Week Thirty-five

Week beginning 30th January 2023

It’s Monday morning and the weather has improved, although we are told it is the calm before the storm, so we are going to get the next two courses of insulation onto the east elevation. It’s always so much easier and nicer working in the sunshine so we are in good spirits.

Some careful measuring and cutting is required here as we are fitting around the top of the window and door.

We can’t get any further with the insulation because we don’t have enough left to finish to the top so we’ll have to wait for a delivery.

In the meantime we can tape the membrane that goes round the ring beam in preparation for fitting the timber that will support the balcony at the wall head.

We have decided to tackle the drip detail at the bottom of the roof. Pete has been putting this off for some time, he doesn’t really know why, but with Molly’s encouragement we are getting on with it.

The weather has turned before we have finished doing the drip detail and we are both dripping, which is also a detail.

The weather came in hard last night, blowing a gale and pouring with rain. Some of the gusts rocked the caravan and it was a bit scary.

It’s still blowing a gale and there are some strong gusts this morning and it’s brinigng in some heavy downpours so it’s indoor work for us today.

We have cut the remaining OSB for the drip details and there is a break in the weather so we are going to finish what we started yesterday.

We are back inside after finishing the drip detail and it is raining again so we need to take on some indoor tasks.

We are giving the house a good tidy up and getting the insulation offcuts bagged ready to go to the dump. Given the amount of insulation we have been putting into and onto the building there really isn’t much waste. This is a good thing on a lot of levels, not least because natural wood fibre insulation is very expensive.

Pete is cutting up some palettes we have been drying off in the house. He finds it very intersting that the palettes that brought the insulation from Germany and the windows from Norway are made of nice, usable, good quality wood. The local palettes are much older and have obviously had a hard life which gives them a nice patina like the ones we used on the toilet door.

Having looked at our to do list, we are cutting the timbers that lie over the thresholds into the rooms, Before today we had only cut the front door, French window and balcony door threshold timbers. We have to saw them by hand and try and do a neat job and not ruin the concrete.

It’s really amazing what a difference to the feel and look of the space removing the threshold timbers makes, it’s another wee step to being a real house.

There was another storm last night and the wind gusts were much stronger, in fact Molly got up in the middle of the night to repair the awning because one of the poles had come loose. Being in the caravan during the storm was making us feel quite vulnerable when the gusts were particularly strong. We had heard that people sometimes tie down their caravan if a storm is coming, we know why now!

Amazingly it is completely calm this morning and, having had a look around, we haven’t suffered any damage. So, this morning we are going to fit the timber for the balcony. We need to make sure it is completely level and positioned correctly and to make it secure enough we are taking a ‘belt and braces’ approach. We are going to glue, nail and screw the timber onto the ring beam to make it strong enough.

Having measured and cut the timber we have found that the tie-down straps on the wall are preventing the timber lying flat against the wall so Pete is carefully chiselling out sections of the timber to allow it to lie flush.

We have just finished fixing the timber and the rain is back so we are covering the wall with the tarpaulin to protect it until we get the delivery of insulation and can finish the job.

Pete is cutting up the last of the good palettes and Molly is doing some shed reorganising.

Back inside, we have decided to insulate and sheet the inside of the south elevation of the shed and get the place tidied up ready for visitors this weekend.