Week Three

Week beginning 20th June.

We had a lovely weekend in Edinburgh visiting the family and catching up with friends, although it was a bit strange going to Portobello as visitors, a very different feeling from living there. We watched the Porty Pride Prom Dog Walk then our grandchildren added their contribution to Pride by making a big sign in the sand.

We started early on Monday because our aim is to get all the panels finished by the end of the week, so no time for late sleeping. Before getting stuck in we had to wrap the second stack of panels ready for Andrew to move on top of the first stack.

Our first day back was productive and we managed to make the next two panels, GF7 which will be for the French windows and GF8 which is the guest bedroom window panel.

Today we started by making a straightforward panel with no windows or doors and it took us a bit over an hour, pretty good considering we only began learning how to do this two weeks ago.

Our final exterior panel for the house was not a simple build because it has a window and the main door inserted so needs a lot of extra support. We had to make the lintels for both which involves measuring, cutting and nailing three lengths of 45mm x 195mm timber. The lintels for the door was quite long and so was quite heavy.

To support the lintels we needed to nail three crimple studs to a king stud for each side of the lintel. Then lintels sit on top of the crimple studs for support. Once nailed together and all the other studs and the OSB is added these constructions are really heavy. We really stuggled to lift today’s last panel onto the stack, partly because a nail went all the way through and attached the panel to the work bench. Dohhhh!!!!

Although we’ve made great progress we still have all the panels for the interior walls of the house to build as well as the gables for both buildings, if we can keep it up we should get this done by the end of next week.

It would be really interesting to know if the amount of timber we have been instructed to use for the windows and doors is a case of over engineering, admittedly we are no experts but it does seem to be a case of the ‘belt and braces’ approach. If so, this has consequences on the amount of time to build, materials used and sustainability of our building process.