Week Eighty-four

Week beginning 8th January 2024.

We arrived back at Gar Bothan mid-afternoon having spent the weekend in Edinburgh and a visit to the dentist this morning for both of us.

We have enough time before it gets dark to fit the infra-red heating panels to the brackets we fitted last week. It’s a two person job because there is a real danger of dropping a panel while fiddling about with the bolts that hold it in place.

The panels are up and in place but they might still need a bit of work before they sit correctly but for now it’ll have to do. We are now fitting the lightbulbs on the return stair. This is pretty tricky as the fitments are very small but we complete the task and step back to admire the result. We are both feeling a bit shocked by the intensity of the lights. This is not what we had imagined and we wonder if there might be a fix we can do at a later stage.

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Pete is back to work today so can’t help. Kevin has arrived to work on levelling the ground around the house and sorting the drive and parking area at the back.

Molly is working inside the house where she is applying a second coat of paint to the walls in the bathrooms so that they are ready for the electricians coming next week.

Des has turned up and is plumbing in the heat battery so that as soon as the electricians return and wire it in we can have hot water and a working shower. Molly really likes the look of the plumbing for the heat battery so we are not going to box it in. Des uses copper pipe in his work so everything looks good and neat, unlike when using plastic pipes.

Pete has finished work for today so we are going to do some more work on the heating panels. We are going to reduce the size of the mounting block we made for the brackets on the south wall so it’s not so noticable, we just need to trim a bit from its height and it will be much better.

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It’s Wednesday and Kevin is back and he’s brought a dumper to help move what he’s digging up to level the land. Kevin needs space to work so we are moving some of our stacks of wood by hand from the back of the mega-shed and around the turning area out of the way.

The spoil Kevin is digging out from the north side of the house is being moved to the front garden. There really is a lot, much more than we expected. This means the land to the front of the house is going to look very different to how it has been until now so we will need to plan how we want it to work for us once all this is done. At the back of the house where all the spoil is coming from we will have a large flat area with plenty of room and easy access for cars.

Molly is adding a third coat of paint to the shower-rooms so that they will be fully decorated before the electricians come and fit the illuminated mirror bathroom cabinets and heated towel rails. We are using special paint that allows the plaster to breath but is suitable for bathrooms, it’s quite chalky and harder to apply than standard emulsion paint.

Molly is clearing some space in the house because we are. expecting a delivery. Our fridge-freezer has just arrived and it is very tall, we didn’t quite work that out when we bought it. The good thing is it will hold a lot of food and has a good sized freezer which everyone around here says is essential to have.

Molly is tidying up the mega-shed because it has got a bit out of hand with all the off-cuts of cladding. That is making a big difference and will make it much easier for the electricians when they come to finish wiring it.

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It’s Thursday and today Craig has joined Kevin to get on with levelling the land. With Craig driving the dumper and Kevin digging they are making fast progress and the area at the back of the house is totally transformed.

We helped Kevin move our big stacks of cladding up onto the area beside the caravan so it is out of his way. Now they can re-lay the French drain to the new level of the land. It is very important to have good drainage when your plot is near or at the bottom of a hill to avoid a quagmire.

Pete is working today and is heading out this afternoon. Molly is giving both shower-rooms their final coats of paint. It has been quite a big job and it has taken its toll on her wrist but she has done a beautiful job.

That’s the shower-rooms decorated, all we need now is hot water and we can shower at home rather than go to the swimming pool in Oban.

Craig and Kevin have found the water table in the car turning area so they are going to extend the French drain to sort that area out too.

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Pete’s not working today so he can help with the house. Kevin and Craig aren’t coming today so it’s just the two of us.

We are having a look at all the spoil at the front of the house and thinking about how we want the land to look so Kevin will know what to do. We will probably have a larger flat bit in front of the house then terrace down to another flat area and create a bit of an amphitheatre around the tree. We’ll see!

Our first job is to raise the height of the scaffolding tower so we can finish the trims on the trusses and give the last area of vaulted ceiling a coat of glaze. With the scaffolding up we now need to rip more trims for the trusses.

Our first attempt at fixing the trims has shown us that we need to raise the platform more and bring up a ladder so we can safely reach the top of the trusses to pin and glue on the trims. This is slowing us down but our safety is more important than speed and as this is the last time we should need to work at height in the house it would be foolish to take risks.

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Even though it’s Saturday both Kevin and Craig have turned up for work. They are going to finish doing the French drain but we need to move more of our timber stacks and our composting area for them to be able to do their job.

Molly is painting glaze in the last areas of vaulted ceiling and Pete is applying decorator’s caulk to the two bits of vaulted ceiling that Jef couldn’t plaster because the area was impossible for him to access. We are going to fake it with paint to match the colours and patina of the real plaster and hopefully it will be close enough not to be too noticable.

We’re leaving Kevin and Craig to get on with leveling the ground and we are taking a trip to the dump then the usual round of showering and shopping.

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It’s Sunday morning and we are having trouble dragging ourselves out of bed. All that climbing up and down the scaffolding has taking its toll and we are both exhausted.

We have finally had breakfast and are in the house partly dismantling the scaffolding so that it is at the right height for the electricians to wire up our heating panels. We are hoping that the electricians come next week but it is not a given.

After a bit of a disagreement about moving our roofing tin again, Molly wants to and Pete doesn’t, we are working on finishing the plastering around our spice rack. It’s a tricky job and we are not sure how well it’ll work but it’s worth a go.

We are calling it a day now because we need to take our old car 20 miles up the road to a garage to get it’s MOT next week. This is one way in which life is much less convenient here. In Edinburgh the garage was just around the corner and in walking distance so dropping it off wasn’t a problem. Here there are no garages locally and there is vey little public transport so we need to take both cars so that we can get back home after dropping the old car off. Eventually we’ll sell the old car and just have the electric one and that means we need to be really well organised and plan ahead whenever it needs serviced or repaired.

It’s been a hard week – it has been really cold, it’s been Pete’s first week back at work and Molly has had to takle the strain with the house, and although it’s great to have the land around the house levelled the ground is a mess. The freezing weather has meant that the Type 1 that Kevin salvaged has frozen into solid blocks and can’t be spread over the soil. We are dragging dirt into the mega-shed, the caravan and the house which is far from ideal.

According to the forecast it is going to get colder, with possibly some snow, and that means Kevin can’t finish the job so we are going ot have a bit of a mess for a while. Hay ho