Week Thirty-seven – Xtra, xtra!

Pride comes before a fall!

We are up this morning ready to finish the first stage of batoning the building and things are going well, it doesn’t take us long to get the west gable done and now we are going to do the east.

We are just discussing how well it’s going and feeling quite pleased with ourselves when Pete starts noticing the fleecy fibres on the membrane.

Oh no, we have put the membrane on inside out! We are devastated and feel very anxious, and stupid. We made exactly the same mistake on the shed and for some reason, probably double compensating or some such thing, Pete was so confident that the writing on the mambrane faces out. Wrong!

We have taken time out to have lunch, to take a step back from what we have done and Pete is giving Andrew a call.

Andrew has just confirmed what we already knew – we have to dismantle the batoning, take off the membrane and put it back the right side out and refix the batons. If we don’t it would be like us wearing a Goretex jacket inside out, really sweaty, and could have dire consequences.

We have a plan that involves reusing most of the membrane and dismantling and sorting the problem in sections.

We’ve just fixed the north elevation and it didn’t take too long, two-and-a-half hours. The worst thing was that it has been raining and we are soaked, other than that it went well. We now reckon we can rectify our mistake in about a day or a bit more.

It’s not good but it’s more of a setback than a disaster.

Upward and onward.

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!!!!

10 comments

  1. Oh man. Bet that was annoying. But it’s all copy, as the say. Will make for a great story round your dinner table in the future 🙃

    1. Hi Louise. The realisation at the time was awful but once we accepted our mistake it was just a matter of fixing it. Now that we’re back to where we were, it’s a distant memory….
      Hopefully you will come and join us round our dinner table at some point.

    1. Hi Helena. It was great to see you at Summerhall. Great event and hopefully we’ll be able to catch up again before too long.

  2. They say you learn by your mistakes but I say it’s not true. That must have been annoying to say the least- imagine you had clad half of the shed before you realised.

    1. Hi Mike. You’re right. You would hope to learn from your mistakes but it seems not…
      However we did concentrate on the possibility that it could’ve been worse, which helped a wee bit.

  3. Really feel for you but hats off for spotting the mistake, providing such an honest account on how you felt, and then getting on with rectifying it: as you say a set back but fixable. Hope you had some respite over the weekend. It is fantastic what you are doing and will all be so worth it in the end!

    1. Hi Nicky. It was devastating but at the same time wonderful that we both felt resilient enough to get our heads down and rectify it….. even in the rain. Looking forward to seeing you both soon.

  4. That awful moment, when you see it and know what you’ve done but can’t quite believe it…
    Steady as she goes, and onwards!

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