Week beginning 29th April 2024.
This is our hundredth week of building our house and it has taken far longer than we could ever have imagined. Luckily for us there are no outside pressures to get it finished so we can keep our stress levels down.
There are stresses, often because of communication between us, we both look out onto the world through different eyes and have different understandings. When Pete was studying for his MSc in Social Anthropology he read Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception’. In the book he discusses at length his theory of perception and how that relates to space. Pete found all that very interesting and recognisable but having gone through the self-building experience it is clear that we, as a team of self-builders and a couple, have such differing perceptions and understandings of space and that has, at times, caused a lot of disagreement and tension. Luckily, neither of us hold a grudge and we move on quite quickly from those moments to focus on tackling the next task.
Although we are now tired from the hundred weeks of self-building, we are not feeling despondent or desperate about the situation. We just keep going, one challenge at a time, learning some new skills as we go along fulfilling all our tasks. We learned this from walking in the hills of Scotland where a beautiful day can turn against you and you just have to keep going, one step at a time and in the end you’ll get to your destination and feel great if a little tired, cold and wet.
The next weeks are all about finishing inside the house and making sure it looks good and as sharp as possible. Having a house with the characteristics of the self-builder does present additional complications for us because, in addition to the imperfect timber, not all the angles in the corners are exactly 90°. This means that cutting mitres and getting them to meet perfectly every time will be unlikely, if not impossible. Anyway, that won’t stop us doing our best so upward and onward as Pete says, or is it onward and upward as Molly says?
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We are starting the week by fitting more of the skirting boards we prepared last week. We only have a few bits to do in the living room, the area around the fridge, the wall under the east stair, under the built-in spice rack and between the units on the north wall and the units with the oven and hob.
We have our technique and the timber ready so it isn’t taking long. The piece between to the kitchen units is a left over piece of kitchen pelmet for the top of the larder cabinet. The kitchen supplier sent a three metre length even though we only needed 300mm so we have plenty left over and can use it here.
With that room just finished we have a visit from Molly’s cousins Mairi and Jane so we stop for coffee and biscuits and a good old chat. It’s lovely to see them, this is Jane’s first visit but Mairi has been before a couple of times and even came with Andrew for a day to help with the cladding.
We are back on the job but now we are fitting skirting in the hall. There are some tricky bits here with multiple mitres meeting in a small area needing to match up. After a bit of toing and froing we’ve managed to do a decent job of it.
We are checking how much timber we have left and it looks like we have enough for the guest bedroom and most of the master bedroom. Our laser digital measuring device is coming in really handy for this and we now have the measurements so we can start cutting more skirting boards. Our technique is to cut a mitre on a length that fits into a corner at one end and meets the door frame at the other, leaving it long at the door end. We then present the block we have designed for the bottom of the door frame to get the exact length of the skirt and voilá, we have it. For the skirt that sits between two corners, we just have to be very accurate and cut opposing mitres at either end.
Measuring and cutting the skirts for the master bedroom has been quite straightforward but the guest bedroom has the recess under the stairs, meaning we need to cut mitres for inside and outside corners. In this room we are starting at the door and working our way round clockwise. Each board has to meet the next one nicely before we move on to the next. Having done the four main walls we are now doing the tricky bit that goes around the end of a wall and into the recess. As predicted, some of the angles aren’t quite right so a bit of jiggery-pokery is required.
With all the skirting boards measured, cut and marked up (essential so that we don’t get confused later on), we can get on with given them a coat of primer/undercoat.
This has been a very satisfying day because when you open the front door and enter the house the skirting in the hall and living room are all fitted and it looks nice.
It’s a lovely evening so we are going for a walk after dinner. Spring is in the air because the trees are starting to come into leaf, there are bluebells almost everywhere and there is a lovely freshness to the look of everything. It really lifts the spirits.
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It’s Tuesday and we are getting on with painting the skirting boards we measured and cut yesterday. We give them one coat of primer and two coats of black, taking care to give them a gentle sanding between coats.
It looks like we have enough skirting left to measure up and cut sections for both shower rooms. We have checked the warped and cupped boards we tried to fix by scoring and clamping but it hasn’t made much difference. Not sure what we can do with them but hopefully they won’t end up as very expensive kindling.
Our ensuite shower room has the recess under the other stairs for us to contend with but we feel much more confident about measuring and cutting the skirting now so it’s not quite so difficult. The guest shower room is much easier but still has it’s own challenges.
We have a bit of time so we are out planting some trees we were gifted. Susan and Iain gifted us a Victoria Plum tree which, if all goes well and we do have green fingers, should give us an abundance of lovely sweet plums. We also have a hazel, an alder and a bird cherry that Zadjil and Carolyn gifted us. It’s difficult to know where best to plant them but we have decided that the plum tree will be in the area of our allotment, the bird cherry is above the turning area and the alder and hazel on the embankment between us and our neighbour. Pete also has three beech seedlings which we are plantng in amongst our hawthorn hedge.
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More painting this morning. We can do the first coat of black on the skirting for the shower rooms and the second coat for the bedrooms.
While those are drying we are looking at starting to measure up, cut and burn the larch that we are using on top of the walls and for the ballustrades. We are starting on the north west mezzanine wall. This is the simplest of the areas we will do this way but it also has the worst pieces of larch. One piece is quite cupped and the other has a lot of knots in it. We paid to have this larch kiln dried and planed in the hope that it would all be nice and straight and as perfect as possible but that was a bit of wishful thinking it seems.
We had hoped to mitre the corners here too but the cupped larch makes that imposible so we are going to settle for a simple butting up join. With the larch boards almost always being a bit bent we are having to try each board out in different ways, turning and flipping the board to find the way it sits on the wall best. Now we can measure and cut.
The skirting for the bedrooms is dry so we are fitting them. The laser level is a great help here and we would recommend investing in one if you do a lot of DIY or are a self builder, much better than a spirit level when working indoors.
It’s been a good day because we have made a start on the larch for on top of the walls and we have the bedrooms fitted with skirting, apart form one long length in the master bedroom which we will need to buy.
We are off to Oban now to go to the dump, pick up some supplies from Screwfix and do a shopping.
We are not long back from Oban when we have our daily visitor come a-knocking.
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It’s Thursday and we are fixing the skirting in the two shower rooms, we don’t have enough to get the job finished but there isn’t much more timber needed and it won’t take us long. We couldn’t buy the timber during yesterday’s trip to Oban because our old car, with the roofrack, is still in Edinburgh with Eddie.
We are now on to burning the first bits of larch for inside the house. Pete prefers to leave this job to Molly because she has experience of doing it and what she has done so far looks really good.
With the two bits of larch cut to length and treated with Shou Sugi Ban we can now fit them on top of the wall above the kitchen area. They look really good from up here and at a distance.
We are now feeling confident about working with the larch for inside the house so we are tackling the wall with the Venetian plaster. This one is a bit more tricky. One end of the board has to fit into the vaulted ceiling but also under a truss. This involves a 45° mitre cut and a cut out that also needs to be mitred. Our technique is to cut the end of the board with the chop saw set at 45° then, using a jigsaw, cut into the board and finally, using a handsaw, cut the mitre. We must be getting better because that worked well. We can now place the board along the wall and get an accurate length with a wee overhang at the open end.
Cate has come round for a coffee and it is so gloriously sunny that we are sitting outside making the most of it. On days like this it feels wonderful to be living in such a beautiful place, and if there were more like it there would be no need to head south to chase the sun.
We are on a roll so we are going to do the piece for the bottom of the straight stair case, by the kitchen. This one is tricky because we need to work out the angles for the cuts at the top, where it meets the wall, and the bottom where it overhangs the end of the wall. We are using two small but straight bits of wood to mark up the angle. Now we place the piece with the angle drawn on the chop saw, line up the blade so we can read off the angle then reset the blade so it can make a horizontal mitred cut at the correct angle.
We are cutting a test piece on an off cut to check the angle is correct. We need to make a slight adjustment because it is not quite straight where the larch meets the wall. We have marked up our test piece and are translating that to the chop saw.
Having presented the larch we find that our cut at the top is good so now we can mark up for the cut at the other end. Bingo! That looks sweet so Molly can now burn this piece and then we can fit it.
It’s been a good day because we were a bit worried about the larch, the angles and the cut outs but it has worked out fine so we can go forward with confidence.
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We are at breakfast and have just had a call to say that the flooring we have ordered is about to arrive. We are fitting bamboo flooring on both mezzanines. Orignally we wanted to fit marmoleum, a sustainable product mostly made of linseed oil, wood flour and jute, but the quote for supply and fitting proved to be ridiculously expensive and way beyond our budget.
The delivery guy has just dropped off 23 boxes of flooring, each weighing in at 29kg. Now we have to move them into the house. This is where one of our best purcheses comes in, our trolley, making moving heavy objects a piece of cake. Getting them from the drive to the front door is easy enough but now we need to carry them into the house. It isn’t far but it still brings out a sweat in us.
Molly has run over from the caravan to get Pete and show him the unwelcome self-builder she found there. A wasp is in the process of building a nest. While this is beautiful and fascinating it is not a good idea to have a wasp anywhere near people so we are going to have to lock it out. We’re sure it wil;l find somewhere else to build.
We are now going to attempt one of the most challenging bits of larch, the piece that runs up the return stair case. At one end we need to cut a mitre, with a cut out for the post with the finial, and at the other end we need to cut the angle that will meet the horizontal piece that runs along the top of the wall.
We have taken our time and a lot of care and have managed to repeat the process that we used on the piece under the vaulted ceiling with the cut out for the truss. It’s a nice fit. Now we are discussing how to get the angle at the top. It’s difficult to get the right angle and we keep making test cuts on scraps of larch adjusting a little each time.
It has taken a lot of time and effort to get this angle right but we are ready to make the cut now. If it’s wrong we will have a problem because we don’t have any spare long boards so it has to be right. We’ve made the cut and presented the board and it is looking good so Molly can now burn it and then we can fit it.
With that done we now need to sort out the sleeping space for Zadjil and Carolyn who are staying here during their diving weekend in the sea near Oban. We are going to Edinburgh for a family birthday celebration tomorrow but tonight we’ll sleep in the mega-shed.
The weather is still good so we are having a BBQ and eating outside. Happy days!
