Week Sixty

Week beginning 24^th July 2023

Another Monday morning and still lots to do. The weather is dry, so we are going to work on the detail of the west gable at the apex of the cladding and where the cladding meets the soffits. If we can we are going to try and put a bit of decoration here by routing out a design.

Firstly, we are going to see what size of edge finish to put between the cladding and the soffit. A 75mm larch looks good to attach to the vertical cladding rather than the soffit. We start at the bottom of the pitch with a 45° cut and fix it with decking screws. We are now doing the same on the other side and now we need to make sure we cut the angles to get a neat join at the apex.

After a bit of experimentation, we have found that if we cut the piece on the north at 44° and the piece on the south at 45° we get a perfect fit and it looks great.

The guys from AESSolar have just arrived to fit the solar panels and finalise and commission our system of photovoltaic solar panels hooked up with a Tesla Powerwall.

We are leaving them to it and while they are doing that, it’s time for us to have a look at fitting some detail at the apex so we have cut bits of 75mm larch to make a bar across the apex. We have fixed it on and it looks good but we need something else. We have decided to put another cross bar in but this time flush against the cladding fitting neatly between the trims we have just fitted. This piece will have the decoration on it.

The guys have worked through lunch and have finished fixing the panels to the roof and they’ve done a good job finishing just as the sun has decided to come out! We are getting the run down on how to manage our system and shown the app for doing that. It’s very exciting and we are already generating power.

The guys have gone so we are fixing the trim on the lower part of the other gable, we can’t finish it until the balcony is up and the rest of the cladding is on but it still makes it look much sharper.

With all that progress done we move into the house to make a wee alcove in the wall of the straight stair. We are well into creating the alcove and looking at how the handrail will sit with it when we notice that the bit of wall at the foot of the stair is at a different angle going up the stair to what the hand rail will be, it is not parallel to the stair!

This feels like a disaster but one of the big things we have learned from building our house is that to every problem there is a solution, you just have to find it. We don’t want to take the wall down so we need to carefully work out how to dismantle and recut it at the correct angle without destroying it.

With our plan worked out, we just have to launch ourselves at the task now in the hope that it’s a good plan and that we don’t have to use too much ‘persuasion’ to take the top rail off. It comes off without too much trouble after a bit of careful hand sawing and coaxing with a crow bar. Now the difficult bit, cutting the angles in situe. We have spent a lot of time measuring and remeasuring to get the angles right (we think) so here goes.

Success!

It’s all reassembled so we can move on to tidying and cleaning up for the day. It’s been another roller coaster of a day but it has a happy ending so we can move forward tomorrow and do more of the snagging list in anticipation of the electricians coming back and the plaster boarders starting.

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Pete’s back at work today but Des is coming to finish the first fix plumbing and Molly is getting on with some of the detailed work and sound insulation. She is building frames within the frames on the straight stair so we can have alcoves for putting some of our nick nacks on. She’s now onto creating some built in spice racks/shelves on the other side of that wall near the bottom.

Des is done and has headed off. Pete has finished work for the day so he is joining Molly to build an alcove in the mezzanine wall near the bottom of the return staircase. We are hoping that these wee details are going to help make our spaces more interesting.

That’s another day done, it’s quite late but we’re nearly ready for the plaster board.

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We are expecting the electricians today to come and finish the first fix on the house and make a start on the mega-shed. Pete has to work and Molly is going to build some more shelving detail for within the walls.

Innes and Jack have arrived and they have our Zappi car charger with them, with any luck they’ll get it installed this week.

Des is also back to do a water leakage test before the plasterboard goes in.

Innes and Jack have started the electrics in the shed and Molly is getting Pete to come and help fix the last few OSB boards on the mega-shed west wall before they can get on with it.

Great progress today. The house electrics are done and Innes and Jack have made a good start on the mega-shed.

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It’s Thursday and we are expecting Scott and his team at eight o’clock. They are here for two days and are hoping to make a big dent in the plasterboarding.

Pete is heading to Edinburgh for work today and tomorrow and Molly is here in charge of proceedings.

Ther guys have turned up just a few minutes after Pete leaves and Molly is having a site meeting with Scott. We are very happy to have Scott back with us as he was involved a good bit in the early days with putting up the kit, the trusses and the mezzanine floors. He’s very good and precise so we have high expectations of what they can do.

Now that they are all set up the team are making fast progress boarding up the vaulted ceiling. They probably won’t be able to do it all because the pile of plasterboard is in the way of setting up the scaffolding to do the middle of the south bit of the vaulted ceiling.

Molly is keeping out of their way and getting on with some box building for more alcoves and shelving.

That’s it for today and they have made a Herculean effort and achieved a lot in one day. They are back tomorrow so we can expect a lot more progress.

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Scott and the team arrive sharp again today and are getting straight into it.

Innes has arrived to get on with the mega-shed but he’s on his own this time.

Everything is going well and the inside of the house is being transformed. We won’t need to look at acres of OSB and all that taping anymore.

The guys have left and we’re hoping that they can come back for one more day to finish the vaulted ceiling and fit out the bathrooms. We’ll do some of the boarding once we get ourselves a screwgun.

That’s it, another day, another week and a huge amount of progress. We originally hoped to be in our house by the summer, then the autumn but it now looks most likely to be by Christmas, fingers crossed!