New look

Imagine a barn, a big empty rectangle of thick rock walls, a simple uninsulated tile roof.

Cutting holes in these walls is expensive. And putting in wires and pipes? Forget it. Much easier to simply build within the walls, should you wish to convert the barn to something else.

This is our house: a new wooden box inside an old barn (well, half the box - our neighbours live in the other half). The box doesn't quite fill the original walls - there's a gap along one side. And, to let in the light, the wall facing this gap is made of glass.

I loved looking out from our bedroom to the rafters and tiles, loved the visual reminder that we do indeed live inside a barn.

You noticed the past tense, right? Yeah, there was a problem with those bare tiles: whenever there was a lot of snow on the roof, any trapped melt water on top of the snow would run up under them, and inside.

Both C and I have a natural inclination towards design over function, but here function had to win.

Off came the tiles.

This was when we discovered that the original plan had been to have glass along this entire section of the roof, only the village vetoed this so instead we just got sky lights. (The range of acceptable house looks in this part of the world is small. Very small. As in, less than you can count on one hand.)

I kind of wish I never knew that, because I like the roofless look even better than the tiles.

We needed plastic sheeting to waterproof the roof, and since this is ugly, it had to be covered on the inside.

I know I'll get used to it, eventually. I know our house is beautiful, that we are lucky to even have any kind of roof over our heads, but still. I don't like it.

I miss the tiles.