Week Eighty-seven

Week beginnning 29th January 2024.

It’s dry and quite nice this morning so we are going to put up another couple of cladding boards on the north side of the mega-shed. This means that when the electricians come they can fit the extractor fan and an outside socket there.

We’ve not long started working and Jef and Kirsty have arrived with Jenny, who is having a house built nearby. Jef wants to show Jenny what the plaster looks like glazed, rather than painted, because she might want to have that effect too.

It’s great to have a catch-up with Jef and Kirsty and it’s always interesting to compare notes with other self-builders.

It’s back to finishing what we started on the north elevation of the mega-shed.

We’ve had lunch and are now dismantling the scaffolding tower in the house and setting it up on the south gable of the mega-shed. We are fitting the drip detail here but we need to think it through because this elevation has a window, unlike on the north, and so we might have to make it a bit lower down the wall.

We’ve done quite a bit of head scratching and have come to the conclusion we can make it work at the same height as on the north elevation, we just need to take the window sill into account.

Having worked out how to do the drip detail on the north it isn’t taking us long to get the south elevation measured up, cut and fixed. We can now add a batten below it to fix the cladding to when the time comes and dismantle the scaffolding and set it up again in the house for the electricians.

We’ve finished early today because we are going to Lochgilphead for an event hosted by Pete’s work. To make the most of it we are going to take advantage of the nice showers in MACPool at Lochgilphead, a community run leisure centre. Nice one Lochgilphead!

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It’s Tuesday so Pete’s gone to Edinburgh for a work meeting. Molly is going to Pickleball this morning so we’ll not do any work on the house.

Melinda from Orchy Bank House has arrived to learn how to use her camera properly before heading off on holiday. Molly is an experienced photographer and photography tutor so is happy to help.

Pete will be back late so Molly is doing a bit of tidying and organising in the mega-shed.

She has decided to redo the frames for the four drawers that are built into the wall in our bedroom. This time she is making them with mitre joints, which is a much better finish. But before she gets stuck in she is doing some test pieces to learn how to do it nicely.

Des the plumber has swung by to see how we are getting on and to check everything is fine. He is not really working because he recently had a hip replaced and needs to give it time to heal.

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Pete’s away to work again so Molly is concentrating on mitre jointing new frames for the bedroom drawers. It is taking a few attempts and she is still not sure if they are good enough. This isn’t helped by the fact that she only has one of the drawers to check the fit, the other three are packed away somewhere in the container.

It’s a horrible wet and windy day so it’s just as well Molly is working indoors. She has moved on to remaking the sill for the west mezzanine window because the board she used to make the sill first time round was a bit warped. Having made a few sills before, Molly is now very efficient at this task. So, with that done there is still time to sand the guest bedroom sill before stopping for the day.

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It’s Thursday and Molly is alone again today. She is working on lining the nooks on the east mezzanine with plywood which can then be painted to match the plaster. Unfortunately there isn’t enough ply for the backs of the nooks so that will just have to wait for another day.

We have decided it would be nice if we could accent the interior with shou sugi ban so we are making the frames around the nooks, the window and nook sills and the balustrades in this style. Molly starts measuring and cutting the larch to make the sills for the east mezzanine nooks, which are reasonably big, so we can put some of our art books there.

Molly has just come off the phone to June, who works for the electrician, with great news. We are scheduled in for Thursday next week so with any luck all the electrics will be connected and we can have hot water, heating and Andrew can come and commission the ventilation system. If that happens our house will be fully functional in terms of services and all we have to do then is finish the interiors.

We are off to Benderloch to collect our old car which needed its MOT and a few repairs. It’ll be good to have it back because we use it as a work horse and now we can start taking stuff to the dump again.

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It’s another horrible wet day so we can’t get on with cladding the mega-shed. We are making a late start, a bit deflated by the weather, but we have a few wee tasks to get on with.

To start with we need to get our timber order in so we can get on with the skirting and door surrounds. We’ve already measured it all out so we just need to add it all up and compose the email to Andrew, making sure we don’t forget anything.

Molly is doing a bit of caulking in and around the nooks so we can get a nice finish and a few other wee tasks around the house. Pete is sooking out the water from inside the old car, one of its repairs was to find and seal the leaks that caused the car to fill with water. With our wet and dry vaccum cleaner he has managed to get over three litres of water out of the car. It will probably need a few attempts over the next week or so to get most of the water out but it will be so much nicer having the car dry again.

We are finishing early so we can go to Edinburgh to visit Pete’s mum and to plan a holiday with our grandchildren. Happy days! But first we need to get some timber from one of the stacks to make the three window sills for the mega-shed. Unfortunately the wood we need is under a stack of other wood so raining or not we are just going to have to get on with it.

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It’s Sunday and although it’s raining we are going to do some work. We got back late last night after our trip to Edinburgh so we have had a bit of a lie-in.

We are going to prepare the three window sills for the mega-shed today and if there is a break in this horrible weather we will see if we can fit some of them.

To make the sills we need to cut a 10° angle into one face of the timber so when we fit it under the window the water can run off. We also need to cut a wee drip channel on the underside of the front edge of the sill.

Our first angle cut on one of the sills goes well and cuts nicely but for some reason the second one isn’t so neat so we are having to do a bit of chiselling and sanding to get a smoother finish. All this takes extra time and is a bit frustrating but we are making progress.

With the first sill prepared we can present it to see if it will sit nicely or needs adjustment. After a bit of to and fro the sill is looking good so we are fixing it in place. One down two to go.

It’s been the same story with the second sill but we can now fix it in place. We’ve been liucky because the heavy rain stopped and with only light rain to contend with we are happy to get this job done. We’ll leave the third sill, which will need scaffolding to fix it in place, for another day.