The posts of the barn are planned to sit on brick plinths (see The Plan). With the post centres marked (see Marking Out) we were ready for the brick plinths to go in. I’m no brick layer. It was time to pull in our local perfectionist general builder – Mike Hillier. Prior to his arrival I’d cut the bricks to size.
To help Mike get started I created two plywood templates.
The larger one…
…was designed to drop onto the screw marking the post centres and define the edges of the brick plinth.
The second template was the 200mm x 200mm square, the dimensions of the posts and was a check that the post would fit on top of the complete plinth.
Anyway, Mike did a brilliant and as soon as the plinths had gone off we were able to revise our centre post dimensions.
As you can see, Mike was pretty much millimetre perfect in his work. These are the dimensions we will use when making up the frame.