We had very little time here in 2001, and most of that went to gigs and guests, so our next bit of progress came in...
May, July & August 2002

Only one of the barns still had most of its old slate roof intact, but a tree had fallen onto the back of it years before.
The ivy had grown in through the roof, and even through the walls, which were built without mortar.

There was so much vegetation on the roof that Mike (above) had to set up scaffolding inside the building and pull the slates out from under the thick mat of roots. Tania tried to deal with it as a roof-top gardening project, but Mike eventually had to finish it off with crowbar and machete. The rafters were past their sell-by date.


Our friend Billy (left) helped us out with major re-building work on the walls, while Mike pushed on with the woodwork (below), and Tania kept an eye on quality control.


Building in Ireland is always a race with the rain. We had no sooner felted and lathed one side of the roof, and Mike nailed on the first few slates, than the rain returned and we ran out of time. We hastily covered our new roof structure with plywood and plastic sheeting to protect it through the winter, and we hit the road again.

The front...

...the back...

... and the view.



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