Barn 1 hasn't been finished yet. The electricity situation has dampened down the drive to push to a completion. When we have a date for electricity it will hopefully be all systems go and we will re-order the kitchen to time it to be fitted at the same time as the electricity is switched on. The bathrooms can also be completed as the water will also be connected up at the same time as the electricity. We seem to have paid a lot of bills eg water and electricity without seeing any of the actual products! Interestingly we did get a bill for a tv license which was mildly amusing, and no, we didn't pay it. While rain and snow has stopped play (brick cleaning) we have been doing some of the more fun research like looking at lighting and wooden floors and bathrooms. I have to admit that it would be nice to have a normal life back and actually live in the barns.
Now there is a push to clear the front of the barns. The huge pile of bricks to clean has almost been converted into a pile of rubble and pallets of bricks. The process entails digging through the brick pile and sorting out the good bricks from the broken bricks. The good bricks are cleaned and stacked on pallets and ultimately converted back into barn building. The brick pile is the remains of barn 3 which was scooped up and shifted around to the front of the barns. As we have time pressure to tidy up the front (at the neighbours request) the good bricks are being partially cleaned (the big lumps of mortar knocked off) and then palleted up ready to be moved into the courtyard where they can be finished off and used for the rebuild. This has become a critical process as the bricklayers are running out of cleaned bricks.