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.