Week One hundred and five

Week beginning 3rd Junbe 2024.

There was no post last week because Molly and Pete were in Edinburgh helping Ursula, Pete’s mum, move back into her home. Last October, just as her new kitchen was being finished, she had a fire that destroyed the kitchen and caused extensive smoke damage in the rest of her home. Since then she has been living in rented accommodation while the insurance company organised the renovation of her home.

So it was a busy week for one and all but by the time we came back to Gar Bothan we had managed to move her back in and build various bits of Ikea furniture, empty the boxes of her belongings that had survived and clean them, and finally hang her pictures on the walls. All-in-all her home feels nice and familiar.

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We got home on Friday night in time for the quiz in the community centre. We managed to do a bit of work over the weekend, mostly doing small tasks like washing the stairs, caulking and filling holes but we did manage to build a frame for the louvre doors that will cover all the electrics like the consumer unit, the battery controller and the inverter for the solar panels.

Kevin came to discuss the work we need to do at the entrance to the drive and will come to start the work this week

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Kevin has arrived and it’s only 8.30 so it looks like we are back into our old routine. Pete is out helping Kevin dismantle the gate, the fencing and take down our letterbox and house name sign from where the entrance needs to be widened. This is a condition of planning so we have no choice other than to comply.

It’s a nice day so Molly is starting to prepare the ground in front of the mega-shed for turfing by adding sand and raking it in. Pete is organising his collection of stones ready to build the dry stone wall later.

Pete is inside doing a bit of snagging by fixing the bedroom door, which is a bit tight to the frame, and the latch which is catching.

Our last task for today is to lay the leftover flooring underlay in the boxed-in storage areas on the mezzanines. With that done we can floor them with the leftover bamboo boards. A very nice wee job done and the storage will come in handy when we move our belongings into the house.

We’ve been invited for dinner with Steve and Cate so we are sure of a tasty meal. How Cate manages to conjure up such great meals in the kitchen of her caravan is fantastic and a bit of a mystery.

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It’s Tuesday mnorning and the weather has taken a turn for the worse, it is wet and much colder than yesterday. Kevin won’t be back because of the weather but he did get a lot done yesterday.

Our plan for today is to make the lids for the storage areas on the mezzanines. Molly, Kathleen and Carolyn all made the palet wood planks, measuring and cutting them then burning them and finally staining some of them. They look really good and add a bit of interest, much better than using plywood.

This job has been much more challenging than we had hoped and so it has taken us all day but it’s done now and that is another step towards the final finishing of the house.

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We are off to Edinburgh today to see Caitlin perform in her schools string concert. She has been learning the cello for a couple of years and we want to be supportive and encouraging so it’s worth the long drive.

We are back and had a nice time today. Caitlin performed well, as did all the children and we enjoyed the concert.

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It’s Thursday and we have decided that we will nail the skirting on the mezzanines by hand. We had hoped to borrow a finishing nail gun again but we can’t wait so we’ll just get on with it. It is taking much longer by hand, and we have to be very careful not to bend the nails, but it is working well and we are getting the job done.

Now we are going to fit the doors we bought yesteday in Edinburgh. When we built the frame we used left-over timber so it is a bit wonky but as long as we take care it should work out fine. We can use some hinges we bought by mistake for another job, even though they are designed for much heavier doors.

Pete is using a combination of router and chisels to fit the hinges and although it is a bit awkward chiselling out the top part of the frame he is managing to do an okay job of it.

We are very happy, we have doors in front of the electrics and once we have finished boxing it all in and making a bench it will look good and we’ll have a functional boot room.

Today is the 6th of June and it was two years ago on this date that we started building the kit for the house. We had hoped to be finished by now, in fact we originally thought it would take us a year to build the house (how naive). Despite it all taking much longer than we hoped we are celebrating the fact that we have survived and managed to keep going with a glass or two of sparkling wine.

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It’s raining again so we have contacted Andrew and arranged to go to his workshop to use his bench drill to prepare the timber for fitting the spindles on the mezzanine ballustrades. We tried drilling them by hand but that was useless as it is impossible to drill perfectly perpendicular to the timber.

It has taken us over an hour to get here but now that we have set up the bench drill the way we need it it isn’t taking long to prepare the timber for the spindles.

Home again and we still have time to give the prepared timber a lick of primer before finishing for the day.

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Even though it’s Saturday and we are running low on energy we have decided to keep working. Our aim is to get the spindles fitted by the end of the weekend. So we are cutting the timbers that will hold the spindles to size. To be sure that our plan will work we are bringing all the components together and doing a dry run. Everything will be fine so we can now carry on with painting the timbers to match the spindles.

Between coats, we are going round and caulking along the edges of the stairs and filling the nail holes on the skirting and door surrounds so that we can get a nice finish that looks sharp and professional.

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It’s the end of the week and we are ready to fit the spindles. The timbers have been painted and we have tested our plan so we just need to bring it all together and screw everything in place.

To be sure the spindles are vertical we are using our laser level. This is such a useful bit of kit we would highly recommend getting one, in fact we regret not having bought one much earlier in the build.

The job is done, it went really well and the result is much better than we had imagined. With the timber painted to match the spindles, it looks like the ballustrade is all metal and made by a blacksmith.

We are happy that we are back on track and it feels like we are so close to being finished. We just need to finish the boot room boxing-in, get more timber and finish the skirting and clad the back of the mega-shed. Compared to what we have done so far that doesn’t seem like much, but then again it’s not done yet.