Week Ninety-nine

Week beginning 22 April 2024.

Our intention this week is to make progress on fitting the door surrounds and, if that goes well, make a start on the skirting boards. To start with we are clamping the top piece of the master bedroom door surround to check that it is good and to hold it in place for nailing. Before we commit to nailing we are presenting the side pieces to check that the mitre joins are good. Now we can nail the top piece.

Using the top pieces that were prepared and painted last week we are working our way round the doors checking then nailing them on.

With that done we can now prepare the side pieces by cutting them to length and marking up and cutting out for the hinges and the latches.

Now we can get on with painting all the pieces ready for fitting. They need a primer/undercoat and two coats of matt black and each coat needs at least four hours to dry so it’ll take a while to get them ready.

Our last job of the day is to do a bit more garden preparation – raking out stones and levelling the soil, pulling up dock plants of which there are loads and generally tidying up.

That’s it, a good hard days work with some progress in the house. It looks like we are back into the work groove.

________________________________

Molly has had to go to the dentist for an emergency appointment so Pete is on his own today. There’s plenty wee jobs for him to get on with so he can experience some of what Molly had when he was away working.

Pete is starting by painting the door surroundings with their first coat of matt black. That didn’t take long so now he is giving the window surrounds in the mega-shed another coat of orange paint. This paint is horrible – a strong chemical smell comes off it and it doesn’t cover well at all – but the colour is good. We should have done more research and sourced a water-based paint instead.

A bit of a domestic chore needs doing so Pete has a washing on and he can hang it out to dry later.

Pete is reading the instructions on how to fit the handrail on the straight staircase and working out how best to make it secure. It has to be strong so fixing it to the plasterboard won’t do. It’s looking like a long plank screwed to the timber studs needs to be fixed first then the handrail has something secure to attach to. We don’t have the timber at hand so Pete is putting that off for another day.

It’s been dry for a few days now so this is the perfect opportunity for Pete to seal the bottom of the mega-shed door. We have been noticing a bit of water ingress from there so better to deal with it now than leave it and risk it becoming a more serious problem.

There’s still some time before Molly gets back so Pete is carrying on working in the garden until her return.

________________________________

It’s Wednesday already and with two of us here to work we can get on with the door surrounds. We have the side pieces for the outside of three of the doors all painted and ready to fit. We have fitted them without too much trouble, although with some bits being slightly off we will have to come back later with some wood filler to tidy up and get a sharper finish.

Now we are looking at preparing the final side bits but some of the timber is cupped and/or warped so we can’t use it. We aren’t sure if it is just low quality wood or because we left it too long before fitting, any which way it is very frustrating and quite costly too.

In an attempt to reduce the cupping and twisting we have scored three grooves into the worst of the timbers and are now clamping them to try and flatten them out. We have done some research on this but not sure how well it will work.

It’s a lovely sunny day so we are using the time to carry on in the garden. There are so many stones in the ground that we really need to try and get rid of as many as possible. Of course we realise it could be an endless task so we are going to be realistic about it but we still want to get rid of as many as possible.

________________________________

Yet another beautiful sunny day and quite unexpectedly the electricians have arrived to fit the extractor fan in the mega-shed. This is great but it means we have to stay out of the way and consequently we can’t do what we had intended, using the facilities in the mega-shed.

The electricians have fitted the extractor and are away so we are getting on with cutting the final door surrounds for the entrance to our en-suite. Now we need to undercoat them.

Our neighbour Ishbel has popped round for a visit and since we have a nice big pot of soup ready for lunch we have invited her to join us.

While the surrounds are waiting for their first coat of black paint we are measuring up and cutting the first of the skirting boards for the living room. We are taking our time and taking a lot of care because we need to mitre them and make sure they meet nicely to give a nice sharp finish. This is a challenge since something is always a bit off – the timber can be cupped or twisted, the wall can have a wee curve in it or the corner isn’t exactly 90°. But if we take care it will be as good as it can be.

________________________________

It’s Friday and we have made slow progress this week, though not for lack of trying.

We start the day by doing some more painting on the door surrounds and skirting which doesn’t take long. Now we are off to Oban to dump three bags of dock plants and rubbish from the garden, then go to collect the laser level we have ordered to help us fit the skirting. We are hoping that the laser level will make the job easier than using a spirit level. We will also do our weekly household shop while we are there.

That’s us back from Oban and we are now fitting the last of the door surrounds. One of the pieces is quite twisted and we had hoped we could persuade it to lie flat by nailing but that hasn’t worked so we will have to come back to it later and replace it.

We are out for dinner at Cate and Steve’s tonight. Wooohooo!

________________________________

It’s Saturday morning and we are testing our new laser level ready to fit the first of the skirting boards. We were right, this is much easier than using a spirit level and we are managing to fit the skirting easily and nicely level. Our mitres sometimes match perfectly and at other times the angles are slightly out, just as we expected but once filled and painted they’ll be fine. It is important for us to take the pragmatic approach otherwise we’d go mad.

We are back from going to a talk in the community centre which was about the Victorian artist, Waller H Paton, who painted a view of the Dalmally Horseshoe from a field near Dalmally. The talk was given by Cat Berry, one of his great, great grandchildren. It was very interesting to learn about the Paton’s, a family of renowned Scottish artists from Dunfermline.

Now we can get on with measuring and cutting more of the skirting boards and giving them a primer coat of paint. We are having a look at the twisted boards to see if cutting grooves and clamping has straightened them out. No luck, they are a bit less twisted but not so much as to make them usable. We are giving it one more try but this time we are stacking the boards back to back to see if that makes a difference.

________________________________

Pete’s up early giving the skirting boards another lick of paint so that with luck they’ll be ready for fitting tomorrow.

We are off to Tarbert, Loch Fyne, for lunch with Monica and Paul and on the way we will return Andrew’s ladder which he so kindly lent us over a year ago. Thanks Andrew, and thanks Monica and Paul.

On the way back we picked up a hitch-hiker, Bob the paraglider. It’s amazing the interesting people you can meet if you are willing to pick folk up.

It’s early evening and we are back at Gar Bothan so Molly is going to give the skirting boards their final coat of matt black before settling down to cook dinner.

It’s been a good week, we could have made more progress if the timber had been better but we are happy to see some of the door surrounds and skirting boards in place. They really make a big difference to the look of a room.