We bought Cae Helygen farm, Bontnewydd, Caernarfon along with all the farm buildings and 3 acres in June 1998, Ifan Hughes a local farmer from Pontllyfni bought the other 24 acres. We moved down the hill from Rhostryfan, and 5 of us lived in a caravan for 2 years while we rebuilt the main house. The shower was in one of the barns, as was the elsan toilet.
Over the years we have renovated 2 other barns a pigsty and an outside brick built store, in 2013 we also bought another 3 acres. All that remained was what to do with the biggest barn.
In 2014 we went through the process of getting planing permission on the big barn to convert it into a holiday let.
View from the yard
The kitchen
View from the back- this will become the main entrance to the barn
The barn was in poor condition but it could be saved and we like a challenge - particularly as we would be doing a lot of the work ourselves, with support where needed from experts!
It was a simple process which just took some time and a fair amount of money.We employed local architect Alun Merion, who worked with us on some options. We wanted the barn to remain as traditional as possible.
We had a structural survey on the building, and a bat survey. The structural survey suggested that we needed a new roof and a few other observations, and fortunately we were bat free.
Then we started the process in May 2014 took the plans through planning, and planning was approved in October 2014. Then there was work on building regulations approval- structural engineers Datrys from Caernarfon produced the structural package, and finally building regulations approval which was granted on 17th April 2015.
The cost for that whole process was about £5.5k before we even lifted a trowel.
Architects fees- £2178- sketch, drawings and planning application
Structural survey- £450
Bat survey- £250
Planning- £330
Building regs- £830
Structural engineers package- £900
Build it Yourself
We decided that we would need to manage the project and do quite a lot of the work ourselves, using sub-contractors and trades for things we couldn't do or didn't have the time to do.
The first job was to clear the building and take the remaining roof off which James helped me with, we removed all of the slates which we could and saved as much wood as possible for decorative use in the building.
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