Week Fifty-nine

Week beginning 17th July 2023.

Zadj and Carolyn are still here and are offering to do more to help so now that we have had brreakfast we can get on with it. Pete is fixing the extra bit of angled wall at the foot of the straight staircase while Zadj and Molly are fixing battens to the east wall of the return staircase and Carolyn is painting the tape on the double trusses with blackboard paint.

Now that the paint is dry Zadj and Molly are fixing more thin strips of timber on the double truss, over the painted tape. It’s a bit tricky lining it up and pinning it with tiny panel pins but it works a treat and looks really good.

We’ve had lunch and Zadj and Carolyn are heading home. They have been a big help to us these last few days, thanks you two.

We are working on making a frame to box in under the staircases where it is too low to use as storage space.

Molly has just spoken to Simon who tells us that his team will come and do the plasterboards next week. There are so many small and awkward details to fix before they come that we hope we can get them all done in time.

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It’s Tuesday so Pete is back at work. Molly is half expecting the electricians today but it’s all a bit ambigious so she’s just getting on with more wee tasks. She is measuring up some battens to cut for the boot room as we have to prepare the groundwork for boxing in all the electricals in that room. We’re planning to fit louvre doors to the top section so that we can get access to the Tesla controller and our consumer unit. The bottom section we are hoping to make shelving for shoes, boots, gloves and hats but we’ll need to wait and see what it looks like once everything electrical has been fitted there.

It’s clear that the electricians aren’t coming today but Molly is still making progress, cutting wee bits of OSB for an unfinished corner and fitting sound insulation between the internal wall studs.

It’ll soon be dinner but Molly is still at it. This time she is adding some brown material like leaves and long grass to make sure our compost mix is good.

It’s been another busy day for us both in different ways and we are glad to have some rest and a nice meal before having a wee stroll before bed.

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While Pete is getting on with his job, Molly is fitting more sound insulation. Now she is taping up the cables that the solar panel engineers fitted to the OSB between two of the trusses that take the power from the panels to the inverter. We are trying to be meticulous with our taping and checking what needs done after the tradesmen and engineers have done their work so that when we get the second pressure test we won’t get a nasty surprise.

Pete’s finished for the day so we are going to work together to fit some small battens around the bulkhead above the kitchen and see if we can find a solution to the area where the bulkhead meets the mezzanine wall. We can’t get in with a screwdriver in the last bit in the corner so we are gluing the last piece in with ‘Sticks like Sh*t’ adhesive. Here’s hoping it lives up to it’s name.

We are in Glen Strae for a wee walk to clear our heads and destress. It is so beautiful here it’s a shame we haven’t had more time to enjoy it.

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We are up bright and early because we are expecting a BT engineer any time after eight. We are finally getting our fibre broadband connected after a lot of tooing and frowing with BT. Luckily for us, there are quite a lot of good people, like Matthew the engineer, working for Openreach and BT who have helped us get the full fibre broadband that we want/need, inspite of some bureaucratic barriers. Thanks people we really appreciate it.

It’s lunchtime and the engineer has gone so Pete has come to see how the hubs have been fitted and he is taking a hissy fit because it wasn’t how he had planned it. Molly is really upset because Pete is being so unreasonable.

We are both upset, Pete realises it’s not a big deal, in fact it doesn’t make any difference at all, and on reflection he feels bad about how he reacted. He is feeling that the challenge of starting work again, in a new role, alongside trying to get the build finished, might be a bit more than he can chew. He’ll just have to try and stay calm and let things settle.

Molly is back fitting the sound insulation and Pete is back on his computer.

Our friends Katy and Martin arrive with their son Peter for a wee break on their way north. Peter has an uncanny gift for finding four and even five leafed clover and soon spots a few in our ‘garden’. Lucky us and lucky Peter.

Tomorrow’s another day and we can work together on the house again.

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It’s a lovely day here today and we can count ourselves lucky. Pete’s sister Anita in Italy is suffering from the extreme heatwave there and Eddie and his family are down south where there is a lot of rain.

We are carrying on preparing for the plasterboarding – adding some extra battens for fixing skirting boards, measuring and cutting timbers for boxing in on the mezzanines, more insulation and working out how to deal with blocking off the wee triangle at the foot of each of the staircases.

It’s three o’clock and Jeff the plasterer has arrived to have a look at our build and to discuss the possibility of taking on our house. We’ve heard a lot of good reports of the quality of his work so we are very excited that he has agreed to come and talk to us.

After a tour of the house and a long chat Jeff has invited us to come and see his work in another house nearby. He has been telling us about various specialist techniques he is trained in and we feel it would be amazing if we could incorporate something special in the way of plastering in our house. We particularly like some of the Venetian lime plaster we have been looking at on the webesphere.

We’re just back from checking out Jeff’s work and are well pleased with what we’ve seen. We have agreed to his price and he says it will take him 28-30 days to plaster the whole house. It’s very exciting for us because, although he can’t start until September, we now feel confident that the interior of the house will be beautiful and sharp.

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Went to Oban yesterday for the usual round of chores. We are both looking forward to the day when we won’t have to do this on such a regular basis because it takes a lot of time and means we don’t get much chance for R&R.

We are at it fairly sharpish this morning, Pete is finishing rerouting the network cables and removing the ones we don’t need now that they have moved our internet hub onto the west mezzanine and out of the boot room. Molly has done a small clothes wash and it’s another nice day so she’s hanging them on the scaffolding to dry.

With those tasks done we can now get on with lowering the height of the door apertures so that the doors we get will fit properly. We are being careful with our measuring and trying to make sure the timbers are level but as usual it’s not as straightforward as all that.

That’s the four doors done so we are starting on building the framing for boxing in the ventilation manifold on the west mezzanine. We have a plan so hopefully that’ll work.

We have had to modify our plan a bit and there’s been a bit of head scratching but we think we’ve cracked it. Most of the framing is in place but we have had to leave a few bits out until after the plasterboard in the eaves has been fitted.

Molly is cooking while Pete is writing the blog. Iit’s later in the week than previously but there is a lot of pressure on our time now that Pete is back at work.