Door draughts and planning

We always knew the farmhouse wasn’t the most energy-efficient of homes – with limited insulation in the converted attic rooms and the small fact of it being about 200 years old. But the two places we really noticed the cold were the front hall and back utility room – basically where the wooden external doors didn’t quite fit into the frames, and the cold air just came straight through the cracks. The lack of any draught excluder and the stone floors didn’t help either – especially in the back room where you were chancing it to try and get through without shoes or a coat! 

We added a brush draught excluder at the back door, but this made very little difference, and so when we had a few free days with good weather where we could leave the doors open all day, we took our opportunity! The door paint was pretty flaky anyway – and so a couple of hours of sanding back the doors and door frames got the worst off. We also decided to take out the cat flap on the back door, and seal the hole up with a random bit of wood from the ‘useful wood’ pile that was left behind by the previous owners. Our lovely carpenter neighbour also suggested a couple of great products to clean down our tired-looking doorstep and re-varnish it, making the most of the original wood texture (rather than staining it).

We’d found a pot of green paint that had also been left by the previous owners – presumably to paint the doors several years ago, although the doors had been significantly faded by the sun since then – and decided it was in good enough condition not to need to spend money on a new pot. And it’s made such a difference to the look and feel – nice and refreshed, and as good as new! We’ve also added a thick rubber seal to keep the worst of the draughts out – you can still see some light around the door but it’s not as bad as it was (in fact possibly a little too thick as you now need to push the door to shut it – which can be no bad thing we hope). We’ll just have to wait until colder weather to test it though! 

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Time was against us, as always, and we haven’t had time to repaint the black metal – just another thing to add to the never-ending to-do list! 

And a quick planning update for those who don’t follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Our second public consultation closed on Friday for the latest plans we’ve submitted – we had to revise our original ones to take into consideration concerns raised by the council’s planning department, as well as add a phasing plan for our listed cottage to run alongside the other barn renovations. We’re not sure yet when we’ll have a response from the council but it hopefully won’t be far away – and we’re keeping everything crossed that it’s a positive one. It’ll be such a relief to get onto the next stage, even if there are several more steps/months before we can actually break ground!