I like the barn chimney but it needed rebuilding and there is no point having the remains of a chimney above an opening. The inside of the chimney was removed in the past. I removed the middle to fit the lintel and now the top part needs to go.

The props under the chimney are there for an abundance of safety but have been moved around so I can get the scaffold tower close to the chimney.

I supported the ridge beam too but need not have bothered as it has rotten through. That is not how you do chimney flashing and water must have been getting in for many years. Some roofing repairs to do later on. The rotten rafter wasn’t attached to anything.

The chimney came apart easily. It was in need of rebuilding and the bricks could be lifted off. I think the top 15 courses of the wall must have been half brick originally. The inner half brick above the purlins has been added in later using cement.

The chimney is out and I’ve started building back upwards. There are more bricks to come out to get back to a sensible brick bond, but if I try to get them all out at once then more bricks will probably fall out. I’ll do it as I go.

Only a couple of days work before a heatwave stopped play. But I thought this was a pretty photo. Some more wall has come down on the left as the inner course of bricks on that side was wobbly.

Removing a chimney leaves a bit of a hole in the roof. I replaced the rotten bit of ridge board. The new section is fastened to a couple of rafters using a cut down joist hanger. I’ve kicked it up at the end to match the other end of the roof and reduce the rain water falling onto the gable.

The felt and batons have been cut back to the next rafter and I’ve screwed a new piece of rafter into the side to sister it so I have somewhere to nail the new batons. The new rafter closest to the camera goes down as far as the purlin. I just need to overlap some new roofing membrane and extend the batons then I can get back to laying bricks.

The roof got some underlay and batons and I put some tiles in place to see how badly they would match. It is important to be able to read the changes to an old building so I’ll make sure the ridge tiles needed to continue past where the chimney was don’t quite match either. I copied what was there but it would have been easier if I had extended the batons a couple of inches further.

The wall is almost up to the top. I decided to add a cast iron vent as the ridge isn’t ventilated. I’ll also add some eaves ventilation before I insulate the inside of the roof.

The weather has been very hot this summer which has delayed the roof. The chimney removal didn’t take much more than a week but a month has passed. We had 30C+ temperatures with no cloud for 3 weeks and it wouldn’t have been much fun to work on the roof.

The ridge tiles are finally on and the roof is complete. They don’t quite match the original ridge tiles but that isn’t too noticeable from ground level. Hopefully everything will weather in.

The barn would make a fabulous kitchen. But it would also make a fabulous workshop and I’m a lot more interested in cars than cooking.

First thing is making a garage door opening so I can get a car in. After a break of more than two years I’m more disorganised than ever and my arms are sore again. First step is to prop the wall up and make a hole for the lintel. Slots were made to insert the strong boys before the rest of the bricks were removed.

I went down a few more courses then built the sides of the opening back up. I figured if I had a few courses of support they should stay in place while I excavate the rest of the opening below.

The lintel is 3m long and the bearings are 300mm which gives an 8 foot opening width. The lintel is much more substantial than it needs to be. It came galvanised but lime mortar won’t get on with that so I painted it, then felt that gloss paint might be a bit slippy so coated it with blue grit to give the mortar something to hold on to.

Next step is building the wall back up from the lintel to support the top of the gable again so I can remove the acrow props.

The first 3 courses of brick sit inside the I beam lintel. My bricks are odd shapes and I didn’t have quite enough room in the I beam so I ended up cutting 10mm off the back of 108 bricks to make them fit.

Finally the wall was built up another couple of courses to support the upper part of the wall. There are still one or two bricks to go in where the acrow props were in the way. I’ll give the mortar a day or two to dry before removing the supports to finish off.

I was surprised how well the metric lintel fitted my imperial bricks. I could set the height of every course where I wanted and you wouldn’t know the lintel was there.

Stay tuned – next job is removing the chimney.