Week Fourteen

Week beginning 5th September.

It’s Monday morning and we’ve had a great weekend with Zadjil and Carolyn. On Saturday afternoon we went to the Dalmally Argriculural Show, which we have been to many times before but was the first time for Carolyn.

We checked out the prize winning cattle and sheep, watched the Drakes of Hazzard, the best dog competitions, checked out the giant vegetables and the baking competitions and much else. Pete’s biggest disappointment was that there were no chickens this year because of Avian Flu.

We also had a chance to catch-up with some family members who live nearby and some of our new neighbours. Margaret, who lives up the hill from us, won two prizes in the photography competition and Molly’s cousin Dochie won first prize in the baking competition in the Gypsy Cream category.

We were then invited to dinner at the Ben Cruachan Inn by Zadjil and Carolyn to celebrate Molly’s birthday. The food was delicious and the service great, we all had a lovely time.

After dinner it was off to the community hall for a ceilidh, Zadjil was the only one in a kilt so Pete suggested he put on an American accent to explain his outfit!

On Sunday we had a nice slow day and took them to the Orchy Falls, then had lunch before they headed home. As a birthday treat we stayed in the Orchy Bank Guest House. It is newly refurbished so we could enjoy a bit of luxury and space away from our caravan.

It’s Monday morning and we are having a delicious breakfast in the guest house, Pete is having the full vegan and Molly the French Toast with bacon and maple syrup. We are fortified for the day ahead.

Before we can do today’s work on the house and the shed we have come to Oban to do our weekly shop and to pick up some building supplies, partly because rain is forecast for this morning so we can’t work outside anyway, and partly we need food to fuel our workload.

Tomorrow Andrew is coming so we have some tasks to get on with before then. We start nailing in the anchor straps (in our last post we wrongly called them binding straps but that has been corrected).

We’ve been at it for hours and between us have manually hammered in about 1000 nails, sore wrists and hands is the cost of this work.

We are up smartish this morning to get ready for Andrew. Pete is going round the house with the nailgun to nail all the panels to the soul plates and to each other to help solidify the structure.

Andrew has arrived and has noticed that we haven’t pinned the tops and bottoms of the OSB to the soul plates and headers so we are working our way round with nailguns.

Andrew is fitting the metal brackets to the shed that will attach the trusses to the walls and we are attaching the airtight membrane to the tops of the walls ready for it to be folded round the joists. We now have to tape the membrane in places we won’t be able to reach once the joists are in place.

Andrew needs to leave soon but before then we put one of the joists in place. Now that that’s in place and before he leaves he is giving us a task list we need to fulfill before next Tuesday when the trusses are to be erected.

We are busy stapling the airtight membrane so it doesn’t blow about in the wind and tear when the rain starts so we are rushing around putting things away out of the rain. With that done we make a dash for the caravan but we are already soaked. Thankfully we now have the awning to dry our clothes off.

It’s been raining for hours now and we have just been lying in the caravan, barely able to hear each other, worrying about the damage that all this rain could cause. On reflection this is nothing compared to what the people in Pakistan are suffering just now.

It’s a new dawn and the rain has stopped so we are getting to it pronto. Pete is getting out the tools in the hope that we can get the rimboards that are to be nailed to the joists cut to the correct width. There are 22 to be cut and the three longest are over 10.5m in length.

The company that supplied the trusses, joists, gable ladders and rimboards supplied the wrong width of rimboards. They are meant to be 253mm wide but are in fact 310mm wide. When we pointed this out they refused to believe us so we had to send them a photo with a tape measure on the wood. We can’t believe the incompetence!

We have spent all morning trimming these rimboards to the correct width and restacking them and covering them to try and protect them from the rain. A job well done but annoyingly should not have been uneccessary.

This afternoon we are hammer drilling and fitting bolts to the anchor straps. The system involves a resin capsule which shatters when the bolt is driven in and the resin expands and sets.

We have waited 20 minutes and now we can put on the nuts and tighten them securing our buildings to the ground and avoiding being lifted off to Oz like Dorothy.

We have managed to do all bar five of the bolts but we have to stop because the rain has finally started. We have been lucky that it has held off so long, allowing us to get so much work done.

It’s time for some rest and relaxation.