Week Thirty-nine – Part Two

Having Ross here is going to be a great help and we should easily get everything ready for tomorrow when Andrew comes to start the fascias.

Although cold it’s another beautiful morning. To start the day Molly is going to finish painting the battens on the west gable and Ross and Pete are going to work out where to add some studs in the area where the balcony is going to attach to the east elevation.

The extra studs are attached and Ross and Pete are now working on adding the battens to the east elevation right up the gables. Once that’s done they will all have to be painted.

While all this is going on Molly is getting on with taping in the house and she is making great strides.

We’ve had a nice bowl of noodle soup for lunch so it’s back to work we go.

Molly is going to carry on with the taping and Pete and Ross are fitting the insect mesh in the eaves of the south elevation ready for its fascia.

That didn’t take long so they are now going to build the frame for the wall that the return stairs will be anchored to.

It has taken them a couple of goes to get it right because Pete is so tired he cut the vertical studs too long, forgetting to subtract the foot and top plate depths. Doh!

We are about to put the frame in place when Molly’s cousin Mairi and her husband, Andrew, arrive on their way home from Tiree. After a wee tour and a catch-up, we rope them in to fitting the wall because we need extra hands to hold up the staircase while the wall frame is put in place. It’s just as well they turned up when they did because we couldn’t have managed without them. Thanks Mairi and Andrew.

They’ve just left and we are going to tidy up and call it a day. We got a lot done, it’s amazing what a few extra pairs of hands can contribute.

Amazingly it’s yet another beautiful morning, it hasn’t rained for almost a week. What a treat.

Pete is making a schedule of works to focus our minds and help us get the house finished by June, although that could be a tall order.

While we are waiting for Andrew to arrive we get on with fitting more packers in the straight staircase to make it super secure and check the levels of the new wall frame.

Andrew has just arrived and we are discussing the schedule and making sure we haven’t missed anything. We’ll be going to first fix soon and fitting the MVHR system. Nick, who visited last week, sent us an email about this and brought up some important points so we are discussing that with Andrew.

With that done we have asked Andrew to check the staircase supporting wall. It’s good so Pete needs to secure it to the concrete floor and the wooden joist above. Drilling into the concrete is proving a bit difficult. The first two bolts went in fine but drillling for the third is taking ages. Finally after almost an hour the wall frame is secured and the stair can be attached to it.

While all that is going on, Andrew is up on the scaffolding working out how to attach the fascia boards. The problem seems to be that with such thick insulation there isn’t much to secure the boards to, but Andrew has come up with a solution.

We need to fit two boards at 200mm, one on top of the other to cover the edge. The bottom row fixes onto the truss ends and doesn’t take too long to do, although we have to keep checking they are straight with a string line.

To fix the top row we need to cut battens with a 45º cut at each end so that we can create a falt edge to fix the top fascia board. It’s a neat solution but takes a a while to do.

Ross has gone into the house and is doing a lot of taping and Andrew, Molly and Pete are getting on with the fascias.

It’s the end of the day, Andrew has gone and we have had a good week thanks to all the help we’ve had.

Ross is heading home in the morning, it has been great having him here for the chat and for his help. Tonight we’ll have a nice meal and a wee celebration and we’re going to take it easy this weekend and get some rest and relaxation.