Week Eighty-nine

Week beginning 12th February 2024.

Another week begins and we are just sorting ourselves out for another day’s building when the electricians arrive to sort out the mains cable from the house to the mega-shed. The task is much easier than we had anticipated so it hasn’t taken long and Pete can fill the holes back in.

We are in the house tidying up a bit and moving any building materials into the guest bedroom so that all the other rooms are clear and ready for when we fit the skirting boards.

Molly is moving some cladding boards into the mega-shed to dry off a bit, ready for fitting around the windows. We are hoping to get on with cladding the mega-shed later in the week if the weather is kind to us.

Cate, our neighbour, has popped by for coffee and a chat. She is heading off to Canada soon to see her newly born first grandchild, Clara. Congratulations to you all.

Molly is doing more work on the sills for the bedrooms and finishing off the Shou sugi ban on the cap for the vent in the guest bathroom.

Our final task for the day is to resize the area where the polycarbonate windows in the meg-shed are. Our new plan is to make the windows shorter and then to add two more to that elevation. Originally, the north elevation had a huge double garage sized opening with a view to using the mega-shed to build the timber frame. We then built the frame at Andrew’s workshop and so didn’t need that huge opening afterall. We had reduced the size of the opening and added the windows and a double door. Now our plan is to fill in the double doors with two more polycarbonate windows, a far cheaper option than fitting the French doors we have been considering up until now.

We have taken off the interior polycarbonate sheets and fixed some additional framing. At a later date we will add insulation and OSB, cut down the polycarboante sheets and refit them, adding some waterproof membrane and battens to the outside. We will also need to build the frames for the two new windows to match. Lots to do here but it will create quite a bit of extra natural light.

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It’s Tuesday again and the new routine is setting in – Molly is off to Pickleball this morning and Pete is working.

We’ve had lunch and Molly is off to Oban to do the usual run to the dump and to do the shopping. No need to stop for a shower there because we have our own working shower now. Yahoo!!!!!

Molly isn’t long gone and Des and his son, John, have arrived to silicon seal both the shower rooms. He has done a great, very neat job using dfifferent colours of silicon to match the wet walls, the shower trays and the screens. Pete had thought about trying to do the silicon sealing but realised he would never be able to do a perfect job on it and that would look rubbish.

Molly is back from Oban and is unpacking the shopping and Pete is finishing up his work and shutting down his laptop. With the days beginning to stretch it is still light enough to go to our container and bring over our dinning table so we have something decent to eat on. This and some chairs is the only furniture we are bringing into the house until all the finishing has been done because several people have warned us that if we move in before everything is finished then it won’t get finished. We are taking heed of that.

Getting the table out of the container was a struggle and we tried to find some other useful kitchen items but that was a nightmare. We realise that we’ll just have to be patient and put up with the limited amount of stuff we have for a while yet.

Our table looks far too big for our new living space so we might have to rethink that, what a disappointment. It could well be that when we get all our furniture and belongings into the house a few more things won’t work and will need some rethinking. We’ll find out soon enough.

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Pete is away at work today so Molly is getting on with some of the finishing in the house. First of all she is doing another coat of varnish on the vent cap and adding the sides. It is looking good installed in the guest shower room.

Now she is lining the nooks we have built into the walls with some 3.6mm plywood she picked up in Oban yesterday. The tall narrow one in the living space is a bit tricky because when Pete made the nook he didn’t frame it properly so there is a big gap at the back on one side. It’s a bit of a headscratcher but it’s done now and looks just fine.

Pete has arrived back and isn’t even out of the car when Jef arrives for a wee visit. It’s great to see him as we miss having him and Kirsty around. Jef is about to leave and we have agreed to get together at the weekend. That’s somethng to look forward to.

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Pete’s away with work again so Molly is working on the lining of the nooks again, doing some sanding, caulking and painting. They are looking really good and the paint is matching the plaster really nicely.

Susan and Iain have just arrived, stoppping off for a visit en-route to Luing. They haven’t visited for quite a while, in fact we hadn’t even ground and polished the floor last time so the kitchen, the doors and the showers weren’t in then.

After a really lovely visit and a spot of lunch it’s time for them to head off to catch the ferry and it’s time for Molly to get back to work. It’s always nice to get visits and positive feedback about our build, and now people are getting a sense of our style which is going down well too.

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Another Friday so Pete can start contributing to the build again. The weather is good this morning so we are going to start cladding the west elevation of the mega-shed. We have already fitted the two sills and the reveals around the windows so we can now fit the 75mm boards to either side of each window. To do this we need to cut notches out to allow for the sills which is a bit tricky.

Our first attempt has not gone well because the notch is far too big. The challenge is that the sill is sloping at about 10° so we have to cut the notch at that angle too to get a neat finish. Sometimes our measuring isn’t the best and in cases like this you can’t get away with it.

Finally we have an acceptable result and can fit the board. It has taken us all morning to fit the four boards with the notches cut out. We are hoping that we can be much more productive this afternoon because the measuring and cutting will be easier.

We are stopping now because we are having Steve round for dinner tonight and we have managed to do a good stretch of cladding. We’ve been lucky because it hasn’t rained or been cold so working outside has been fine.

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It’s Saturday and it’s dry again today so we are getting on with the cladding. We should be able to get this elevation finished, as long as the weather holds out.

It has gone well and we have done as much as we can cladding this elevation so we are going to try and fit the downpipe from the gutter to the drain.

It is proving to be a bit of a hassle caused by the fact that the insulation for the foundation was too big and so the cladding doesn’t overhang the drain in the right position. Our problem is trying to make sure that the down pipe isn’t so far offset form the wall that it looks ridiculous while at the same time it sits over the drain properly.

Pete is having to cut the straight pipes and the bends several times until we get the whole thing to sit in the way we want. We also have to make blocks that off set the brackets to the correct distance, a right carry-on! We think we have everything about right now so Molly is touching up the cut edges with the special paint that comes with the Lindab Magestic guttering and downpipe system. We’ll need to let that dry properly so we’ll fit the downpipes another day.

Unfortunately our planned get together with Jef and Kirsty has been cancelled but we can look forward to doing that another time. Tomorrow we have been invited to lunch by Monica in Tarbert, whom we haven’t seen since long before Christmas, so that’s something to look forward to.

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It’s a nice dry morning and with everything ready we use the time we have before heading to Tarbert to fit the downpipe.

It’s been another productive week with a number of the indoor tasks completed and, much to our delight, the cladding started on the shed. This is something that we have been wanting to get on with for ages so it feels good.