Week Eighty-five

Week beginning 15th January 2024.

It’s another very cold day, we’ve had quite a few since the beginning of the year and it is making it very difficult to get the landscaping finished. It also means we have to endure the cold which, although we are hardened to it, is not too pleasant.

We are up sharpish because Andrew is coming today to hang the internal doors and Kevin is coming to reshape our front garden with all the spoil from the back of the house.

Andrew has arrived and is getting his equipment ready to start fitting the door casements. He starts off by measuring the width, height and depth of each doorway and they are all slightly different. The door casements were bought as a kit and are the widest available so that we can adjust them to size.

It’s lunchtime and we have fitted two of the casements and the third is assembled, ready to be fixed in place. Molly is heading to Edinburgh after lunch so it’ll be down to Andrew and Pete to get the doors hung.

Molly is having a chat with Kevin about how she imagines the front garden landscape to look before she heads off.

Andrew has a jig for cutting the rebates for the hinges on the doors and casements which makes it a lot quicker and easier to hang the doors.

Kevin has finished reshaping the front garden and Pete is very happy with his work. He has brought the level up around the tree so that there is a nice extended flat area around it. It then gently sweeps across to our eastern boundary, with a steeper slope down towards our hawthorn hedge saplings. Kevin has managed to avoid damaging any of the young trees we have planted which is a testament to his digger operating skills.

That’s the doors hung and Andrew is getting his gear packed ready to head home. It’s quite icy now so he needs to take his time on the long road home.

It’s been another nice bit of progress – having doors changes the feel of the house quite a bit and the reshaped garden, although not finished, gives a sense of how the garden will work and look. Things are really taking shape.

______________________________

It has snowed overnight and it’s a bit miserable now, kind of slushy and wet. Pete has to work and Molly is in Edinburgh and won’t be back until the afternoon so nothing much is due to happen today.

Pete has just had a call from a delivery driver who has our paving slabs and needs to know exactly where we are.

The driver has arrived but can’t get his lorry up the drive so Pete is having to come up with a plan B and quick. The best option is probably to unload at the bottom of our track and then see if Kevin can move them up later with his digger. Pete sends a text to Kevin with this suggestion and before the driver can start unloading Kevin has turned up in his pickup truck to assess situation. Kevin has a plan so he’s off to get his trailer so that the pallets can be unloaded.

The pallets are unloaded and somehow Kevin has managed to get his pickup and the trailer up our very slippery snow covered track. He’s now using the digger to move the pallets of slabs into positions where Craig doesn’t have to lug them too far when laying them. Kevin you are a star and got us out of a very tricky situation. Thanks a million.

Molly is back from Edinburgh and Pete has finished working so we are going to finish plastering around the spice rack to try and get a good finish. Our first attempt at plastering was only partially successful so we are doing a second coat.

______________________________

It’s Wednesday, Pete’s heading away for work today and Ishbel is coming later to help Molly. It’s very cold, -9°, the car is covered in a hard frost and the track is very icy so Pete is going to have to take his time and drive very carefully.

Molly is sanding the plaster around the spice rack and this time it has worked better and we can get a better finish once she has applied the glaze to the plaster.

It’s 10.30 and Ishbel has arrived after a beautiful journey down from her house near Duror with blue skies and the hills covered in snow.

Ishbel starts by applying glaze around the spice rack and another coat of glaze around the kitchen area because this is where we are most likely to need to wash down the walls fairly often. Molly is painting around the windows in the shower rooms.

Molly and Ishbel have had a nice lunch and are now ready to paint the two sections of plasterboard that Jef couldn’t access to plaster. We have bought some extra paint samplers to help make the paint match the colour and patina of Jef’s plastering.

Ishbel and Molly are very satisfied with the result of their painting as it’s a very good match to the real plastering with a nice patina and good colour matching.

Pete’s back from work, he only just made it with 13% power in the battery when he got home. Steve is joining us for dinner tonight because Cate’s away and so he’s on his own in his caravan. Us caravan dwellers need to stick together!

______________________________

Pete has had a bad night and isn’t feeling well so he’s taking a day off work to try and recover. Molly is going to get on with work.

It’s another freezer today. That’s been quite a while now, maybe over a week or even ten days of sub-zero temperatures. In the winter of 2022-23 we had 10 days of sub-zero in late November and early December but that was more or less it. This winter we had the same before Christmas, but we’ve also had this spell since New Year so that’s a lot more very cold days than last year. Next year we’ll not mind it so much when it gets very cold because we will surely be snug and cosy in our house by then.

Molly is working on fitting the door stops, it’s not heavy work but it does have to be precise. With that done she heads to Oban for some shopping and to pick up some building supplies so we can paint the doors at the weekend.

______________________________

It’s Friday and Pete is still feeling ropey but he’s keen to try and fit the door latches so that the doors can be painted. This isn’t heavy work so Pete thinks it’s worth a go even though he’s not feeling great.

To fit the latches we have to work out the position we want the door handles to be then it’s a case of drilling into the door and chiselling out the cavity for the latch and the rebate for the latch plate. With that done he now has to mark where to drill into the face of the door so the spindle can go through. The trickiest part is chiselling out the rebate for the latch plates and making sure everything is in the right place and matchers up. Pete has taken his time on the first one so he now knows how to do it and is all set to do the other three doors.

Molly is doing a bit more work on the painting to match one of the areas better with Jef’s plaster. In this area the paint and the plaster merge so the painting has to be a lot more accurate to get the look right so nobody will be able to tell the difference.

With the cut-outs for the latches done we can now prime/undercoat the doors so that we can paint them tomorrow.

We are stopping now, satisfied with our work today. Zadjil and Carolyn are coming to help us this weekend so we need to tidy up and get organised. We’ve decided not to sleep in the caravan, instead we are going to set ourselves up in the house which is much warmer.

______________________________

It’s Saturday morning and after a late start and a hearty breakfast we are getting organised for our day’s work. Zadjil and Pete are going to concentrate on painting the doors and Molly and Carolyn are going to experiment with making window sills and applying the Shu Sugi Ban technique.

Zadjil and Pete are being very careful with the painting and protecting the floor because we are painting the doors black and we don’t want to risk getting any paint on our floors.

Molly and Carolyn are choosing some larch to make into window sills. First they are practicing the burning technique because it’s all about knowing when to stop to get the best effect.

The larch for the sills needs to be prepared before cutting and burning. Molly is using our electric planer and sander to get a perfectly smooth finish.

Measuring and cutting the first sill is proving a challenge because, as usual, everything is a bit off square. We call this a ‘characteristic of the self-builder’ and don’t consider it to be entirely negative, even if it does maker life difficult.

With the sill cut to fit, it’s now time to burn it and Carolyn is taking responsibility for this job.

The sill looks amazing and Molly and Carolyn have done a great job making it fit so well and look so good.

Pete and Zadjil are putting the final touches to the doors and Molly and Carolyn are finishing the second sill so we can have an early finish because Pete’s still feeling ill and needs to rest.

______________________________

Another slow start but we are working now. We have all agreed to take on small tasks – Carolyn is varnishing the sills then she’ll do some repairs to the nooks at the straight staircase, Zadjil is making a top for the boxing in for the vent in the guest shower room, Pete is doing some touching up on the doors and painting the tops and bottoms to seal them.

Molly and Carolyn are now applying glaze to the areas painted to match the plaster and the west gable. Pete has moved on to applying another wax polish to the Venitian Plaster.

We’ve had lunch and Zadjil and Carolyn are heading home in time to miss the incoming storm which is predicted to be quite bad. Thanks to them once again for gving up so much of their time to helping us. They are such a big help and we hope that they will take advantage when the house is finished and come and hang-out with us.