Week Ninety-eight

Week beginning 15 April 2024.

We have been away for the last two weeks on a European rail trip adventure with our grandchildren, hence no blogposts. We had a great time and all the trains were on time, pretty much. We took eleven train journeys to get to Rome and back, with stop-overs in Paris and Milan and had to make connections in London, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Grossetto, Pisa and Zurich. Niven and Caitlin were great travelling companions and we enjoyed our stay in Paris with Jonny and Lupita and with Anita and Gianluca in Tuscany. Thanks to them for making our holiday adventure so wonderful and memorable.

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It’s Monday and we are joined by Zadjil and Carolyn who are happy to help us again. We are going to start preparing the door surrounds by doing some accurate measuring.

It’s just as well that we are working indoors because it’s raining hard outside, a big change from Europe where the sun shone and it felt like a Scottish summer.

Pete is making some blocks for where the door surround meets the floor and the skirting boards. He is trying a few variations on his design idea so that the size and angles look right.

We are also having a discussion about whether to leave the timber with square cut edges or to round them off a bit. We’ve come down on the side of leaving them as they are since we don’t have many softened edges in the build and we want to be consistent.

We’ve come across a bit of a problem, some of the finished timber is twisted, cupped or warped and a few have all of the above. Working with timber has proved to be very challenging because of the high percentage of imperfect wood.

Molly and Zadjil are taking the lead on measuring and cutting the mitres for the door surrounds while Pete and Carolyn are forming the blocks.

Carolyn has gone into the house to stain some of the timbers that cover the storage spaces on the east mezzanine.

That’s it we are calling it a day, we are not pushing ourselves too hard since it’s our first day back and we are still tired from our three day return trip from Italy.

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The electricians have arrived today to get on with the wiring. Mostly they have to work on the mega-shed wiring but the LED strip lights in the kitchen area of the house need a more powerful driver, so that is also getting fitted today.

There’s not much we can do without getting in the way of the electricians so, because it’s a nice day, we have decided to go for a walk.

It’s so nice to be out in the sunshine and to be doing something relaxing with Zadjil and Carolyn for a change since most of their visits here involve helping to build the house and quite a lot of hard work.

We are not long back and the elctricians are done for the day. They have finished the wiring in the mega-shed so we now have light switches to lights in the toilet and one to illuminate the other end of the space. They do have one more job to do but are still waiting for an extractor fan from their suppliers.

Now that they have gone, Zadjil and Pete are fixing the internet boxes to the wall on the mezzanine, a delicate job because Molly was given strict instructions not to bend the cables by the Openreach engineer.

Molly and Carolyn are priming the door surrounds that have been mitred before fixing them to the wall. We reckon this will be quicker than painting them once fixed and also should give a neater finish.

Pete and Zadjil are now fixing the finial Mike Cressy made for the return staircase. This involves drilling a hole with a 40mm drill bit, making sure it makes a straight hole so the finial can sit nicely.

Another day over and we have made some more progress. Pete is happy because he was worried about damaging the fibre optic broadband cable but it worked fine and we have the surrounds cut and primed for three of the doors.

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It’s Wednesday morning and Zadjil and Carolyn left just after breakfast so we are on our own. We are giving the door surrounds a first coat of matt black paint to match the colour of the doors.

We are heading down to Ardpatrick to catch up with Jef and to borrow his finishing nail gun. This gun uses much finer nails than our one and so is good for door surrounds, skirting boards and the like.

It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the trees are just starting to come into leaf. It’s great to be reminded how beautiful Argyll is when it’s not raining.

Jef is working in quite a remote location so we have to park our car beside his van then walk for ten minutes. We briefly see Kirsty before heading along the track with it’s beautiful views of West Loch Tarbert.

We’ve finally reached where Jef is working and it is remote. He is telling us that it has been hard work and quite a lot of hassle getting the timber on-site for the sauna he is building. He’s far from finished but it’s looking good already and it’s in a fabulous spot. If you ever need a sauna built, we reckon Jef is your man.

We’ve left Jef and Kirsty and are heading home but we are going to pop in and see Andrew, our guru, and Manda since we are in the area. Andrew has started building them a new house and is selling the one he built years ago. He’s doing most of it himself, single-handed, which is a huge task but he has the advantage of a lot of experience and expert knowledge.

We are home now in plenty of time to get dinner ready for Steve, who is coming to eat with us. Happy days!

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We are going to head to Edinburgh later today to drop off our old car with our son, who is planning a trip to Yorkshire. First we are going to give the door surrounds another coat of paint.

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It’s Friday and we will be getting the bus back at 16.50 so we have some time for chores in Edinburgh. Pete is dropping off his devices at his former employers and Molly is heading into town.

We are having lunch at Eddies and are catching up with Niven and Caitlin. It seems our railway adventure has made quite an impression on them as well as us.

The bus journey back to Argyll is lovely because the weather has held out and the sun is shining giving glorious views as we travel homeward.

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We are doing more painting of the door surounds, each coat takes the two of us a bit over an hour to apply but we are sure if they had been fixed in the house it would have taken twice as long because we would have to take so much care not to mark the walls or floors.

We are doing a bit of work in the front garden in the area in front of the mega-shed where we plan to lay some turf so as to create a perfect camping spot. The soil is still quite wet but we want to start the laborious task of getting rid of as many stones as possible. Being Argyll, the land is very stoney indeed so this task is vital if you want a nice piece of lawn. Luckily we have decided that this is going to be the only area of lawn and it isn’t very big. Phew!

We are heading off to spend the night with Molly’s sister Ish, who lives a bit further north and west of here. It’s beautiful where she lives and because the weather is holding out, it is sunny and warmish, we are looking forward to our visit.

We’ve just finished dinner and because the days are stretching and the sun is out we are going for an evening stroll down to the coast. It’s such a good feeling knowing that winter is finally over and spring is in the air.

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It’s Sunday and we have enjoyed a long lie, if you can call nine a long lie. Ish has had ten large Sitka Spruce felled and so there is a lot of brush and branches to be cleared, it would have been cost prohibitive to have them felled and the site cleared of the debris so she is having to do it herself. She has come and helped us so many times that we are more than happy to help, and as they say, ‘Many hands make light work’.

It’s been a good week, not the most productive but we are happy with our progress. It’s always a challenge getting back in the swing of things after having been on holiday, especially when that time was so special, but we are ready to pick up the pace next week and drive forward towards finishing our house build.