Week Twenty-four – Part Two

Today should see more progress with the scaffolding being finished, here’s hoping.

Our tasks today are to hang the door for the toilet, dismantle some palettes for planks to cover toilet door and make a pair of double doors for the mega-shed.

We’ve managed to get some interesting planks from some palettes but we’ll need more which we’ll get from our pile once the rain stops.

We are starting to make the double doors and have decided that to be more accurate with the pices we are clamping together the horizontal pieces of timber then cutting them to size together.

That worked well so we’re doing the same with the vertical pieces. Now that we have the pieces and we have laid them on the table we find that everything fits much better and we have nice right angles on each corner.

It has been much easier making these doors than making the toilet door, that must be because we learned from our mistakes. Those with sharp eyes will notice the door on the right is a little wider than the one on the left! This is because Pete got his basic arithmetic wrong when calculating the size of the doors, his excuse is that he is a bit tired!

Molly is phoning Des, the pumber, to ask him if he has the time to finish fitting the toilet, sink and fittings for a washing machine. He says he’ll pop round tomorrow morning.

The day is over and the scaffolders didn’t turn up again. We’ve been very patient about it up till now but there is a limit. Andrew’s coming tomorrow so we’ll discuss it with him then.

We are up and about and have topped up the water barrel and dealt with the waste water. Andrew has arrived and we are going round the buildings talking about what needs done next.

He’s remeasuring the mezzanines for the staircases so that we can order them soon but we have to be sure we get the measurements accurate because the staircases are expensive.

We’re still measuring and Des has turned up to check what is needed to finish the plumbing job in the mega-shed. He says that we need to finish insulating and sheeting the toilet for tomorrow so that he can come back and finish the job.

Des is very interested in our project and we’re all having a big chat about it. We tell him about our problems with the scaffolders and he says he has a lot of scaffolding and a friend who is qualified to erect it. This might be a good option for us.

Andrew has called the scaffolder and we have agreed to give him yet another chance. We hope that because he knows we have another option that will focus his mind.

Andrew is showing us how to apply the special expanding foam around the windows and is going to head off and leave us to get on with our task list.

With Andrew and Des gone we get on with a bit of foaming of windows then we finish sheetng the toilet.

We’re off to Oban to meet our friend Tommy for dinner, we are really looking forward to it because we haven’t seen him since before we left Edinburgh.

We had a great time last night and Tommy treated us to a very nice dinner which was so generous of him.

Des has turned up as we are working on adding another layer of batons to the west elevation oif the mega-shed to ensure that the cladding sits over the shoulder of the foundation insulation.

He is getting straight into it and we are finishing our wee job before heading off to Oban for the day to do our usual round of shopping, clothes washing, going for a sauna and this time going to an exhibition.

We’re just back from Oban and it’s dark but look, we have a fully functioning toilet and a sink with running water!

What a week, we now have electricity and a fully functioning toilet. It feels like we are rejoining civilisation after four months making do.