After much deliberation, several meetings and quite a lot of angst, we now have an architect and a building contractor. Pheee-ew. As we have no experience whatsoever with barn conversions, we have put our fate (and our money) into someone else's hands. We intend to be involved as much as possible, but we have no illusions about our ability to project manage our barn(s) conversion. Hopefully we have made a good choice, but time will tell. We went for a local combination of architect and contractor with the decision being made on a number of factors; recommendation from friends, examples of their combined work and a gut feel, if you like, that they appear to be on the same wavelength as us. Why an architect when we have full planning permission? Well, inevitably we want to make a few changes to the existing plans and we need building regulation drawings as well as input from a structural engineer. All in all, we couldn't bypass the need for an architect. Unfortunately, this will add delay to the start time for our build, especially as builders all seem to be inundated with work. We have discussed endlessly how we could have done things quicker, but there is so much information to gather (for us newbies anyway) and after all, it will be the biggest expenditure we have ever made in our lives and we just cannot afford to get it wrong. So, that is that. Not much more will happen until we have our new plans in place, although it will feel more like our future home when we talk about our house wishlist with the architect. In the meantime, we will continue to research our heating and sewarage options, do a bit of gardening and ground clearing and look at bathroom and kitchen catalogues!