Week Twenty-five

Week beginning 21st November.

We are fast approaching our six months of having been building our house and the roof still isn’t on. Hopefully this week will see the scaffolding fully erected and the beginning of the roof works.

We’re starting the day by finishing the job of adding the extra layer of batons around the shed.

With that done we can now get onto more pressing tasks. Our very dear friend Cristi is coming to help, all the way from Argentina, as part of her holiday trip to Europe. This is amazing and so generous of her, here’s hoping she’s read the blog enough to know what to expect. She says she wants to stay in the shed so we need to get it into a bit of a better state than it is at the moment so we are going to finish making the toilet door by fixing palett planks to the door frame we made.

Having put a ridiculous amount of effort dismatntling some palettes we have a nice selection of planks to play with. We are trying out a few different patterns to see what works best before moving to the next stage.

To prepare the planks first we have to measure and cut them, then we sand them and place them in the correct order on the frame. We have decided to leave them to dry off a bit overnight and screw them on tomorrow.

Now we need to get the double doors finished so Pete nails on some OSB and we screw the hinges to the wall. Later we will add larch cladding to the outside of the doors.

We don’t think we’ll be able to get the main door fitted because it is too difficult to get out from behind the palettes of insulation but we hope what we have done will be okay for Cristi.

It’s a lovely bright but cold morning and there is a bit of frost about, and snow on the high tops.

We are going to our storage container to get a rug to make the mega-shed attic a bit more comfortable. We will also get some bedding if we can find it in the very crammed and disorganised container. If you ever think of putting your stuff in storage then we would suggest you take your time thinking about how you are going to find things in there if you suddenly think you need it, we didn’t do that properly and now it’s a big bit of a problem!

We get back to find Simon and a couple of his guys getting on with erecting the scaffolding.

To prepare for attaching the planks we make a chalk line so that we can have a nice neat column of screws down each side of the door. With that done we can screw on the hinges and voilà, an interesting door made of palett planks! To finish it off Pete adds a latch for privacy and we now have a proper toilet ready for our visitor.

We are getting on with wee jobs like foaming around the outside of the windows and taping the join between the window and the walls. We added some damp proof course in preparation for fitting the window sills.

Simon has just left but says he needs to come back for a couple of hours tomorrow to finish off adding hand rails and the final level at the gables.

We are going for a wee walk even though it is already dark because the sky is still fairly clear and we can see the stars coming out. It’s nice to go for a walk after work so we don’t forget why we came here in the first place, it’s so beautiful.

It’s a horrible wet morning and we are taking our time getting up and out to work.

We have finally motivated ourselves to come down to the mega-shed but we aren’t really doing very much, just sort of milling around.

It’s about 10am and we are ready for coffee, even though we haven’t done anything to deserve it, and we can hear Simon’s lorry reversing up the track. He’s brought another two guys today so there are five of them in all. They are just getting on with it even though the weather is terrible and they are getting soaked. These guys work very hard, the scaffolding is steel not aluminium so it’s pretty heavy, and they are going to get the job finished double quick time.

Simon is about to leave and he has come to tell us that he is giving us an exceptionally good deal to make up for all the delays. He also gives us another bottle of quality whisky. We are very happy about all this and happy to have our scaffolding.

We have had lunch and now that the rain has stopped we can board up the mezzanin window and door so that the rain can’t get in and to protect the roof from being lifted by the wind. It isn’t taking long and is quite easy now that we have the scaff.

Our next job is to try and measure the difference in height between the top of the gables and the top of the rafters so that we can make spacers for the roof ladders to sit on.

We are using our laser measuring device and that is making it a bit easier but we are still struggling with this task.

It’s been a tricky job and we have had a few goes at it but now we are fairly confident that we have the measurements we need. We have noticed, though, that doing measuring jobs is the time we fall out. Each of us approaching the task from a different perspective or methodology.

We can’t finish the job because the light is fading fast so we decide to move the timber we need to make the risers inside, ready for cutting in the morning when hopefully they will be a bit drier.

That didn’t take long so we are reorganising our timber stack again. By tidying it up and moving some of the timber to other areas of the site we have created a bit more space near the caravan.

Every day, in every way, we get a little bit closer and a little bit closer to our goal.