
New oak cladding over the stone plinth, under the roof that was already there.
The winter photograph shows it pale, with the openings cut and nothing in them yet. By the August photograph it had begun to silver towards the colour it will keep, and the garden had grown back up against it.
How it went in
An old storage barn: dark boarding that had had its day, and the first opening cut through to find out what was behind it.
The cladding went on first and the window openings were cut through it afterwards. That is the right order on a building like this: the openings are then set out from the frame as it actually stands, rather than from a drawing of where the frame was assumed to be.
The reason to convert a barn is the thing holding it up, so the frame is not boxed in. That one decision governs the rest of the job: there is no plasterboard void to run a cable or a pipe through, and no lining to hide a junction that did not quite work. Insulation, wiring and plumbing all had to be worked in around timber that is on show.
Solid oak throughout, in wide boards run the length of the building. On a floor this open there is nowhere for a short board or a bad joint to hide.
Made and fitted for this opening. A stair is set out from the hole it goes into, and here the hole is bounded by timbers that are neither plumb nor parallel, so the flight, the newels and the landing balustrade were all cut to the building rather than to a standard rise and going.
The annexe's upper floor is open to the roof for its full length. The screens beside the stair are obscured rather than clear because they are borrowing daylight from one room into another, not offering a view through — and glazing them into the frame was the only way to move light around a plan with windows down one side only.
The barn holds two bedrooms. Plaster panels are filled and finished flush between the beams, so the frame reads as structure rather than as decoration stuck onto a flat wall — and every socket and switch had to be placed where the timber allowed rather than where a drawing would have put it.
The windows and doors were made rather than bought, which on this building is not a flourish — nothing here is a stock size, and no two openings are quite the same shape. They are hung on black ironmongery to suit the building.
The hardest room in a timber frame. Tile, glass and water want a flat, stable, square substrate, and a frame that has stood for centuries offers none of the three — and here it is on show in the bathroom too, so there is no stud wall to take up the difference.
New oak cladding over the stone plinth, under the roof that was already there. It went on pale; by the summer it had begun to silver towards the colour it will keep, and the borders had grown back up against it.
This project involved renovation and conversion work, hand cut and trussed roofs, bespoke fitted furniture. See more work across West Sussex.
Related work
A timber-framed barn taken back from collapse: the roof stripped to lighten it, the building jacked back to its original height, new base plates and posts let into the old oak frame, the stone walls rebuilt, and a tin roof chosen so it can come off again.
A kitchen and utility room designed and built on site — every unit and door made by hand in the room, the quartz worktop machine-cut in place, and the whole thing hand painted.
A trussed roof in Billingshurst that had moved for want of any bracing, pushing its brick gable 150mm out of plumb, taken apart and put back with the original tiles.
Showing 01 of 08