Week Ninety-one

Week beginning 26th February 2024.

It is a cold but beautiful winter’s day in Argyll and Craig has arrived to get on with our paving. He is doing a first class job and once it is finished it will give us a significant clean area around the house.

We are erecting the scaffolding at the south face of the mega-shed to give us access to the window at attic level. In order to be able to finish the cladding below the drip detail we need to fit the sill and reveals.

Our frst task is to fit the sill we had partially prepared earlier. We need to measure how far it will protrude, taking into account the cladding, and cut it to the correct width. We are making a drip cut, a channel on the underside of the sill at the leading edge which helps the water run off. With the sill ready, we present it and mark where we need to fix a supporting batten. Finally, we can fix the sill under the window and onto the batten securing it with a couple of long screws.

Now we need to work out if we need to add any battens to secure the reveals. When we were fixing the verticle and horizontal battens for fixing the cladding to we weren’t careful and thoughtful enough about how the window reveals were going to be fixed so we are now going to have to retrofit some supporting timber.

For the top reveal we need to cut away a little bit of a protruding verticle batten and add some timbers behind the horizontal battens to give us something to fix to. We have presented the top reveal and have worked out that we’ll need to use shims to get them to sit snuggly above the window. A few screws and it’s fixed in place and looks good.

The left and right side reveals need slightly different adjustments which is involving quite a bit of jiggery pokery, and lots of climbing on and off the scaffolding with frequent trips to the mega-shed to cut and recut. It’s taken quite a while to get this all done properly but taking the time pays off in the long run. No doubt, if we were more experienced and professional we could have been far more efficient by battening correctly in the first place or finding and implementing fixes based on experience.

Craig is making great progress and has laid the slabs at the threshold of the French doors. We can’t walk on them for 24 hours to let them set but we are very happy and it looks great. It also means that we can soon finish cladding the front of the house because we can fit the reveals which needed the slabs in place.

With a few hours of light left we are going to fit the last of the downpipes on the south east corner of the mega-shed. Again, this involves some cutting of pipe with the angle grinder but Pete has really got quite good at making straight cuts.

Having said that, he has got his measurement wrong so he is having to cut a wee extender piece so the downpipe isn’t too far above the drain. It’s amazing but just when you think you know what you are doing you can make a silly mistake. Measure twice, cut once!!!!!!!

That’s it for today, we are happy to have fitted the sill and reveals to the high window and the final downpipe is in place. All we need to do now is take down the scaffolding and tidy up.

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It’s Tuesday and we are off to Edinburgh, Pete for work and Molly for the dentist. While we are away, Craig will carry on with the paving.

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Pete’s working again today and Molly is off to visit her sister and to do the shopping in Oban. Craig is here again making great strides with the paving.

We are both back home and Steve is coming for dinner so we are busy cooking.

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Pete’s away for work again today so Molly is getting on measuring and cutting pallet wood for the tops of the storage areas under the eaves. The weather is bad so Craig isn’t coming today.

Pete’s back and although he has done a full day’s work already, he still has more to do for an event he is organising for the end of March.

Molly starts doing a bit of clearing of weeds in the garden but has stopped because it is far too muddy for that.

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It’s Friday again already, the time is flying by and our year long build is fast approaching a two year long build. Talk about naive optimism!

The weather is good so Craig is here again.

We plan to do some cladding on the south elevation of the mega-shed but just as we are getting our tools and supplies ready Molly has noticed that the nails we bought are very thin. After consulting with Craig it looks like Pete ordered the wrong nails. The upside is that Craig says he has stainless steel nails that we can have so we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to fix the cladding.

So that our day is not a complete write-off we have decided to cut a load of boards ready for tomorrow. All the boards under the drip detail should be the same length so we can create a bit of a production line.

We’ve cut a load of boards so we have decided to move what’s left of the 150mm and 200mm cladding from in front of the caravan to behind the shed and in the process scrape the sawdust from them so they are clean and ready to cut when needed.

That was a hard, back breaking job but one that has been well worth doing. We now see clearly how much cladding we have left and when we need it, it will be much closer to the shed for cutting. It is also the start of clearing the area ready to move the caravan from its perch.

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It’s another lovely day and Craig is here again, it seems he is on a roll and wants to get the job done, which is perfect for us. Craig brought us the nails so we are going to get on with fixing the cladding boards.

We are making good progress, because the boards are pre-cut we just need to present them to check they are measured correctly then drill pilot holes for the bottom nails and then fix in place. It’s coffee time and the mega-shed is looking much smarter already now that it’s getting ‘dressed’.

It’s getting near dinner time and Craig has gone. We have spent most of the afternoon on the scaffolding fixing the two 75mm boards either side of the window and then cutting and fitting the boards above the drip detail to the east of the window. A good day’s work but tiring because of all the up and down from the scaffolding.

Steve is coming for dinner again so we think a few glasses of wine are in order.

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We are very tired today after our efforts of the last couple of days so we are slow to start. Before even getting out of bed we have to write the bulk of this week’s blogpost.

We left the scaffolding up so that we can finish the high bit of the south gable of the mega-shed. The weather is good so we have to take advantage and try and get all the cladding to the west of the window and above it done today. Just like yesterday it’s all about the angles and careful measuring and we are not always getting it right.

It has taken us about five hours to get the top of the gable finished and although we are pretty exhausted we are happy that the job is done and we can take down the scaffolding.

We are having a wee siesta before dinner and then Pete is off to badminton.