Week Five – Part Two

We’re on to our final tasks in the workshop this week and are reorganising the last stack, wrapping it in plastic to protect it from the elements and to making sure all the stacks are in the right order for when the lorry comes to transport them up to our plot. We are also cutting the timber to size for our work table and chop-saw bench, ready to assemble as soon as the shed is built.

After making the panels for both buildings we managed to keep the amount of waste timber fairly small. We have some OSB left over for use when the frame is erected and some other unused timber, but a lot of it is pretty useless as it is bent and twisted.

This is most of the waste timber from making the panels. Some of it can no doubt be salvaged by Andrew for other uses.
A wee reminder, this was our stack of timber at the beginning of the project.

We’re moving things forward with the groundworks and have had meetings and phone calls with Scottish water, SSEN, our groundworks contractor, Lorne, and a company who hire portaloos. It looks like our start date for the groundworks will be 18th July by which time we will have moved our caravan back to the plot, with the help of Molly’s cousin Duncan, and the portaloo will be in place.

We now have our house name and a postbox installed on the plot, which is very exciting and makes us feel like we are establishing ourselves there finally.

Wild strawberries.
A wee handful of delicious wild strawberries from our plot.

The plot won’t look as nice as this for long because as soon as the groundworks start most of the greenery will disappear and be replaced by mud, Type 1 stones and drainage and waste water trenches. Our hope is that once the house and shed are built we can re-establish a lot of the native plants, including the wild strawberries, and have the garden to the south of the house feel quite natural.

Once we are living in our caravan on the plot things are going to be a bit more difficult for us. We won’t have the facilities that living on Tarbert Holiday Park offers.

Tarbert Holiday Park has been our home since 1st July. The facilities have made the transition to living in the caravan easy.

It will take some time to get the sewage treatment plant up and running so we will use the portaloo until then, rather than the caravan’s toilet, and we have no idea when we will get mains electricity. Our neighbour, Margaret, is very kindly letting us use her garden tap for a fresh water supply until we get our mains water connected, which shouldn’t take too long.

We have a shower in the caravan but haven’t tried it yet as it is a tiny space and not too inviting so we’ll have to find a solution for that. We’ll also need to see if their is a launderette somewhere nearby. Other than that we are looking forward to the next part of our house building adventure.

By Pete Ross

After years of living in a beautiful Victorian flat in Edinburgh, Molly and I have decided to sell up and build our new house ourselves in Argyll, Scotland. We have called it Gar Bothan which is Gaelic for warm bothy or cottage or hovel!!!!

8 comments

  1. It is so good now to be able to picture you both. Good luck with the next stage. Andrew and Trish

    1. Thanks Trish, it was so nice meeting you both and we had such a great conversation, especially because you have experience of what we are doing.

  2. Just catching up on your updates. Wow, you’ve made such great progress in just a few short weeks! Impressive.

    1. I think it helps that we have been treating it as a job so we take time off to rest and recover. It has been quite physical and tiring but we are done with this part of the project and have survived.

  3. A postbox – that is great to see and when you have moved onsite we will have to send you a postcard when you are ready to receive mail! Thanks for sharing exciting next steps.

  4. Love the postbox. Great to read that everything Is going in the right direction. Can’t wait to get more update.

  5. Me and the dogs and Charlie cat miss you folks 🙁 You are too efficient and completed your panels too quickly in my opinion. Please come back and visit us soon. Xx

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