Author Archives: dMb

Internal Painting in the Outbuildings

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Any work on internal paint finishes was intentionally excluded from the scope of the builders’ contract for the Outbuildings, giving the structure chance to dry out and allowing the opportunity to review how many of the rooms to paint. My Architect had suggested leaving all the blockwork walls unpainted, but two different lorry-loads of blocks had been used so the colour and texture of the upper walls was different from the lower walls. Painting the walls white also reflects a lot more of either natural or artificial light and the gritty grey dust that seems to be forever coming off bare concrete blocks gets sealed in by the paint, making for a much cleaner environment. (The extract-side filter on the MVHR system is also trapping a surprising amount of plaster-coloured dust, which can only be coming off the unpainted ceilings.)

While the overall impression is still very much that of a prison cell, the walls in the Outbuildings’ Shower Room look a lot better with a couple of coats of white emulsion paint.

White painted walls of the Shower Room and WC in the Outbuildings

The small Plant Room is next on the list, then the Utility Room (which has the same grey vinyl flooring as the Shower Room). While it would be nice to paint the Workshop too that’s not a high priority. I’m currently thinking all the unheated rooms (i.e. the Garages and Store Rooms) will just be left as bare blockwork.

Timber Fence Preservative

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The 65m run of ‘motorway’ post-and-rail fencing along the Eastern boundary of the site, installed in January 2026, always had much paler-coloured Rails than Posts – as can be seen in one of the photos of the adjacent Hornbeam hedge here. To help balance the colours and to prolong the life of the timber, the plan has always been to apply some dark-brown, oil-based timber preservative. Since the preservative effect is improved if that soaks into the wood as much as possible, the best time to apply it is when the timber has been able to fully dry out. The mini-heatwave at the end of May seemed like a good time to apply a first coat, with perhaps a second coat at the end of the Summer.

There are a couple of different treatments which are safer alternatives to traditional creosote, and Creosolv from Barrettine gets good reviews so is the one I selected. It’s quite a thin liquid and so tends to splash easily but it soaks into dry timber very well – especially end-grain and the ‘incised’ surface of the fence posts.

One section of the post-and-rail fencing with a coat of dark brown Creosolv timber preservative

The fence Rails, while being ‘rough sawn’ are actually quite smooth in places, which means the preservative soaks in much less well than on the Posts. On a hot day the product dries quickly enough for a second coat to go on straight away, so some of the Rails did get two coats – but they would benefit from a further coat at some point. Rather than applying that straight away it seems sensible to wait for the fence to dry out some more (and for the finish to ‘weather’ a bit).

65m of fencing needed about 22 litres of Creosolv, so the cheapest option is to buy one 20 litre barrel then top-up with the 4 litre cans if required.