The First Little Pig

August 2008

2008-08-28T14:13:00.002Z

In response to persistent nagging from various family and friends, here are some internal shots. 'Fraid I didn't have time to tidy up first, so they're not quite up the the "Self-build & Renovation" standard!

House Internals

April 24th - Update

2008-04-24T11:29:00.004Z

We've been in about ten weeks now, and are completely settled. I've got the drive back, after a bit of a lazy spell when we first moved in, and am in the middle of getting the upstairs area in the barn accessible, to try to make a bit of space downstairs for a workshop. The weather has been pretty crap - still far too cold for the time of year, and Anna has been bringing the equines in each night. We've built a stable within the open-fronted barn, using the surplus strawbales for the walls, meaning that all my timber and saws, the families bikes and various bits of horse-tack are crammed up one end. Can't wait for the spring to arrive properly so we can dismantle the stable and reclain the space.

Still knocking off the last few bits and pieces of joinery in the house, the latest of which was a cupboard for Hamish. This involved closing off the cylinder space, putting some shelves and making a nice wide ledge & brace door (see below).

Still no warrant!

240408

March 21st - A few external pictures

2008-03-21T20:21:00.001Z

Here are a few shots of the outside of the house. I'll take some inside when we get the place tidied up a bit.

190308

February 11th - Living in the dream

2008-02-11T09:25:00.000Z

We’re in! After a few last very long days, which went unblogged due to time-pressures, we flitted (to use the borders vernacular) on Saturday 9th. We’d booked a Luton van, and the wonderful Jack turned up by bus the previous evening, hot-foot – or probably cold-foot – from a skiing jaunt in the highlands. Helped by him, the children (hmm!), Melvin, who rolled up in trendy clothes, freshly scrubbed and bowed down by the weight of a huge bouquet of flowers in a blatant and alarming pitch for Anna’s affection and Rachel we made the move in two van-loads. Yet again we were blessed with gorgeous warm sunny weather, which always seems to happen, even though our last four moves have all been between October and February.
We’re now settling in very nicely, and are finding the house incredibly easy to live in. It’s everything I wanted, and so much more. The big open-plan living / cooking / dining area is wonderful, and with the furniture in is very, very easy on the eye. The bedrooms are a little smaller than we’re used to, and one or two bits of furniture will have to be sacrificed. These rooms were deliberately kept to a modest size, as one of the core-principles I had in my head when drawing up the floor-plans was to try to keep some kind of relationship between the proportions of a room and the amount of waking time spent there. For that reason, a large upstairs living space, away from the hubbub of downstairs, was always on the wish-list. This lounge is currently full of boxes, which will be unpacked gradually over the next couple of weeks as bookshelves are made, clothes-storage solutions are worked out and wardrobe-rails hung. The snug is also out of action at the moment, littered as it is with tools and materials from the build that haven’t yet found a home out in the shed. One of Jack’s main achievements this weekend was to reorganize the shed, restacking the stockpile of firewood and sorting out the rest of the junk in there. This has already enabled me to store the solar-panel equipment out there, and today it should be joined by the bulk of the gubbins from the snug and my two big saws, which are for now doing battle with the elements on the verandah.
Yesterday Anna and Ellie were in Edinburgh, and Jack, Rachel and I took the boys up the hills. The little ones were very excited to walk through the cloud and emerge in the warm sunshine above. Hamish made it all the way to the top of Hownam Law with J&R, and the boys made it about half-way. The pictures below were mostly taken on the walk. Pictures of the house will follow once the remaining boxes downstairs are unpacked.
I phoned Mal yesterday morning and thanked him for making it all happen. I feel incredibly fortunate that all the necessary pieces fell into place at just the right time. We had the funds through the sale of our house in the village; the perfect plot fell in our laps (albeit at a cost of £125,000!) and – most importantly – we had Mal’s renowned expertise, Aussie can-do attitude, dynamism and disregard for bureaucracy on hand for a year. Without all that it would never have got out of the ground. I’d blithely assumed that I’d be able to carry it off mainly solo, with a little advice along the way. In the event, Mal’s experience and know-how was absolutely indispensable, and on this occasion rescued me from my own arrogance. He’ll probably never realize how much the whole project has meant to me. It’s something I conceived during a ten-day walk through Tasmania (funnily enough) in 1994. It has turned out even better that my paltry imagine could allow, and I’ll be eternally grateful. Cheers, mate!
And Melvin too, who started the job as clueless as I was back I June and learned the ropes as we went along, just as I did. It’s a journey that I’ve found almost wholly enjoyable and immensely fulfilling (with one or two notable exceptions), and I hope that Melvin has been similarly enriched. He’s certainly picked up some very useful new skills, and absorbs information and concepts amazing quickly. He looks a lot fitter and trimmer around the middle, and under Mal's careful guidance learned how to get out of bed in the morning and tackle a day's honest toil. His physical strength, his engineer’s analytical brain and his irrepressible good humour have been enormous assets.
Several other pals have involved themselves: Dave, who was here laying blocks in soupy mud and pouring rain for the first two days; Jack who hammered heroically for a summer fortnight despite being left-handed, my band of straw-baling volunteers who worked like Trojans through a hot September weekend; Lucky Phil who helped with the sheeting for a few days in the Autumn and my running buddy JD, who was the only volunteer to serve a second stint, right at the death when I was fitting out the utility room. Most of those involved in the build were fed and watered at some point by Anna's mum, who turned up from time-to-time laden with splendid picnics, and who did a huge amount of sweeping, wiping and general clearing behind the scenes.
Deliberately, and not solely for financial reasons, I have employed the bare minimum of tradesmen. Rob beautified it all with paint, Stevie and Rab the tapers smoothed out the wrinkles (well – most of them) and Jim installed and commissioned the boiler, and didn’t laugh openly at my plumbing. Big thanks to them, too.
And, of course, Anna, who has looked after the kids and coped with my daily absence with scarcely a murmur of complaint, and who had the recklessness and courage to plough our life-savings into my harebrained scheme. Ta, chuck!
We're not quite finished, of course, and I doubt whether we ever will be. The project took on a momentum all of its own, and looking back through the photos and the blog, it's remarkable to see how much work was packed into seven months. We've taken up residence a year ahead of schedule and more-or-less within budget. The first of these is largely down to Mal. The second is a complete mystery, as each stage seemed to devour at least twice the materials originally allowed for. Perhaps when I sit down and do the figures in a few weeks I'll discover a black hole somewhere. For the moment I'm content to sit and radiate in the glow of satisfaction, watching the slopes of Hownam Law turn red and gold in the evening sun, and to wait for the days to warm with the Spring, when I shall put down my saw, pick up a tinnie and sit on the verandah, listening to the gurgle of the stream, the mastication of the horse and the happy sound of the boys playing with the owls and the mice in the pile of surplus strawbales...

Hownam Law 100208

February 6th - phone and oiling

2008-02-07T01:07:00.000Z

My email to Scotland's top BT-man has borne fruit spectacularly. Completely unofficially, and without any order numbers, delays, connection fees or any of the usual nonsense I now have phone and broadband in the new house - and they've even transferred the existing number over. I'm a happy chappy!
I had Toby and Hamish with me all day, and Oscar as well for the last couple of hours. Pottered around oiling doors and securing the kitchen and utility-room sinks in place and sealing around them with silicon.
After putting the kids to bed I headed back and spent the night until 1:45am sanding and treating the stairs with Osmo PolyX oil. They've spent the last few months protected by heavy-duty polythene held in place by duct tape, and removing the tape was a real pig of a job. Took ages (hence the late finish), but the stairs look great with their satin finish.
More timber coming in the morning,which should enable me to complete the architraves and skirtings upstairs, and possibly get some shelves up in the pantry and bedrooms.
Ordered epoxy wood-filler and brass powder, which I plan to combine into a metallic paste to fill the joint between the worktops, and fill the craks that are appearing as the spport pillars dry out. Anna was in Edinburgh conducting a funeral, and came back laden with a dining table, a bench and a load of rugs and light-shades from Ikea.
It really feels like the end is in sight, although of course, the project probably won't be finished for years, if ever.

February 5th - Jack of all trades

2008-02-05T15:40:00.000Z

Another short day curtailed by a school run, but in the six-or-so hours we had, Anna and her mum oiled doors and had a BIG clear-up, shifting everything off the kitchen island and lifting the protective cardboard and excavating the floor from beneath piles of sawdust, card and sundry gubbins. Hamish (off school again) played with various beeping things and I had a bit of a tinkering sort of a day. Started with some architraves, then moved on to door-locks. After lunch I fitted another double socket to the right of the kitchen sink and with my final ten minutes I connected the water supply to the bathroom WC.
A brace of BT bods turned up to tell me that a temporary cable had been hooked up, and that they should be back to connect me tomorrow.

February 4th - Architraves and oiling

2008-02-04T20:50:00.000Z

A very short day on site for me, as I had a dozen parcels to ship in the morning and a school-run in the afternoon. Anne came over to lend a hand and she, Hamish (bunking off school) and Anna oiled internal doors with Danish oil. MUCH nicer finish than the varnish we've been using for the upstairs doors, and I've half a mind to strip them and oil them instead. I finished the architraves around the loft-hatch and used the remaining timber to finish the architraves around some of the upstairs doors.
Anna re-varnished the back door, which was already looking a bit sad and weathered, having had just a single coat in the Autumn.
I spent a completely fruitless and infuriating 40 minutes being shunted from one BT department to another, with lengthy periods on hold between each, trying to sort out the phone connection. Eventually hung up in an incandescant rage and fired off an email to Ian Shanks, the Scottish Head of Operations. By early afternoon he'd phoned back and was on the case. Even he is being fobbed off by the supervising engineer, who told him that the cable-laying is complete. I told him that, quite to the contrary, I could see from the end of the road the two coils of cable - one at each end of the bridge - which have yet to be taken overhead and connected. He said he'd look into it further. I wait with baited breath... (must stop eating lug-worms!)
Hamish also did a quick tour of the house with a little socket tester I bought for a quid, and almost immediately found a fault in a socket in the living room, where it reckons I've reversed live and neutral. He was very pleased with himself. Will fix it tomorrow.
I've had a comment from someone called Janet asking why we didn't install under-floor heating. A good question. At one point I seriously considered it, and I suspect it's on the drawings (along with several dozen other abberations which aren't reflected in the house). Eventually it was discounted for a few reasons:
Initial cost - would have been probably a grand or two more than the radiators.
Efficacy - not sure how effective it would have been with a suspended timber floor. It really comes into its own in a concrete floor, where the thermal mass of the concrete stores the heat and acts like a giant storage heater. The much less massive suspended floor would have heated up and cooled down much faster, and the heat given off would have probably been a lot less uniform, being concentrated around the pipes rather than diffused through the floor.
Effect on flooring - Several of the suppliers of hardwood flooring stipulated that their product wasn't suitable for underfloor heating, presumably because of excessive drying and warping.
Inertia - I just didn't get around to learning enough to make an informed decision before it was time to lay the pipes, and the radiators were and easy cop-out.

February 3rd - Plumbing on the night-shift

2008-02-04T00:21:00.000Z

Fitted a new thermostatic shower, plumbed in the utility-room sink and installed the dish-washer after putting the weans to bed. Good productive three hours.

030208

February 2nd - Loft hatch and varnishing

2008-02-02T22:17:00.000Z

Had a lovely run over Wideopen Hill and Hownam Law in the snow with John in the morning, then headed for the plot in the afternoon. Anna joined me with the boys, and while she continued varnishing doors, I made and installed a loft hatch. A bit labour-intensive, but I'm very happy with it. Cut a piece of OSB to fit the hole, then clad it with offcuts from the architraves. Looks grand. No pictures from the build, but photos of the run below:

Hownam Law_020208

February 1st - Tropical - innit?

2008-02-01T21:24:00.000Z

Today we mostly drank tea. And in between the blizzards JD plumbed in the central heating system, hung a few doors, cut and fitted the sink in the utility room and generally showed off his amazing DIY skills. I mostly danced all day to the groovy sounds of the Dixie Chicks, Michael McGoldrick and Show of Hands. Jim the plumber stopped the CO2 from poisoning us all and the neighbours rode in through the saloon doors on their Clydesdale horses to borrow a bag of sugar. Anna painted a few muriels (I think he means murals - ed) of flying ducks on the wall and then dashed off to save the twins from the mighty blizzard that was sweeping through the metropolis of Morebattle. JD bravely tested out the WCs in every room and judged them nae bad. Fuelled by peanut butter and cheese pieces at lunch we then ran 26 miles home over the Cheviots in time for a BBQ and some midnight trampolining. JD is back off to the smoke tomorrow and I don't know how I'll cope.

As you may have guessed, JD wrote that lot! Big, big day, when the disaster of yesterday was dispelled. My fix for the central heating worked an absolute treat, and by mid-morning I had all the radiators connected, with just a couple of very slow drips for which I needed a roll of PTFE tape. Jim had filched it all, so they had to wait until he rocked up at 4pm. In the meantime JD and Anna varnished a load of the internal doors (and pretty nifty they look, too) and JD and I cut the utility-room worktop and assembled it all.
Jim commissioned the boiler and did the CO2 test, and by the time we all left a little after 5pm, the place was almost approaching warm. What a difference - it's really starting to feel like a home!
The floor is continuing to dry slowly, and I think, but can't be sure, that the bumpy floor is starting to flatten a little as the swollen joints shrink back.

010208

January 31st - Water, water everywhere...

2008-01-31T21:26:00.000Z

... and Jeez, I need a drink. Arrived at the build late morning to discover to my horror that we'd not closed the patio doors, and the gales in the night had blown them open and flooded the living room. Piles of sodden cardboard and a huge puddle on the oak boards. Some of the joints have swollen and the floor is now very bumpy. Swore colourfully for a few minutes then got stuck into sorting the mess. Soaked up what I could with cardboard, in the absence of towels or mop, then plugged a halogen heater in and left it for the day. By knock-off it had dried to a surprising degree. The joints are still wet and swollen, and it'll be a nervous wait to see whether it will all flatten down as it dries out.
To continue a soggy theme, Jim turned up to commission the heating system. We switched on the water and immediately discovered a few minor leaks, mainly in the waste from the basins and cisterns, where I had assumed that the washers would form water-tight seals, but where Jim says standard practice is to augment them with silicon. We then set about filling the radiators. All was going fine until I tried to bleed the towel rads in the bathrooms. It turns out that somehow the radiators in both bathrooms, the lounge and the master bedroom are completely unconnected to anything except each other - with no connection to any water supply! Bit of a disaster, and I had visions of having to open up the ceiling in several places to try to sort it all out. I was sitting with my head in my hands in the shower room (well - almost) when I suddenly realised that if I could link that towel radiator into a flow / return circuit in the tank cupboard immediatly behind it, it should solve the problem and get all four going. That is, assuming all four are connected together.
I had to speed home at 6, as John Donnelly, a running pal from Glasgow who helped with the straw-baling back in September, was turning up for a couple of days. Tomorrow will be quite crucial, and could be either a triumph of a nightmare. Not sure how much kip I'll get tonight...

310108

January 30th - Partial move-in

2008-01-31T21:23:00.000Z

Having decided to delay our move by a week or two, we kept the van we'd booked and shifted a load of already-packed boxes and some of the surplus furniture (freezer, spare fridge, spare dish-washer, sofa etc). Lovely warm sunny day. Also used the van to collect a load of doors, a worktop and a kitchen unit for the utility room from Howdens and return the unwanted kitchen components.
Upstairs now almost finished, and looking lovely now that it's been swept.

January 29th - catch-up

2008-01-29T23:17:00.000Z

First diary entry in several days. Last night I finally got home at 1am after a bit of a marathon wiring the boiler (which involved lifting the vinyl floor in the pantry and squeezing through the tiny hatch to access under the floor and pull a cable for the cylinder thermostat).
We were supposed to be moving in tomorrow, and had booked a van and lined up a small army of helpers. That was until our landlord pulled a bit of a flanker. He turned up this morning and informed us that we are required to give three months' notice, rather than the one month we provided. Can't understand why he waited until the day before we were moving, when we gave him a letter a month ago. The result is that we've decided that since we have to fork out another £600 (he's letting us off with two months' notice) in rent on this place, we might as well use it for a while and make the move a bit more relaxed and less of a stress. Who knows, we might even have a phone connected before we move...
Over the last few days a huge amount has been done on the build. The boiler and hot-water cylinder are now installed (by Jim Lauder, a local plumber, and seeing the spaghetti of pipes, I'm very glad I didn't tackle it myself!). The shower is in place (thanks mainly to Melvin, with a bit of help from me) and I've done a fair bit of joinery, skirtings, architraves and a very pleasing oak window sill in the dining room. I've also floored the utility room and the cupboard under the stairs, and Carlo, a local joiner gave me a hand at the weekend to fit doors on all the bathrooms. Rob the painter came back to paint the cupboards and touch up any knocks we'd made. He was horrified and a bit grumpy at the state of the walls, which are pretty mucky in places and liberally pock-marked. I think we probably had the painting done too early. He did what he could with the small amount of remaining paint, and said he'll come back when we've completed the moving in process. The paint does seem to mark incredibly easily, and with the four children dragging hands along walls, I think it's going to look pretty tatty pretty quickly.
I've hardly been taking any pictures, mainly through lack of time and inclination, and partly because my camera battery has packed up, and a full charge only lasts about ten shots.
I think I might have finally cracked the mysterious leak in the patio door. I had a good look at the design, and decided that the gasket where the bottom of the door meets the frame was crap. It was very thin, and didn't seem to be compressed at all when the door was closed. I removed it and replaced it with two strips of self-adhesive foam draught-excluder. Today it rained for several hours, and not a drop came in. I can hardly contain my excitement. I also switched all power off and installed proper 25mm tails between the metre and the fuse-box, in place of the much thinner cable I'd used temporarily. This was fine for when we were just using a power-tool and a few lights, but now the house is ready for full load (simultaneous washing machine, cooker, dish-washer etc)
I've gone back to the building society and asked to borrow and extra £10,000. This necessitated another valuation (and another £75 fee), but it should just about get the place finished, although a good bit of the landscaping will have to wait till the spring or summer.

290108

January 25th - Boiler and joinery

2008-01-25T21:49:00.000Z

Another big day on site. The much-awaited installation of the boiler was scheduled, and Jim the plumber from Morebattle turned up first thing. I led him with trepidation into the utility room to show him the provision I'd made for it, and to my considerable surprise, he didn't snort with derision, but acted as if it was exactly as he would have expected. I worked alongside him for large chunks of the day, first cuttng an access hatch in the floor so he could connect to the drain underneath, and then hurriedly closing it all up again when he'd made all his copper connections. This was quite a procedure, as I had to cut and fit the sub-floor around all his pipes, seal it all with expanding foam, fill the floor-cavity with insulation, then repeat the cutting and fitting (and a bit of dwanging for good measure) with the chipboard flooring. I had to do all this at a clip while he was doing something inside the boiler, so he wouldn't be standing idle.
Melvin was dispatched to Galashiels for a flue extension, but made the 60-mile round-trip and, due to some breakdown in communication, came back without it and had to make the entire journey a second time. Hardly a great use of his time! He's struggled with his motivation over the last couple of days, possibly because the end is very close, or possibly just because he's done his first five-day week since Mal left in October! At any rate, after connecting the bathroom WC and securing it and the downstairs WC to the floor he was making rumblings about calling it a day (or rather a half-day). I persuaded him to stay on and prepare the ground out the back for the oil-tank (the digger driver had already taken a large bite out of the bank).This seemed to enthuse him a little more, and after levelling it, pouring a couple of barrow-loads of type 1 and dumping some blocks, he packed up and left.
Jim and I had managed to cock up the cutting of a hole for the flue. The hole in the internal wall and the one in the external wall didn't line up. Where it should have come through the external wall was bang centred on a structural timber. This cost me a couple of hours as I had to remove a couple of cladding boards, brace around the structural timber with horizontal trimmers and a stud either side, and then cut the timber to make an exit for the flue. Opening the wall up like this had a silver lining in that it gave me the chance to fill the metre-square cavity behind with insulation.
When we were doing the straw back in September I formed a big box and lintel in the straw cavity and left this empty as I didn't want to have to take the flue through straw. Now, with the exact position of the flue fixed, I was able to fabricate a 200mm square box around it and fill the big void with straw, and the space immediately around the flue with fibreglass. As the flue draws its combustion air through the outer-most of its concentric pipes, the surface doesn't heat up, but I wanted to surround it with something non-combustible just incase.
In between all this I cut and fitted architraves in the snug, dunny and lobby and finished the skirting in the open-plan area.
We've arranged an oil-delivery for Tuesday morning, so the priority now is to get the tank in position. The weekend forecast is fairly benign, with possible light rain. Next Wednesday's move looks vaguely possible, given a following wind. Anna has no qualms, but my paucity of imagination is leading to huge misgivings...

250108

January 23rd & 24th

2008-01-24T20:53:00.001Z

It's getting harder and harder to find the time to keep this going! Melvin and I are battering away, working long hours to try to wade through the list of things that need doing before we move in next Wednesday. He's now finished installing all the radiators, including the two towel rads in the bathrooms, which he hates, and which took him a large chunk of yesterday. We had to open up one of the walls (through the water-tank cupboard behind it) to put a supporting timber in to take the weight of a radiator full of water. I've been pottering on with finishing joinery, mainly skirting and door-frames, but also an oak hatch in the lobby, and, today, the first of the architraves, the timber for which arrived this morning.
The boiler and oil-tank came yesterday, and is sitting in the snug waiting for Jim to come and install it tomorrow.
I had an email from Building Control today, which was the first sign for months that they are doing anything. Apart from asking for an additional £360 fee (to add to the other additional £220 fee - and which they can bloody well whistle for), they have come up with four pages of bullet points they want addressing. Most of these are just things they need adding to the drawings. One is a request for guidance / literature on the use of timber in strawbale construction, so while asking for an extra £360 to do the job they should already have done, they're asking me to do it for them! Still - I suppose that's what we pay our average £1500 council-tax for. Nothing in the email is any cause for concern, but it's something I'll have to find the time to address.
BT have run into problems laying a cable to the site. The new cable they're laying down the valley is all underground, and they've no way of bringing it across the narrow stone bridge out on the road. Whatever they do to get around this, it's going to delay things, and there's now no chance of having the phone connected by next Wednesday. This means that I'll have to find office-space elsewhere, possibly in the house we're renting, if it's available for another month. More expense!
Melvin has finished insulating the loft, which now has 340mm of fibreglass on the floor, compared with the 200mm set out in the building regs.
While all this has been going on, Walker Groundworks have finally pitched up and started the landscaping. The priority is to get a decent surface down for vehicular access to the site. It's been getting very tricky driving out at night, with the steep slope impossibly muddy and slippery. The type 1 bottoming(!) they've spent the last two days spreading has already made a huge difference.
With no sign of our mains water connection, and the memory of Hamish's horrendous water-borne gut-rot of 2006 still vivid, we've decided to use bottled water for drinking and teeth-cleaning for the time-being. The spring that is currently feeding the house has plenty of pressure, and has been used by our neighbours for drinking for years, but we're reluctant to use our un-immune weans as guinae-pigs.

230108

240108

January 22nd - Insulation & joinery

2008-01-22T23:12:00.000Z

Blimey - seem to have missed three days' blogging. It's all a bit of a blur now. Just eight days to go before we move in, and thre's still heaps to do. Melvin's being aTrojan - endless good-humoured (although he swears loudly - alot!) and incredibly versatile, skipping from carpentry to plumbing to cleaning up and back to carpentry with virtually no instruction needed. A real asset.
Over the last few days I've been fitting the kick-boards to the kitchen units, cutting and fitting skirting and door-frames, wiring the external lights and various other bits and bobs. Melvin's created a hatch in the lobby floor, plumbed in the stop-cock and non-return valve and closed up the utility-room floor, laid 10 rolls of 170mm deep insulation in the loft (with another 170mm to go on top) and numerous other sundry tasks. We have a list we're gradually working through, but it seems that we can never quite finish any of the jobs on it. No doubt it will all come together in a rush at the end - at least that's what always happens on the telly!
The boiler still hasn't arrived, but after a couple of very acidic emails that I sent last night, I was promised today that we'll have it by lunch tomorrow. Jim the plumber has been booked to install it on Friday.
The landscaping is set for tomorrow, and Gregor dropped the digger off today to prove it. Today our temporary water supply, which runs above ground for a few metres, was frozen, which may be a bit of a problem if it becomes a permanent water supply! Need to sort that one out with Neil...

220108

January 19th - plumbing

2008-01-19T19:56:00.001Z

The family had a panto to see in Edinburgh, and after packing them off I headed to the build for a good uninterrupted day. Yesterday's carpentry had made a huge amount of mess, so I had a good sweep-out of the ground-floor. The 20 rolls of insulation that arrived wet have more-or-less dried out, so I ferried them one-by-one up to Ellie's room, handy for rolling out in the loft. They'd been a bit of an obstacle downstairs, and it's nice to be able to move around the place properly again.
That lot took me till about lunchtime, and after a short break I got stuck into the kitchen plumbing. The waste kit for the sink unit was pretty involved and took quite a while. The supply to the taps was a doddle by comparison. The sink and taps look great, but I had no camera again.
At long last I was in possession of all the necesary bits for the bathroom WC. The cistern for this is wall-mounted, and connects to the pan with a highly polished chrome pipe. There were no timbers in the wall where I wanted to mount the cistern, so I used butterfly fixings, and will drill a hole through the back of the cistern to fix it to a stud when I have a diamond-tipped drill bit. Although the tiling behind the bath isn't quite finished, I couldn't resist plumbing that in as well, and will have to undo the waste-pipe temporarily to finish the tiling tomorrow.
Yesterday I foolishly told Melvin that we're running out of things to do, but having made a fresh and very scary list that has to be knocked off in the next ten days, I texted him to put him straight!

January 18th - Kitchen worktops mostly

2008-01-18T22:06:00.000Z

No time to blog. Photos below, and diary to follow later...

Sorry about that. I worked a full day with Melvin, and arrived home to find the family in a state of collapse. Oscar had a temperature of 40 degrees (104 in old-money), which refused to respond to paracetamol. Trying to deal with it, and long periods on hold to NHS 24 left no time for frivolities like blogging.
As you'll see from the photos, Melvin and I spent a large part of the day installing the kitchen work-tops. This involved some precise and very enjoyable joinery, using a router and a biscuit jointer borrowed at the last minute from a mutual friend (thanks Patrick). The clamping system is pretty clever, and the end-result was very pleasing. To cap the day off I wired in the hob. Managed to fit door frames to the snug and the bathrooms too, so a good productive day.

180108

January 16 & 17th - Flooring, radiators & door-linings

2008-01-17T21:08:00.000Z

Two days to report. Melvin was with me yesterday and spent the day fitting radiators and the downstairs WC door-frame and grouting in the bathroom while I somehow managed to use up a whole day on the last few fiddly bits of flooring (including the lobby) that I though would take a couple of hours.
I was on my own today, and only had about four hours on site, during which I fitted door-frames to the pantry, utility-room, lobby, Hamu's bedroom and the shower-room, and cut and fitted oak thresholds everywhere where vinyl flooring meets oak. Anna brought the twins over briefly and did a bit of clearing up, but the wee men are still pretty unwell and weren't coping with being out of bed, so she took them home again.
I'm being messed around by Plumbing Supplies Ltd, who should have delivered our boiler and oil-tank several days ago, and keep fobbing me off when I chase them.
We've set January 30th as our moving date - less than two weeks away. Difficult to see how it's going to happen, but we'll see. I predict a mad and stressful end to the month...

170108

January 15th - flooring and radiators

2008-01-15T17:27:00.000Z

Had a late start after a horrendous interrupted night. Anna had to take Oscar to the doctor with a raging fever, while I looked after Toby at home. On my way to the plot at 10am I discovered Melvin asleep in his car at the side of the road, so my fears that he would have turned around and gone home when I wasn't there were unfounded.
A delivery of radiators arrived just as we did, and Melvin spent the day hanging them all. I floored the snug, and was almost finished by the time I had to leave at 3pm for school runs etc.
Farmer Neil filled the big hole out front, and another in the field behind, and BT assured me that the engineer who told me that it would be weeks before my line was connected wasn't in possession of all the facts, and that it should be done any day now.
Having trouble with the boiler suppliers, who have so far failed to deliver, ane seem to be avoiding my phone calls.

Jaunary 14th - Bits and bobs

2008-01-15T08:15:00.000Z

Had Melvin back on site today, which was a boost. We spent a couple of hours pulling the BT cable through the ducting from the house to the manhole at the roadside about 70m away. This involved all three of us (including Anna), Melvin pulling at the manhole, Anna holding the 200m drum of cable on a pole so it could spin and muggins here under the floor feeding the cable into the duct, where it tended to jam.
The rest of the day was spent on bits and pieces, Melvin fitted the utility-room radiator and tiled behind the bath(his first attempt at tiling, which all looked pretty good while I cut the skirting for the upstairs lounge and fitted an architrave on the outside of the patio doors to se if it stops the leak. Can't work out where the water's getting in, so am having to use a process of eliminationto trace it.
I went back to the plot at 8pm and worked till after midnight flooring the living room, which is now finished apart from a strip where the patio-door is leaking.

140108

January 12th - skirtings

2008-01-13T20:40:00.000Z

A pretty wild day with steady rain driven against the front of the house by a strong southerly wind. I'd been wanting a day like this, as both the front door and the front patio doors have been letting a little water in, and I wanted to find the reason and fix it before finishing the flooring. The front door was easy. Mal cut a rebate at the bottom of the door when he was installing it, and all I had to do was to fit some stormseal foam (draught excluder) which acts as a gasket between the door and the bottom of the frame. This seemed to work a treat.
The patio doors are a different matter entirely. I'd already had a couple of half-hearted looks, and last night was struck by the horrible thought that perhaps the water was seeping through the reveal beside the patio doors from the straw, which would signify a pretty major leak in the roof and the catastrophic prospect of a wall full of sodden straw. To check this, I cut a hole in the reveal just above floor-level, where it will be hidden by the skirting. Behind the plasterboard, the structural timber was damp to about three inches above the floor. I then drilled a 40mm hole through the OSB, into the straw cavity, and pulled out a few strands. I was very relieved to find that these were absolutely bone-dry. I looked and looked, but still can't find the point of ingress. Melvin's back tomorrow, so maybe he'll have a brain-wave.
I spent the rest of the day cutting and fitting skirtings in the downstairs WC, the master bedroom and Hamish's bedroom. It's a bit frustrating, as the timber has cupped a bit, making accurate mitre-joints almost impossible. I suppose that's why MDF is so popular for skirtings, door-frames and the like.
Cutting the mitres for the angled reveals took a bit of guestimation, but they actually worked better than most of the right-angle corners for some reason.
No camera again today. I'm very glad Melvin's back tomorrow. Perhaps it's the long days working solo, but for the first time since the project started in June, I found myself this evening looking forward to it being finished. It could be the pressure of having an entry-date just two weeks hence, and no heating system yet!

January 11th - flooring

2008-01-12T13:14:00.000Z

Pressed ahead with the flooring. Andrew finished upstairs and the half-landing - beautifully, while I carried on downstiars until the oak boards ran out late in the afternoon. As with all other materials on the project, I'm going to need another 20 square metres of oak to complete the job. Ho-hum - another £500 goes whizzing out!
Before he left, Andrew helped me to take the patio-doors off and plane about 5mm off the bottom, to give them clearance over the flooring. As they were, they wouldn't have opened at all once the flooring is laid in front of them. Laying the flooring is one of those compulsive and addictive jobs. The very obvious and rapid aesthetic change make it very rewarding and enjoyable.
Insulation arrived from B&Q, who had it on offer at half-price, which brought it in marginally cheaper than anywhere else. It was in a van with a load of garden equipment, from which the frost had thawed en route, so the bottom end of each roll was pretty wet. Hopefully it'll dry out OK, but it might take a couple of days in the unheated house.
There's also a big pile of dressed timber for skirting and architraves impeding progress around the dining room. Anna oiled a couple of planks to see how it looks. Very light-coloured finish, and I'm undecided whether I like it or not. Anna does, so of course my opinion is purely academic!
No photos again, so you'll have to try to imagine a wall-to-wall sea of dark oak.

January 10th - elsewhere

2008-01-10T17:07:00.000Z

I was back in bloody Morpeth today, chasing up the payment for the big security job I did last month, so didn't get anything done at the plot. In my absence, Andrew forged ahead and finished the flooring in Ellie's room and Hamu's room. Just the twins' room to do now, and upstairs will be finished. The timber arrived for skirtings and architraves, and the twenty rolls of super-itchy loft insulation are coming tomorrow. Any volunteers for THAT pig-of-a-job will be richly rewarded in heaven!

January 8th & 9th - Flooring

2008-01-09T23:27:00.000Z

I've spent the last two days flooring like a Dervish, laying the oak downstairs while our neighbour Andrew does the same upstairs. He's a former full-time floor-layer who gave it up when he smashed a knee in a car accident. It's great to have an expert on the job, and some of the tips and techniques I've nicked from him have made a huge difference. He's about half-way through the five rooms upstairs, and I'm probably about a third of the way through the ground floor. I've hired a "Porta-nailer" machine which automatically punches nails into the tongue of each board at exactly the right angle, and tightens the floor up as it goes, making for a beautifully precise job, with the nails completely concealed. It's a marvel of a gadjet, and a snip at £35 for the week.
In the meantime, Anna's pitched up and done a couple of brief spells of external painting between school-runs etc. The front fascias are now all the same colour (black) which make quite a difference!
The photos below don't really do justice, as the colours are all to pot and the floor is very dusty, but you'll get the idea...

100108

January 7th - plumbing and floor-sanding

2008-01-07T20:11:00.000Z

Didn't get anything done yesterday, as a puncture and a trip to B&Q in Galashiels ate up all the available time. Still, the trip to Gala was very worth-while, as I returned the unsuitable toilet that we'd bought in August for £190, and exchanged it for one at £60. Picked up a load of plumbing fittings, tiles for the shower and a couple of tools, and still came out with a £36 profit!
Armed with the right bits and bobs, I cracked on with the bathroom installation today. The biggest job was the shower-tray, which involved opening the floor up to run the waste pipe to the spot where the shower-trap has to be. Had to get the pipe through a floor-joist at an oblique angle, which meant a slightly awkward cut. The shower-room plumbing is now finished, as is the downstairs dunny. Just the bathroom WC and bath to do now, both of which are awaiting parts from Graham's in Berwick. Anna helped me lug the bath upstairs so I could work out the waste plumbing.
My last three hours on site were spent sanding the upstairs floors, to allow our neighbour Andrew to start laying the oak flooring when it arrives tomorrow. revolting job - I'd aborted it last week because I didn't have a mask. You'll see from the photos why I needed one!

070108

January 5th - electrics and bathrooms

2008-01-05T19:52:00.000Z

Spent the morning finishing the upstairs ring main. This should have taken about 20 minutes, as I just had three sockets to fit. Having done that, however, I tested and discovered that the ring didn't have continuity, suggesting that there was a pair of cables hidden inside a wall somewhere where I'd intended to fit a socket, but which had been sheeted over without being brought through the plasterboard (nice one, lads!). Tracked the problem down to a corner of the twins' bedroom, took a punt, cut a hole and found them. Installed a socket here and tested again, with the same result. Investigation suggested that the break was now in Ellie's room, and once again I managed to cut a hole in exactly the right place. The ring was now complete, and I powered it up and tested all the sockets.
After lunch I delved in my delivery of plumbing parts and dug out the fittings I'd ordered for the bathrooms. The remainder of the day was spent installing the three wash basins. Two of them were fractionally too low to be screwed to the timbers Mal installed in the walls to support them, but I suspected that might be the case and had ordered some heavy-duty plasterboard fixings, which did the trick. The weight of the basins is taken by their pedestals, of course, but with our three terrors I thought the stronger the fixing to the wall, the better!
I finished the day with a lovely run up Hownam Law, just as dusk was falling.

January 4th - down-day

2008-01-04T21:13:00.001Z

No work at the plot today, as Anna was working and I was on childcare detail. I did, however, splash out almost two grand on a boiler, flue and oil tank, which should arrive in about a week, and took delivery of the various traps and fittings that should enable me to crack on with the bathroom installations tomorrow. Also measured the loft floor-area so I can order the insulation. At 300mm (12") deep, it's going to cost around £400.

January 3rd - snow

2008-01-03T19:15:00.001Z

No work at the plot today. Anna dashed over first thing to feed the horse after a night of snowfall, and promptly got stuck. I caught up with the day-job, which has reared its ugly head again after the Christmas break, and the kids spent the day in the garden.
We ran out of oil five days ago, and the house is now the same temperature as the garden.

030107 snow

January 2nd - Plumbing & shopping

2008-01-02T16:43:00.000Z

A frustrating day. I drove over the border to Berwick to take advantage of the fact that the English winter holiday ends a day earlier than the Scottish, only to find that Graham Plumbers Merchants were closed anyway. This meant I couldn't get the bits and pieces for the main bathroom. Instead I went to Doves and picked up a load of waste traps and other gubbins for the sinks and dunnies.
After a brief appearance at a neighbour's party I dropped in at the plot and quickly discovered that the traps were the wrong size (40mm instead of 32mm), the kitchen sink waste fitting didn't fit, the universal kitchen sink trap, which claims to fit "virtually all 1.5 sink units in the UK and Europe" doesn't suit ours, and the shower-room WC is designed for a waste pipe that comes from the wall, rather than the floor, as ours does. Of the 10 fittings I bought, only one was useable! Plumbed in the downstairs WC basin, just so I could feel that I'd achieved something, then raced home to order a load of replacement fittings from Toolstation before I missed the cut-off.
Harrumph!

January 1st - Electrics

2008-01-01T23:18:00.000Z

A miserable day of incessant rain. My mood reflected the weather, and I found it very hard to get going. Everything I wanted to do needed materials. In the end I sanded the lounge floor, but stopped because I had no mask. None of the bathroom installation could be done, and in the end I resorted to installing the bathroom fans, shower-light and a couple of outstanding light-switches. One of these revealed a damaged wire in the pendant in the master bedroom, which turned out to have been pierced by an overly-long screw. As with all these things, it took me quite a while to track the fault down, but the repair was quick and easy.

010108

December 30th & 31st

2007-12-31T19:19:00.000Z

Now then, two days to report. Sunday, had my gorgeous wife with me. She is such a fabulous helper, I got so much more than usual done. Oh, also had the two dogs and four children, who admittedly are not quite so helpful, but still, nice to have the company. Together we laid floors or rather vinyl, and Anna oiled the work surfaces for the umpteenth time. Then my superhuman but beautiful wife made a bonfire with the children and still managed to find time to brush and feed the horse and donkey.
Monday, alone today. Sat about with my two arms the one length. Then went home to get ready for a new year's eve party.
You may have guessed that my gorgeous and talented wife penned the entry above. She neglected to mention that I unpacked and assembled all the basins and WCs, and compiled a list of the missing bits, which have either been supplied wrongly (incompatible toilet and cistern), forgotten (toilet handle, sink waste) or not yet ordered (basin traps and one or two bits that a plumber would have known to order, but I did not). The two-week shutdown that is being enjoyed by the entire building industry (but not me) has made things a bit tricky, as materials are very hard to come by. I am three back-boxes short of finishing the electrical second-fix (about £1.20-worth, and 20 minutes or work), but can't cross it off the list until they arrive. Similarly, I could have toilets and basins working but for the want of a couple of quids' worth of plumbing fittings.
The vinyl-laying was a lot easier than I'd expected, even the accurate positioning of holes for pipes, measured upstairs, then laterally transposed (as I was marking on the back of the vinyl) and cut on the living-room floor. It's pretty thick and heavy stuff, and the larger cuts are a bit unwieldy, but with just the utility room to do, it's all gone down very satisfactorily.
No Melvin today, which was a bit of a disappointment. He's off snow-boarding in a couple of days, so I doubt I'll see him for a couple of weeks, by which time most of the oak flooring should be down.

Pictures below are the downstairs WC, which did itself this morning while I was checking the uniform length of my arms.

311207

December 29th - Plumbing

2007-12-29T22:27:00.000Z

I'd arranged to meet farmer Neil on site at 8am to connect the house to the spring water supply. It felt awfully early, and very dark. The connection took only a few minutes, after which I had no excuse to delay any further the testing of the plumbing throughout the house - a task I've been avoiding for many weeks, simply because I didn't think I could take the heartache if it revealed a load of leaks, which would involve pulling floors up or the ceiling down. Of course, the proper time to test it all is BEFORE the ceiling and floors are down, but we didn't have a water supply back then.
It was with considerable trepidation that I hooked up a temporary supply to the first radiator circuit, and little short of outright terror that I turned the water on...
and it was with growing disbelief and relief that I watched for ten minutes, and waited for the tell-tale damp patches to appear on the ceiling. None came.
My test rig didn't include any kind of pressure-release mechanism, and the only way to let the pressure off so I could disconnect my temporary supply pipe was to drill a small hole in the bottom, with a bucket placed strategically underneath, then cut of the drilled section before the next test. I repeated the test for the three remaining circuits, with similarly splendid results. Infact the only slight mishap was when the shower-fitting that Melvin installed a couple of months ago shot a plume of water towards the ceiling and soaked the wall and bathroom floor. I suspect he warned me at the time that he'd only finger-tightened the fittings, with no PTFE tape, but if he did, I'd forgotten long ago. The spill was quickly mopped up and dried, and the leak repaired.
I also did a bit more floor-scraping upstairs and oiled the worktops (again!), before baling out at lunchtime to receive a visiting neice (Camilla).
A huge day. Now that the plumbing has the thumbs-up, I can crack on with the flooring. Bathrooms first - I'll get the vinyl down and have a bash at the installation of basins, dunnies, bath and shower this coming week, hopefully with Melvin's help, before the oak flooring for the rest of the house arrives sometime around the 5th of January.
Aussie Mal's 40th today. Happy birthday from the other side of the world, cocker. Your Scottish legacy is well on track!

291207

December 28th - plumbing and tidying

2007-12-28T22:12:00.000Z

No pictures for ages - sorry mum, and not much to photograph today. Anna's lost her car-keys, and needed my car, so I had her drop me at the plot for 10 hours. There was a power-cut, so I was working with the generator again. Funny how I've already got so accustomed to having unlimited power - it seemed a real drag to have to ration it.
I started with an unpleasant and long-avoided bit of plumbing under the floor, running the pipes in for the utility-room taps. Uncomfortable and fiddly, but it felt great to have it finished.
I'd nipped into Kelso in the morning for a stop-cock, which I installed with a temporary length of 15mm pipe on the down-stream side which I'll use to test all my plumbing before putting the oak flooring down.
The entire afternoon was spent tidying, sweeping and chipping plaster-spots from the downstairs floor to give us a smooth surface on which to lay the oak boards. The place was a real tip - evidence of Melvin's long absence. He's always the one to get hacked off with the mess and sort it all out.
Neil popped by in the evening and promised to be on site first thing tomorrow to hook me up to the spring supply temporarily. I have a feeling that he's done nothing about having the mains supply connected, and is a bit evasive whenever I mention it! Still, the spring will be fine for testing the plumbing.

281207

Christmas Eve & Boxing Day

2007-12-26T19:13:00.000Z

December 24th:
Installed the last smoke alarm, the kitchen downlighters (above the island and in the bulkhead) and the upstairs ring-main sockets, apart from in Hamish's room because I ran out of back-boxes. Somehow - and I need to check my invoices to see what's happened - I've ended up with 80 extra single-gang back-boxes and a shortfall of two-gang. As the job only used about a dozen single-gang, it's difficult to see how I managed to procure almost a hundred! Still, as they cost about 30p each, it's hardly worth agonising over.

December 26th:
Hadn't intended to work on the house today, but after lunch I decided to nip over to the plot, take the dog for a run up Hownam Law, feed the horse and donkey and do a little bit of work. The run was wonderful - very windy and invigorating, and a relief to see that despite the lack of training over the last six months, I can still make it to the top without walking or suffering a coronary.
With the couple of hours I had available to work, I cut and installed the spindles on the upper flight of stairs. Made a pretty smart job of it, if I do say so myself, and I think it'll look rather natty when it's all oiled up.
I also marked out the hob cut-out on the island worktop, but decided that cutting it would take too much strength out of it, and would be better left until we've stopped flipping it over for oiling and moving it around.

December 23rd - Electrics

2007-12-23T20:27:00.000Z

Made it over to the plot for about five hours today. Spent all of it working on the downstairs ring-main - which involved quite a bit of rolling around in the 15" space below the floor tracking down errant wires - and the upstairs lighting, which entailed an hour rummaging around in the loft tracking down a short-circuit that kept tripping the circuit-breaker. Turned out to be a cable damaged by the sharp edge of a truss bracket. I'd also managed to mis-label a wire, which led to some pretty confusing symptoms. Got it all sorted in the end, and now have just the upstairs ring-main to do, plus fripperies like aerial sockets and a couple of phone points.
Anna brought the boys over, and she painted fascias while they bickered inside for a couple of hours.
Our neighbour Andrew dropped by to cast his eye over the flooring I've asked him to help out with, and agreed to start on January 3rd. He reckoned that the three of us (including Melvin) ought to knock it off in around a week. Before then I have to satisfy myself that the plumbing is all sound (still not done that!) and chisel all the lumps of plaster off the floor to give us a smooth surface to lay the oak boards on. Sounds like a job for Connor (or Jack, if you're reading).
No pictures, but if you imagine shallow puddles and a muddy sludge where the ice was, you'll not be far wrong.

December 21st - Power!

2007-12-21T21:45:00.000Z

The freeze shows no sign of abating, and this morning's -10 degrees in Kelso had both Fiat Multiplas out of action. I had the startled Aussie Connor on site again, marvelling that life in such a cold climate is sustainable.
The installation and connection of our electricity meter was scheduled for today, and all morning I worked in a state of impatient expectation, waiting for it to turn up. I finished the upstairs lighting circuit, including a wire to switch the lounge lights that somehow I'd neglected to run in while the walls were open. Managed to get it in with no disturbance to decor. Connor cut as much verandah flooring as he could, then oiled a couple of worktops and set to work painting the front of the house, once the frost had melted from the wall in the soft, bright sunshine.
Anna came with the twins for a brief visit, during which they made an improvised slide with a couple of sheets of frosted OSB, ending at the edge of an open trench, into which they'd plummet at the end of each ride.
The meter-man turned up just after lunch and was finished within half-an-hour. When he'd gone I hooked the supply up to the fusebox and, with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, switched on. It seemed like a big moment, and work will now be a lot easier with lighting throughout the house (still to test upstairs) and sockets in handy places.
Connor finished the front wall, which makes a heck of a difference to the first impression the house gives as you approach it. Feels like things are coming together. All I need now is to sort the plumbing...

211207

December 20th - nowt (again)

2007-12-20T19:30:00.000Z

I rather think this house is going to have to build itself. Anna had to take Ellie to the airport, and I had two sick twins to look after at home. The permafrost shows no signs of thawing. I met Jim the plumber on site to try to talk him into taking on the boiler and tank installation. I wouldn't say he was particularly keen, but I think he's agreed to do it (although with Jim - a man of famously few words - it's hard to be sure).
In the absence of progress on the house, here are some pretty hoar-frost pictures taken on the way home.

frosty 201207

December 19th - Electrics

2007-12-19T21:08:00.000Z

Another clear and penitentially cold day. At breakfast time the car thermometer read minus seven, and the gear-stick was frozen in position! I only managed a half-day, as the twins are off school with croop and Anna had Hamu's school play to get to. Spent the morning fitting pendants and light switches upstairs, and when I could stand the cold no longer, I went out into the sun (and ice) and fitted one of the lanterns in the porch, which involved a tricky bit of wire-pulling behind the cladding.
Collected the vinyl for the bathroom and utility room floors in the evening, so we can get cracking with the bathroom installation as soon as we've tested that section of the plumbing.

No pictures today.

December 17th - electrics and verandah floor

2007-12-17T21:46:00.000Z

Back on site today for the first time since last Thursday. Melvin had warned me that he's pretty tied up for most of the week, so I got hold of young Connor the Aussie and had him working on the verandah floor for the day. His morning was spent fitting joist-hangers to all the floor-joists, which had to be done before the flooring could go down.
After several weeks of wondering vaguely what to floor it with, and wanting to avoid using ugly and pretty toxic decking, I bought a load of 150 x 32mm larch boards from Willie Dobie. They're planed with about 20 small longitudinal grooves across the 150mm width to provide grip when they're wet, and, being larch, should theoretically be OK to leave untreated. In the interests of keeping them clean I'm planning to oil them thoroughly so they can be washed down, and so water can be swept off them.
While Connor was busy with that, I was indoors cracking on with the second-fix electrics (fitting sockets and switches). I'm hoping to have it complete before the man comes to fit the meter on Friday, although the way the day-job has gone in the last couple of week, I'll be lucky to find the time.
We finished the day working together for the last hour, with Connor cutting boards to length and me fitting them with a 5mm gap between rows to aid water-shedding.

I bit the bullet this afternoon and phoned a couple of plumbers to take the heating system installation off my hands. Neither can fit it in this side of the new year, and I think it's going to be a bit of a panic getting the flooring done thoughout the house. Hopefully I'll be able to get the pipework in most of the house tested in the next week or two so I can make a start.

171207

December 13th - cladding and slating

2007-12-13T20:34:00.000Z

One of the dangers of living in a modern well-insulated house is that you can easily misinterpret the conditions outside. It was for this reason that I managed to under-dress rather dramatically today, and spent a long and uncomfortable day on site fighting all the time against hypothermia. It didn't help that I was working on the north side of the building, while the front was bathed in lovely soft winter sunshine. I finished the cladding of the overhang, knocking off the last two ventilated boards by late morning, while Melvin worked on the gable-end above the verandah.
I was chuuffed that by the time we'd fitted the last profiled caldding board, we had just nine left, out of a total of 550. Pretty nifty quantity surveying by yours-truly!
After lunch I spent a couple of hours on finishing the porch slating, and Melvin started fitting battens on the verandah roof, to prepae it for slating. I joined him as dusk was falling and we worked together by site-light until almost 6. Frosty when we left, and I didn't thaw until I had a ot dinner in me.

131207

December 11th - Cladding

2007-12-11T21:27:00.001Z

It was as chilly a start as I'd feared, exacerbated by the fact that I forgot my neoprene socks, and almost immediately lost feeling in several toes. Melvin and I worked together on the cladding the overhang at the back of the house. This is the north side, so we were in shade, but soon warmed up and had to shed layers and hats with the effort of fitting boards in awkward nooks and crannies. It was slow going - we'd thought that we'd romp through the straight unbroken run along the back roof, but the bottom course, which requires cutting to length, then ripping to width with a 35 degree angle, and then the awfully time-consuming task of measuring, marking, jigsawing and meshing the soffit vent slots seemed to take forever.
I had a call just as Anna was arriving with the boys at 3pm summoning me to a meeting at home (which I'd completely forgotten about), so I had to knock off early. Melvin carried on alone, but as dark was falling he belted a finger with his hammer and was unable to continue, even after aneasthetising it in the icy stream for five minutes!
No work tomorrow, as I'm off to Northumberland again to finish last week's big job. Spoke to Scottish Power Systems today to chase up the meter installation. Now scheduled for December 21st, which is a bit crap, as I'd been led to believe it would be early this week. Still - by then I should have finished the electrical second fix, and the house will be ready to go live.
Neil, bless him, volunteered to shift some of our piles of rubble and soil, and to dig a shallow trench to drain our perpetual puddle into the stream.

111207

December 10th - Cladding and wiring

2007-12-10T21:31:00.000Z

Had Melvin back on site today, but in a diminished form. He was snuffling and coughing all day, having given up smoking AGAIN. By the time he arrived the rain had cleared and the day gradually got brighter as it progressed. We spent it cladding the underside of the overhangs at the front and west of the house. I'm delighted with the end result. The forecast is fair for the rest of the week, so we should get the back and east knocked off tommorrow. meanwhile, Anna spent a good chunk of the day painting the cladding beneath us. It's really starting to look quite smart externally.
Melvin left as dark fell, and I moved indoors and spent an hour installing and wiring the fuse-box in the utility room. Thick ice on the puddles when I left at 6, so a chilly start tomorrow.

101207

December 8th - slating & electrics

2007-12-08T20:30:00.000Z

Another short day - just about three hours on site, the second half of which featured howling winds and driving rain. I arrived to icy puddles and spent the first hour or so exchanging Ellie's window (it had finger-prints on the MIDDLE of the three pains in the triple-glazing sandwich), which was quite tricky single-handed with a slated roof beneath me. I should have done it before slating the porch, but there you go... With what remained of the only slightly nasty weather I knocked off another three rows of slating on the left-hand-side of the porch before retreating indoors when it was just too unpleasant to stay out. Before I had to leave for home I wired a smoke detector and four light-fittings upstairs.
We had a family jaunt to Galashiels, which included a trek around Carpet Right, choosing a floor-covering for the bathrooms. Below are the candidates. Votes if you will please by email. If I like your choice, I'll go with it. If not, I'll ignore it, like General Musharraf...

Vinyl - 081207

December 7th - Going live

2007-12-07T22:21:00.000Z

I didn't make it to the plot today, and spent the day working in Northumberland again (and the job STILL aint finished!). Anna was there for a while and reports that a team from Scottish Power turned up and installed the transformer that will service the three / four plots, and that we now have power in the house. We can't use it yet, as the meter hasn't been fitted, but it really feels like progress - having energetic electrons waiting to gush forth. I think my ailing generator will be very relieved.
Conspicuous by his absence was Gregor Walker, who was supposed to come and backfill all the holes on the site in readiness for the start of landscaping on Monday. We've now had to put Roger the landscaper off till Tuesday.
Below are a couple of photos I took from the border-crossing at Carter Bar on the A68. It was very, very lovely driving over there this morning, and impossible to do it justice with a photo.

Carter Bar 071207

December 6th - slating etc

2007-12-06T19:37:00.000Z

Much to my surpprise, I found myself slating again today. Anna and I arrived together and she immediately set about painting the cladding and oiling worktops. I took a while to get up to speed, and pottered around fitting sockets into the douglas fir structural posts in the kitchen.
After a while she told me to stop pfaffing about and to slate the porch. This hadn't figured at all prominently on my list of priorities, but it did seem to make sense to do something outdoors on a dry and mild December day. Quite enjoyed being back on the slates, and as Anna was painting around the porch, we actually got to spend some time together, which doesn't seem to happen very often with me shuttling between plot and real work. Finished one side and fitted all the battens on the other side, and just managed to get a couple of rows of slates on the second side before dark forced me back indoors. Fixed the remaining cupboard handles in the kitchen then installed the back-boxes for all the ground-floor sockets, including one in the snug where there were no wires pulled through the plaster-board, but where I was convinced I'd made provision when I was wiring. After a couple of minutes racking my notoriously fallible memory, I bit the bullet and cut a fist-sized hole... and there they were, two fat wired just where I thought they'd be. Mal - you're a charlatan and a scoundrel!

061207

December 4th - Electrics

2007-12-04T20:37:00.000Z

A nasty cold, blustery damp day, so I retreated indoors and set about the electrical second fix. The first couple of hours saw all the back-boxes fitted for the ground-floor light-switches and above-counter sockets. The remainder of the day, until I had to leave on a school-run at 2:30 was spent installing and wiring the twelve downstairs light pendants. Just finished the last one in time, which was very satisfying.
Meanwhile, a couple of Scottish Power engineers arrived and joined our 25mm single-phase cable to the big 95mm three-phase cable serving the four plots. They also terminated the cable in the utility room, fitting a 100A fuse on the end of it, in readiness for the meter-installer to come soon. Apparently a couple of years ago all these tasks were carried out by one man, or at least one team in a single visit. Now, in the interests of efficiency, or health and safety, or political correctness, they divide the job into four distinct tasks, each carried out by a separate team, each travelling from Edinburgh in a van (or, today, two vans). It would seem that the soaring cost of domestic energy isn't all down to the price of oil!
Back home I ordered all the sockets, switches etc, which should be here in a couple of days. Quite looking forward to installing it all. It's the one part of the build of which I have any previous experience. Very glad to notice that the wall in Hamish's room, where water had leaked in around the velux unit, has dried out.
Back in Northumberland again tomorrow, working on the day-job.

041207

2nd December - painting & leak-plugging

2007-12-02T22:56:00.000Z

A couple of hours on site with all the kids today. Started with some painting off the scaffold at the west end, helped briefly by Ellie, then noticed that water is still getting in somewhere around the velux in Hamu's room. Had a good look and discovered that I've made a bit of a boo-boo with the flashing, and left out a soaker, meaning that water flowing down the right-hand side of the window leaks into the cavity behind the plasterboard. Need a drawing iron to remove a slate to fix it. Don't have one, and to keep the water out until I borrow one from my pal Davy, I patched up with a load of silicon, which should do the job for a few days at least.
Back down to Northumberland again tomorrow to earn some cash, so no more work till Tuesday...

1st December - External painting

2007-12-01T20:56:00.000Z

Only managed three hours on site today, on my own. A bit blustery to work off a ladder on the overhangs, so I decided to do a bit of painting off the scaffold, which Anna wouldn't be happy doing. After a couple of hours I'd done all I could without reconfiguring the scaffold, so I cut a few boards to length and fitted them to the raked overhang above where I'd just been painting. Back still pretty stiff and vulnerable after my fall earlier in the week, which makes manoeuvering on the scaffold a bit of a pain.

November 29th - Cladding and eaves

2007-11-29T19:13:00.000Z

This weather forecasting is proving to be very reliable, which makes planning a lot easier. The predicted sunshine was confirmed as soon as I opened the curtains, and persisted through the day, with completely cloudless skies.
Melvin and I finished the cladding above the verandah, while indoors Rob completed the painting (apart from the built-in wardrobes, which he'll do at a later date) and young Connor the Aussie fitted all the doors and drawer-fronts to the kitchen island.
I had to nip into Kelso to get Rob's cash at lunchtime. I released another £15,000 of the mortgage a couple of days ago, not quite early enough to avoid going overdrawn for a couple of days (I wonder if the bank will hammer me for that), but just in time for it to clear and allow me to pay Rob, and Melvin for his last two weeks.
Back at the site, Melvin had started fitting the very top row of cladding on the front wall, which we thought we might avoid by having a small boxed-in soffit. Looking at it afresh, it seemed easier and probably prettier to fit the top row and board the overhangs right up to eaves level. The draw-back was that nailing the top row of cladding and the top overhang board would be awkward. In the event, it was no real bother, and the finished result is extremely pleasing. We had to cut ventilation slots in the bottom board of the overhang to allow airflow up into the loft and thus avoid the rafters rotting if warm air from inside the house condenses on the cold roof timbers. We blocked the back of these slots with a fine stainless steel mesh to keep birds and insects out.
When it became too dark to work outside, we carried on with the cooker-hood installation in the kitchen. It's a very bold piece of kit - very modernistic glass and brushed stainless steel, but it works surprisingly well with the rustic timber surrounding it. My one concern, shared by Melvin, is that it hangs very low - bang on eye-level if you're 5' 7". That's as high as it goes, so we may dismantle it and cut it with a grinder to allow us to raise it by 6 inches or so.
A wonderful starry night as we were leaving, with the nebulous stripe of the Milky Way clearly visible. It's lovely being there in the dark, looking at the stars and listening to the stream gurgling through the garden.
Tomorrow's forecast is grotty, and I have a work-visit to do. Melvin also has stuff to do, so it looks like progress will stall for a couple of days.

291107

November 28th - Cladding & sundries

2007-11-28T20:36:00.000Z

The forecast rain arrived mid-morning, by which time Melvin and I had added four or five rows of cladding above the verandah and Anna had painted a section of it. We moved indoors and instead prepared the way for the installation of the main power cable, which is scheduled for Monday 3rd December. I knocked a 50mm hole through the inner block wall below floor level with a hammer-drill while Melvin cut and mounted a 600 x 700mm section of chipboard on the wall for the electricity-meter and fuses. It was then a two man job (with muggins here volunteering for the nasty under-floor role) to feed the 32mm ducting in through the block walls and up through the floor to where the meter will be. We'd drilled through the floor and subfloor, then filled the gaps with expandable foam to exclude draughts and beasties.
That done, we pulled five lengths of plastic plumbing pipes up through the boxed-in section around the soil-stack. These pipes will connect the boiler to the hot water tank (which we lugged upstairs and into position), and to a header tank in the loft.
Rob the painter had brought his girlfriend's nephew along for the day. Nice young lad from Waneroo, the next-door suburb of Perth to Joondalup, where Mal and Michele have ended up. Small world, and nice to be carrying on the Aussie input to the project in a small way. He helped Rob with a bit of sanding and painting, and fitted a couple of doors to the kitchen units. Made a decent job, too. Shame he's set on joining the army. I'm sure Mal could have sorted him out with a job when he leaves school next year!
With the plumbing done (or rather, our supply of pipe exhausted), Melvin and I made a bit of a hash of fitting the cooker-hood, and will need to finish the job and touch up any damaged paint-work on the ceiling tomorrow, although with sunshine forecast, the cladding will take priority. Should finish it tomorrow, which is rather exciting.

281107

November 27th - Cladding

2007-11-27T19:44:00.000Z

I had a slightly fretful start to the day, wondering what to do if the generator wouldn't start, and at the plot I immediately topped up the oil (the first time since buying it in June), removed and de-coked the spark plug and gave the generator a couple of friendly pats and an imploring look. It started second pull, to my enormous relief.
Melvin and I continued with the high cladding at the west end of the house and made steady progress through the morning. I managed to fall about three feet from the scaffold and landed flat on my back. It winded me momentarily, and throughout the remainder of the day I became increasingly sore and immobile. Melvin was fitting the cladding while I operated the saw, and around lunchtime he finally topped out, fitting the last board from a step-ladder perched on the scaffold. It was actually one of the steadiest scaffold we've had - probably because we'd built it leaning in against the house wall.
Anna turned up, followed by Roger Lynn, the landscaper. They spent half-an-hour discussing his plan, and I asked Melvin to stick his oar in, as I've become a bit hacked off with Roger's lack of action, and would like Melvin to do the work. Anna managed a bit of painting before she nicked off on a schoool-run just before 3.
We lugged the saw down to the other end and carried on above the verandah, where I'd started over the weekend. A tricky and very slow section around windows, combined with my increasing stiffness and Melvin's sense of anti-climax at working from ground-level made it a slightly subdued afternoon, and we packed up just as light was fading around 4 p.m. I had quite a bit of dificulty getting from the roof onto the ladder, and even more getting out of the car when I got home. Think I might be a bit sluggish tomorrow...

271107

November 26th - cladding

2007-11-26T16:42:00.000Z

A pretty unsatisfying day, all in all. I wasted an hour on a trip to Bowmont Forest Sawmill, only to find that the spruce they have in stock is even more mouldy than the stuff I already have. I was assured, however, that once it's good and dry, the mould can simply be brushed off.
Back at site, I spent an hour finishing the sarking on the verandah roof (with the mouldy timber), just putting a couple of nails in each plank in case I decide to replace it later, then set to work on the cladding. It was a very inefficient way to work - trying to do it solo. Far too much of my time was spent lugging timbers up and down the ladder, or fielding phonecalls.
By the time I had to knock off at 2:45 to go and collect the boys from the bus I'd had enough. Things weren't helped by the generator packing up in the afternoon, and repelling all attempts to get it going. Hopefully Melvin will be able to work some magic on it tomorrow. If not, we're stuffed...

November 25th - Battens

2007-11-25T23:15:00.000Z

Spent a few hours alone at the plot fitting battens above the verandah. I'd planned to complete the verandah roof sarking, but discovered that all the planks - which I'd left stacked outside some weeks ago - had gone mouldy and were unusable. Melvin called to say he'll not be here tomorrow, so I'll work alone on the cladding above the verandah, weather permitting.

November 23rd - Cladding & slates

2007-11-23T23:26:00.000Z

A gorgeous clear, buttock-clenchingly cold day. After the rain of the last few days, some of which seeped through various small orrifices into the house, I was very keen to fit the last few slates, left out where the roof-brackets have been embedded in the sarking for weeks. I did this, but it was no easy task with painfully cold fingers and an icy roof. Used the roof ladder, which at least gave me a decent level of security.
By the time I'd finished, Melvin had added a lift or two to the scaffold at the west end of the house, and we spent the remainder of the day stamping our feet, tucking throbbing hands under our armpits and occasionally fitting lengths of cladding.
It was so cold that the boards kept sticking together as frost formed between them, and the puddles at the front of the house, which were in bright sunshine all day, stayed frozen. We made it to the top of the first-floor windows, which translates to about four rows above eaves level. Slow going, as we now have to cut the 35 degree pitch at the end of each board, as well as the 45 degree bevel at the other end. Rob the painter did a wee bit in the morning but left at 11ish.
Anna came too, and waitied anxiously for the arrival of the latest addition to the zoo, a young Irish donkey named Seamus, whose function will be to keep the horse company. He finally arrived from Carlisle an hour and a half late at 4:30, by which time it was too dark to see him. Donkey pictures below taken the following day.

231107

November 22nd - kitchen

2007-11-22T23:44:00.000Z

Revolting weather again today, so Melvin and I continued with the kitchen. I had a re-jig of the design last night, and came up with a layout that made more efficient use of the units we have, and avoids a weird arrangement in the corner by the fridge. Assembled the remaining units and fitted them, all screwed together and braced to the back wall. Cutting the worktops went very smoothly, despite both of us having a bit of nerviness about it. A big cut-out for the ceramic sink and an accurate end-cut where the worktops joined were done with a jig-saw and a router respectively. The router was one I managed to scrounge from SKS Joinery in the village, as neither of the ones we had would accept the cutter that came with the worktop jig. Practiced and honed our technique on an offcut before tackling the butt-joint. Very pleased with the end result.
I also hung out the windows and fitted a couple of slates at the back and one at the front. Much better forecast tomorrow, so we should be back on the cladding.
Rob's flying through the painting, and is almost finished upstairs.

221107

November 21st - Kitchen

2007-11-21T19:10:00.000Z

Grotty weather again, so Melvin and I spent the whole day fitting the kitchen. The enormous island occupied us for the morning, including cutting four of the carcasses to fit around the support pillars then bracing them with timber. There was a brief hiatus at lunchtime while Melvin fixed the generator pull-cord (again!) and I nipped off to Whitton to collect the hifi I left there when we moved at the end of January. Set it up and worked to groovy vibes all afternoon. We had to close up the subfloor along under the kitchen window, then insulate and fit the flooring before we could install the cupboards on that wall. A bit of a redesign means that we're a couple of units short, so couldn't fix it all together, so instead we hauled out a couple of the big heavy oak worktops and tackled the slightly nerve-wracking task of cutting them to fit around the supporting pillars. If I say it myself, we made a damn fine job, and with the island complete apart from the doors (which we'll leave till the end to save them getting damaged) it looks great. Very happy with it, and glad we pushed the boat out a bit on good materials.
While all this was going on, Rob was painting upstairs. Once again, I forgot to check his handywork. I hope he doesn't feel under-appreciated!
Anna came and went for a ride on her horse. I guess someone had to...

211107

November 20th - cladding & kitchen

2007-11-20T19:09:00.000Z

Quite a big day, but unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures. Grotty weather early on compelled Melvin and me to work indoors on the kitchen, unpacking and assembling the units that will make up the island, which looks enormous. Rob the painter was back, and disappeared upstairs. From the occasional noises we assumed that he was doing something.
By late morning the day had brightened and we moved outside and spent the remainder of the day cladding. There was only a little bit to do on the front, after which we got stuck into the west wall, which I'd started last week. By dusk we'd reached just a few rows short of eaves-level.
Anna spent a good chunk of the day treating the north (back) wall, and by the time we pulled the scaffold from beneath her she had about a quarter of it done.
Stevie the taper turned up in the afternoon, and I left him and Rob to sort out the thorny issue of who was responsible the various undulations and anomolies in the wall-finishes. I didn't manage to check before dark, but assume they reached some kind of accommodation. Rob still has a few days to do, so the onus now lies with him.

November 19th - Window vents and kitchen

2007-11-19T17:57:00.001Z

Miserable grey day with frequent showers, so cladding wasn't really an option - or not a very attractive one at any rate. There was evidence of rain ingress under east-facing windows, which had somehow blown in through the vents. This dictated my task for the day, which was to fit the vent covers to all the windows. An easy job that I should have done weeks ago. Still - no harm done, and by the time I left in the evening, all the floors had dried out.

Also had a look at the kitchen units, and installed a couple of small high-level ones. The island will be made up of two rows of five 600mm units. These have to fit into a gap of 2970mm between the big supporting posts, so the units on each end will need to be cut so that they overlap with the post by 15mm. Unpacked a couple of the floor-standing units and worked out the best way to go about this alteration.

All the bathroom equipment arrived today from Grahams, and is stored for the moment in the dining room, until Rob (who's due back tomorrow) paints the bathrooms.

Mal, if you see this before heading off to work on Tuesday, give me a bell at home please - I need to pick you brain.

191107

November 17th - cladding on my jack

2007-11-17T19:46:00.000Z

A short and mildly unsatisfying day on site. There was a blustery swirling wind blowing, the generator refused to start for a long time, a delivery of hay for the new horse arrived and had to be unloaded and I kept whacking my head on the same pointy corner of barge-board above the porch roof.

After giving up on the generator, putting its refusal to play the game down to a coked-up spark plug (for which I had no spanner), I decided to spend the day painting. I set up some bales in the shed, laid a few planks out and got cracking. Only then did it dawn on me that this approach would mean that all my off-cuts would be painted, and with Osmo retailing at over £15 / litre, this didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead I started painting the front wall, but got so buffeted and chilled by the wind that in desperation I had another bash at starting the gennie. This time I bypassed the ignition switch, and the wee beauty started first time. I think the damp must have corroded the contacts in the switch. I now have to stop it by pulling the HT lead off the spark plug.

With a cup of hot tea in me, I was much restored, and set about cutting and fitting more cladding. It was slow and a bit frustrating doing it on my tod, having to climb the ladders at each end of every board, and it was while fitting the planks above the porch and running a wire down for the porch light that I kept colliding with barge-board, eventually punching a hole in my scalp and giving myself a dull headache.

Around 3 p.m. Anna rang to say the cupboard was bare, and shortly afterwards I packed up (moving the saw indoors single-handed was a bit of a pantomime!) and headed home.

There’s only about an hour or two’s work left to do at the front with Melvin on Monday, after which we’ll move to the west end, which I started last week.

I’m toying with the idea of using waney-edge larch for the wall inside the verandah, which, as well as looking very rustic and groovy, will help to eek out the profiled spruce cladding and the Osmo, both of which I think might be quite tight. The forecast for the next few days doesn't look to clever, so we might even put the kitchen together if outdoor work is rained off.

171107

November 16th - Cladding the front wall

2007-11-16T18:21:00.001Z

I hoped we'd get the front wall finished today, but a slow start, tricky access and an enforced early knock-off scuppered this. Still made pretty good progress. We could have done with scaffold along the length of the house, but open trenches would have made it very awkward and time-consuming to erect. Instead we worked off ladders, continually shifting them around.
We had to work out how to flash the interface between porch roof and house-wall, something I've been vaguely contemplating over the last few days. In the end we simply ran a strip of heavy-duty 6" damp-proof membrane up the joint, which sits behind the cladding and beneath the slates, much like the soakers used for the velux roof-lights.
Lots of labour-intensive boards today, bevelled at one end and cut to the porch-roof pitch at the other. Anna's horse arrived in the neighbouring field at around 3 p.m. to her conspicuous excitement, and just around then we had to call it a day so I could do the school run. Should get the front finished tomorrow, without Melvin, who'll be busy watching Scotland thump reigning world-cup holders Italy in the footie.

161107

November 15th - Cladding the front wall

2007-11-15T18:02:00.000Z

The dream-team (sorry, Mal - two-thirds of the dream-team) reassembled this morning to carry on with the cladding. A much slower day than yesterday, with a fair amount of fiddling around with battens and insect mesh, and nothing like the super-efficient groove of yesterday. Anna came hot-foot from the paint shop with yet another colour to try on the fascias, which have taken on the characteristics of a chamelion. Today's variation was black, which better be right, because if it ain't, it'll be a bugger to cover!
I'd already clad the left-hand half of the front wall to about 2m high last week, and today we were starting at the far end, and hoping that when we reached top-of-door level, the two halves would splice in together. With this in mind I spent a bit of time at the start trying to ensure that I had the levels right for the first course. This wasn't all that easy as the porch forms a barrier in the middle, so it's not possible to run a continuous line along to marry things up. When we installed the final plank, above the front door, as dusk was falling we were just about bang-on, give or take a couple of millimetres - certainly well within the depth of the overlap between boards. I was delighted and amazed in equal measure.
The generator's been running a bit lumpy of late, and today Melvin removed and cleaned the air-filter, after which it was as sweet as a nut. Handy having a graduate mechanical engineer (and petrol-head) on the team!
I located the ground-floor WC ducting outlet, hidden behind the green membrane. By a stroke of good fortune, it comes through just a few inches above the porch-roof. A hand-span lower or to the right would have been a nightmare, as it would have been inaccessible behind a porch timber. Mal will claim that this was deliberate - but we all know that's a BIG lie!

151107

November 14th - more cladding

2007-11-14T20:02:00.000Z

Had Melvin on site again and battered on with the cladding on the north wall. I thought that we might get it finished today, but when we had to dismantle all the existing scaffold and re-erect it at the back of the house it was pretty obvious that dark would beat us. That was before Melvin produced a master-stroke in the shape of 1000W of halogen lighting, by which we worked for the final hour, finally knocking off triumphant at 5 p.m.
It was a glorious sunny morning again, and it seemed a shame to be working in perpetual shade in the shadow of the house. Once again we made slow progress early on, but in the afternoon found a groove and the planks were fairly flying up. I was cutting and painting, and Melvin was on the scaffold nailing and measuring where necessary. Once or twice one of us made a mistake that upset the rhythm for a few moments. It's amazing how long it takes to get it re-established.
I remembered to put a wire in for an outside light by the back door before it was too late, but it was only in the shower at home that I realised that we've buried the ducting outlet from the cooker hood, which is sitting behind the membrane somewhere above the kitchen window. Now need to study photos taken when we were installing the bales to try to get an accurate fix on where it is so I can cut through the wall and fit the louvre without damaging any cladding unnecessarily.
Anna turned up just before lunch again and filled a few gaps in the undercoating and ferried some cladding round for us.

141107

November 13th - cladding with Melvin

2007-11-13T21:47:00.000Z

The big man was back today, and we spent the day in companiable endeavour, cladding the back (north) wall of the house. Progress seemed ridiculously slow at first, but after a while we found a rhythm, with Melvin nailing the lengths that I had measured and cut. He's still a bit nervous of the chop saw, and his finger, which he damaged with it a couple of weeks ago still looks a bit of a mess, and is still very tender.
We're treating ALL the end-grains before fitting now, including the mitred joints between planks. Probably should have done it on the front and west walls, and will have to be extra diligent when painting those walls to ensure that all joints are well covered.
Anna came for a couple of hours and touched up an unvarnished section of the back door, made lunch and partially exhumed the bale I'd buried to mark the small access hatch I cut in the power-cable duct.
Scottish Power were on site for part of the day, running a cable from a nearby pole to the plot-side. I borrowed their "cobra" - a continuous mini drain-rod on a reel to run a draw-wire through the duct to the house, but it wasn't long enough. If they don't bring a longer one next time I'll have to excavate the ducting at some point and do it in two runs.
No pictures today - forgot camera, but if you close your eyes and imagine the back wall almost half-covered in very light-coloured spruce cladding, you'll not be far wrong.
MUSTN'T forget to run wiring for the outside lights beside back an front doors tomorrow before cladding too high!

November 12th - cladding

2007-11-12T19:02:00.000Z

Freezing morning, with a thick frost at the plot and iced-over puddles. Spent a couple of hours installing insect mesh to the west and north walls in preparation for cladding. Had terrible trouble with painfully cold fingertips, which were completely numb and unable to hold onto nails or to operate the stapler. Mal phoned from Australia to report that the kids were all in the paddling pool, and that it had reached 39.8 degrees - which strangely didn't help with my predicament.
Warmed up a bit when I started cutting and fitting cladding to the west end of the house, which was in bright sunshine. I had to haul the scaffold out of the way first, but decided not to dismantle it, in the hope that Melvin and I will be able to manoeuvre it back into position tomorrow when we need it to access the higher cladding.
There are only two small windows in the whole gable-end, so the first ten rows of cladding were very straight-forward, simply straight runs of three planks per row. Here I encountered the first window - the utility room, and work slowed down a little when I had to do some accurate measuring and cutting to ensure a good weatherproof finish. I used the last dregs of Woodstain & Protect from the matchpot to treat the end-grains that were butting up to the window-frame.
Light started to fade around 4 p.m. and I finally knocked off at 4:45. Had a visit from a very friendly Scottish Power engineer, just checking that everything was set for the running of power as far as the plot-side tomorrow.

121107

November 11th - cladding

2007-11-11T16:16:00.000Z

Managed about four hours on site today before the boys had extracted all the fun they could from a shed full of bales and an assortment of dangerous tools. Fitted the cladding I'd brought home for end-grain treating, and cut and installed a few more. Quite tricky working solo with 12-foot lengths, trying to hold them in position and nail at the same time. Some tricky cutting around the porch timbers slowed things down a bit, as did dealing with the boys' frequent misadventures and calamities.

I awoke in the early hours this morning and wrestled with the best way to weatherproof the joints between cladding and window / door frames. In the end I decided to use a bead of silicon behind the cladding, and another on the front. This should provide a belt and braces. The front bead will be easy to inspect and maintain, and will prevent water ingress as long as it is in good condition. Any any water that manages to blow through if the bead gets damaged will be kept out of the straw cavity by the second bead, which, being behind and therefore protected by the cladding from UV and accidental damage, should remain in pristine condition for many years.

There's a pronounced bulge in the wall between the snug window and the porch, where the tightly stuffed straw has bowed the external (non-load-bearing) frame. This isn't a problem, either structurally or in terms of the weather-proofing performance of the cladding, and it lends the building a pleasing organic feel that sits well with the very rustic porch and verandah timbers. Shouldn't think Mal would be very impressed with the curves, but he's very much a straight-lines, stainless steel and glass man.

Speaking of stainless steel, the nails I'm using for the cladding are 65mm stainless steel ringshanks from Russwood. Galvanised nails are unsuitable because they cause nasty black staining when they react with the tanin in the timber, and ringshanks were chosen to provide good pull-out resistance. With the bulging walls this is essential, as the ends of the planks are under quite a bit of tension. It may be necessary in future, when the wood is under additional mechanical stress due to wetting and drying, to screw some of the board-ends. At the moment, though, the nails are holding.

Melvin's due back on site tomorrow, which should speed things up considerably.

111107

November 9th - cladding (but not much!)

2007-11-09T21:35:00.000Z

A very short day on site. I took the boys into Kelso first thing to look for presents for Anna's 40th tomorrow, made it to the plot late morning and had to leave just after 2 p.m. to get to a job in Dunbar. While there I managed to fit a few rows of cladding to the left of the front door, and cut enough to get to the top of the snug window. I brought this lot home to treat the end-grain before fitting. Left a note for Stevie, who hadn't turned up by the time I left. Don't know if he made it over.

091107

November 8th - cladding begins

2007-11-08T19:11:00.001Z

Another day of bits and bobs, with precious little progress on anything. I had a call in the morning saying that the treatment for the cladding wouldn't be here until a week tomorrow, so I resolved to start installing it untreated and paint it in situ. I spent part of the morning fitting the insect mesh at the bottom of the front external wall, then suddenly realised that I ought to make things ready for Stevie the taper, who was due after lunch. I tidied up the sheeting around the waterfall window, chamferring a couple of the joints and trimming back rough gyproc. Anna was away from lunchtime, so I stayed at home with the boys for a couple of hours and only returned to the plot around 3p.m. Stevie turned up shortly after, with less than an hour's daylight remaining. I showed him the bits around the window reveals where I thought he could have done a neater job, and where the painter reckoned the taping was a bit ropey, but Stevie laughed it all off and laid the responsibility firmly with the painter, whose job it is apparently to iron out the kinks left by the previous tradesmen.
A blustery wind was blowing from the north, unusually, and it was freezing. I installed four lenghts of cladding to the left of the front porch, forming mitres at the joins to protect the end-grains. Slow process, which I'll need to streamline if the cladding (over 500 boards) is to be done this side of doomsday.

081107

November 7th - Grrr!

2007-11-07T20:50:00.000Z

A completely wasted morning when I accidentally went from Berick to Newcastle by train was followed by a frustrating wait for instructions for the cooker hood (none were included with the equipment, and the manufacturer then faxed the wrong ones over) which almost scuppered my day completely. At least my time in Berwick wasn't wasted, as I paid for the bathrooms and arranged delivery, quizzed a pointless pillock about boilers and colleted the insect mesh for the bottom of the cladding. Anna at least had a productive morning, undercoating the front fascia with a light sage green, which we though would look nice but actually doesn't work at all. Still - better to find out with the undercoat, as we can now choose an alternative for the top coat.
I eventually got stuck into some work mid-afternoon, cutting and fitting a couple more rows of sarking while I waited for a Howdens rep to turn up with the right cooker hood documentation. When it arrived, I cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling, nailed a couple of cross-members to the floor-joists to support the weight of the hood (32kg), then patched the hole and cut a hole in the patch for the ducting. I had to get this done today so Stevie the taper can make good the joints tomorrow when he comes to do the waterfall window.
Right at the end of the day a driver from Navitron pitched up with the solar panel and hot water tank. He'd driven from Rutland to Skye, and had another drop in Newcastle before returning to Rutland, about 1000 miles' driving in a Transit van. His eyes looked like fried eggs, and he still had 250 miles to go! I arrived home in the evening to find £15,000-worth of bills in the post. Eeek!
Below are photos from the last few days.

071107

November 6th - Painting & misc

2007-11-06T21:10:00.000Z

A continuation of yesterday, with Rob the painter making great strides inside, Anna working on the front fascia and me doing bits and bobs. It was very bright and surprisingly warm - I worked for most of the day in a T-shirt.
Anna put a couple of coats of Woodstain and Protect (the match-pot arrived in the post) on a plank of cladding. It looks pretty good - a bit darker than I'd expected but nicely accentuated grain. Last night I emailed Osmo and invited them to donate 20 litres to use as a case-study, and today they emailed back to say they could do it at half-price, which will save us a few hundred quid.
I finished the bottom row of battens to which the insect mesh will attach, fitted flashing above the remaining windows and doors (a job I should have done weeks ago, and which Mal started before he left). Anna headed off after lunch and Rob knocked off again around 4p.m. when the light started to fade. For the last hour I fitted sarking to the verandah roof, and by the time it became too dark to work up there safely I had amost half of it done.
Noticed today that one of the glazing units I fitted last week has finger-prints on the middle (enclosed and inaccessible) pane, and will need taking out and replacing again.

November 5th - Painting begins

2007-11-05T20:19:00.001Z

Took the weekend off from the build to catch up with work. Returned today with Anna as soon as we'd packed the kids off to school. Anna promptly set to work damp-dusting the walls and ceilings downstairs in preparation for the painter, who turned up around 9a.m. He told her not to waste her time, so instead she spent the morning perched on a ladder undercoating the fascia on the back of the house. She's completely lost her voice, and was unable to make herself heard whenever she needed the ladder moving, and twice had it topple out of control behind her and land with a clatter on the ground. Anne turned up mid-morning, and they put on a delicious lunch together. Anna completed the rear fascia then called it a day, after a pretty heroic effort, feeling somewhat off-colour and struggling with the ladder in a blustery wind.
I had a bits and pieces day, which felt very unproductive. Knocked off a little bit of plumbing, which enabled me to close up the wall in the utility room, then nipped into Kelso to run a couple of errands (including dropping the computer at the boffin-shop for repair - hence no photos today), and picked up some nails. Armed with these, I fixed short sections of batten horizontally in the spaces between the vertical battens on the outside walls. I left gaps which, when covered with an insect mesh before the cladding goes up, will provide a ventilated cavity between the cladding and the breather membrane to help the wall breathe. To finish the day I fixed the first row of sarking on the verandah. I still reckon that the verandah roof might keep an awful lot of light out of the east end of the house, and I think we should possibly have some glass in it, above the big windows and patio-doors. Anna's not keen.
By the time Rob the painter knocked off around 4p.m. he had first-coated the ceiling and walls in the main downstairs area and some of the bedroom and bathroom ceilings using our Earthborn Claypaint. Costs a small fortune, and doesn't appear to live up to it's coverage claims, but it's free of chemical nasties and shouldn't damage the kids when they lick the walls (although if I see them at it, I might!)

November 2nd - Big deliveries

2007-11-02T21:39:00.000Z

Not a lot of work on site today, but a couple of big deliveries. Spent an hour shifting loose straw and timber from the shed to the fire and burning it in a controlled fashion to make space for the cladding, which arrived from Abbey Timber at 11a.m.
I'd been haring around the place trying to find a man and machine to unload it, and reluctantly had to prevail upon the ever-obliging Neil, from whom we bought the plot to take 20 minutes out from building a new cattle court. He managed to get it all under cover in the shed, which was a great result.
Before all that, however, the entire kitchen arrived from Howdens, including a double-oven, hob and extractor. Stacked it all in the snug, then spent the rest of the day fitting the mortice lock to the back door to get the place properly secure.
Just before leaving I cut a sizeable hole in the wall of the lobby t excavate a wire that some eejit had buried when we were sheeting. Neither Melvin nor I could remember exactly where it was, so it took quite a bit of cutting to find it. Patched it all up in readiness for Stevie the taper, who's coming on Monday.
Anna worked upstairs for a few hours, damp-dusting the walls and ceilings to prepare for the painter, who's also due on Monday.

021107

November 1st - Progress on warrant

2007-11-01T17:24:00.000Z

No work on site yesterday, and today I only managed to nip over for a couple of hours in the afternoon to clear the shed in preparation for tomorrows delivery of all the cladding. While I was there I had a call from Douglas Thompson at Building Control. I'd been expecting the call since last Friday's visit by Chris Weir, and was pretty anxious that I'd be told to stop all work. In the event, he was very sensible and pragmatic about the fact that the house has been built without a warrant, and promised to send out a warrant application for the super-structure and roof, and to prioritise the application once I submit it. Their estimated cost of works is £120,000, which means an extra £220 in fees. This may well be more accurate than my rather optimistic £80,000. I suspect the final figure will be somewhere in the middle.
As well as the cladding, the kitchen is out for delivery tomorrow, so once the painter has done the big openplan area I'll be able to crack on with that.
We've been having a hell of a time trying to work out what to treat the cladding with. Osmo, a German company make a range of toxin-free treatments, but their UK office and the suppliers we spoke to seem to have almost no useable knowledge of the product range. In desperation, Anna rang the German office yesterday and finally got the answers we need. Based on these we've selected their "Woodstain and Protect", which goes on in two coats, and will need reapplying every few years, depending on the amount of rain and UV it's exposed to.
I dropped by the Bowmont Forest sawmill today and collected half of the timber for the verandah roof. 25 boards was about as much as I wanted to load on the roofrack. I'll get the rest tomorrow. If you're out there, Melvin, next week is going to be busy!

October 30th - battens, windows and sheeting

2007-10-30T20:35:00.000Z

A productive day, with Crispin and Melvin on site again. Melvin resumed where he left off yesterday with the sheeting around the waterfall window and Crispin cracked on with the external battens. I nicked into Kelso and collected the replacement glazing for the two front bedroom windows. We fitted these after lunch and Melvin, having finally finished the sheeting and in no mood to start anything else, called it a day and went home.
I took some slates onto the roof to replace a broken one, and ended up breaking four in a diagonal line up the roof before eventually getting it all patched up! The final task of the day, which Crispin and I did together, was to fit the lock and handle to the front door. A small change, but a symbolic one, as now that we have all the windows in and the door furnished, we can lock the place up at night. Probably just as well, as soon the high-value bits and bobs for the kitchen and bathrooms will start arriving.

301007

October 29th - Ridge flashing and cladding battens

2007-10-29T22:58:00.001Z

After a weekend away from the site I was joined today by Melvin and my brother Crispin, visiting for a few days as a second-best because the rivers are too low to fish.
Yet another pristine Autumn day, chilly with a lovely soft sun. Melvin carried on where he left off last week with the framing and sheeting around the waterfall window, and I set Crispin to work nailing battens to the outside walls, on which the cladding will be mounted. Good worker, requiring virtually no direction. He had his newest toy - a broadcast-quality video camera with him, and shot some video that may someday make it onto the blog.
I was very pleasantly surprised how much work he got through, fitting battens to the east end to verandah-roof level, all of the front wall and part of the west end. I worked with him for a while, then headed up to the roof, where I undercoated the finials and fitted the zinc ridge-flashing. It looks very nifty, although the first rain-shower will dull it down a lot.

291007

October 26th - Summit!

2007-10-26T20:30:00.000Z

Finally, after 342 years of non-stop slating, today I finally finished. Well - almost finished - I completed the top row on the south side of the roof and now have only the missing slates to insert where the roof brackets have been. After an interruption for an afternoon school run, I returned at the end of the day and fitted the ridge-pole I'd bought first-thing from Border Slate Supplies in St. Boswells. Also bought the zinc flashing, but just as I was finishing the ridge-pole it started to rain and the slates very quickly turned treacherously slippery. That, combined with the failing light and the fact that I'd left my mobile at home and wouldn't be able to summon help if I got into diffs persuaded me to call it a day. More sporadic rain forecast over the next few days, so I'll need to squeeze the flashing installation in between showers, and knock off some inside jobs when it rains.
Anna carried on with some pretty precarious painting perched on the scaffold in a chilly wind. She's well into the window frames, but is a bit concerned about the variety of finishes on seemingly identical pieces of timber.
Chris Weir from Building Control dropped by to remind us that we don't yet have a warrant, and told me that the pragmatic Dougie Crew has been transferred to Hawick, and replaced by someone rather more bullish. Suspect there may be a bit of a battle looming, but with the roof not quite finished and the cladding ready to go, I'm certainly in no mood to down-tools. Need to get the place properly weather-tight with winter coming. The fact that three blokes have built a 5-bedroom house from scratch in the time it's taken them to do precisely nothing with the drawings ought to fill them with shame. But it won't, of course.

261007

October 25th - Slating

2007-10-25T21:15:00.001Z

A short day on site with Anna. She treated some windows and I worked yet again on the roof. Reached the ridge, and now have just to fit a row of half-length slates to provide cover at the top, and finally the ridge flashing.
Ordered the hot water tank and solar water heater from Navitron and paid a £795 deposit, about half the total bill.

October 24th - Slating

2007-10-24T20:52:00.000Z

Another day of flawless weather. A hard frost first thing, but once the mist had lifted it soon thawed in warm sunshine, allowing me to spend the better part of the day slating in a T-shirt - pretty remarkable for late October! Anna was on site again, treating the window frames with Osmo One-coat, an eco-friendly external timber treatment. Goes on a treat and looks great. She was a happy bunny. Having spend several days priming one fascia, and still facing the prospect of three coats of undercoat and gloss, she was delighted with the idea of a single application for the windows and door-frames. We'll use the same stuff for the cladding.
I climbed ever-closer to the ridge, and finally ran out of slates at round 5p.m. with around a hundred left to do. Assuming the last box arrives good and early tomorrow, I should finish by mid-afternoon, in time to drive to St. Boswells to choose the ridge-capping, or flashing, or whatever it's called. Suppose I ought to find out...

241007

October 23rd - Slating

2007-10-23T21:00:00.000Z

A slow day slating the right-hand side of the waterfall window. There was quite a bit of calculation do sort out to make sure that I tied in correctly with the existing slating further up the roof. Very happy and relieved that it all worked out perfectly.
Anna was on site for a few hours, and completed the priming (i.e. the first of four coats) of the rear fascia while her mum tidied up around the place and burned a load of scraps of treated timber and OSB.

231007

October 21st & 22nd - Slating

2007-10-22T22:18:00.000Z

A productive couple of days on the roof. Yesterday I reached to within 6 or seven rows of the ridge, and today I reached it. I now have about two days' work remaining to finish the slating completely, and the forecast is set fair for at least three days.
Melvin joined me today and started framing up around the waterfall window in preparation for sheeting. After an hour or two he damaged a finger on the chop-saw. Tried to carry on, but the throbbing from the hand and an understandable nervousness around the machines made him call it a day and drive home to count his blessings and his fingers.
Dad is very much on the mend and might even be discharged at the end of the week, only ten days after being on life-support. What a trooper!

Pictures below taken on October 21st:

211007

October 20th - Slating again

2007-10-20T21:12:00.000Z

Just a couple of hours on site before lunch today. Slating up the left-hand-side of the waterfall window, I was delighted to discover that I could insert the soakers without taking the flashing assembly apart. I reached the top of the windows, then called it a day.
At last, I felt almost at full strength, after some weeks of dragging myself around, and look forward to making the most of a great weather forecast over the next few days.
Dad, too, is making strides in his recovery, and has been transferred from Intensive Care to a cardiac ward. He's breathing unaided, eating, sitting up reading and talking and looking a completely different man to the one who very nearly died a couple of days ago. Bit of concern over damage to his heart.

October 19th - hiatus

2007-10-19T07:19:00.000Z

No activity and no blogs for a few days. My chest continues to be completely crap, but the main reason is that my dad, who came to visit a few days ago very suddenly developed life-threatening pneumonia on Tuesday night. We had to meet an ambulance on the road, as he couldn't breathe. He's spent the last few days on life-support under heavy sedation, and looked at one point like he might not survive. Happily, the ventilator has now been withdrawn, he's conscious (though still very confused) and breathing unsupported.
The family has descended on us, which is lovely. Shame I can't issue them all with paint-brushes and overalls!

Later...

Managed a little work today on the build. Coralie (sister) came with me and varnished front and back doors, which look absolutely gorgeous. I started on the stair components. Mal had cut some of the spindles to length, so I did the calculations for the spacers, cut a load of them and set about assembling it all. Got about half the lower flight done before suddenly realising that painting the wall behind would be a lot easier without the banisters in the way.
Uber-sister Tamzin, who's been cooking like a dervish for the assembled family, rocked up with a super-tasty pot of soup for lunch, which helped my flagging energy levels for an hour or two. Anna carried on with the varnishing and I cut and the intricate barge-boards at the sides of the waterfall window. Now at the stage where I can crack on with the slating, and hopefully get it done before this wonderful weather cracks.

191007

October 15th - non-starter

2007-10-15T18:23:00.001Z

Bit of a shocker today. I trundled over to the plot with my clogged and painful lungs to start slating, but felt so weak and wrecked when I got there that I couldn't face the exertion of hauling the slates up to the roof and battling against the wind to stay up there. Instead I started to sheet around the waterfall window, but discovered that the necessary framing was going to be very tricky without a nail-gun. Managed a little bit but when a couple of orders came in by phone I found it extremely easy to justify packing it in and heading home to tackle the day-job instead.
I'd had a bit of a run-in with a perenially grumpy and misanthropic sales assistant in Travis Perkins in the morning, and had shed and destroyed a roofrack-load of plasterboard on the way home when I was driving too fast in a rage, so all in all it was a pretty crap day!
Need to get Melvin back with his nail-gun for a day to finish the sheeting.

October 13th - Waterfall window

2007-10-14T19:16:00.000Z

Mal's last day on site, and a very significant one. He rang and woke me at 7:30, from outside the kitchen door. A quick cuppa and a hot bacon roll he'd picked up on the way, and we were off. The task for the day was to fit the waterfall window, the parts for which finally arrived yesterday.
Within minutes the instructions had been discarded, as they had been written for installation where the vertical elements of the assembly would be set back in the wall with an external reveal. As we're using timber cladding, the windows will sit proud, with the cladding running into the side of the frames. For the first hour or so I was little more than a willing but clueless assistant, trying to keep up as Mal worked out the necessary steps in his head as he went along. After a while I could see how it was all going together, and was able to anticipate the next step. I was extremely grateful that Mal was there, as I would have been in a bit of a hole without him.
The big articulated timbers that support the middle of the assembly have a lovely solid look and feel about them, and as it all took shape it grew into a fabulous feature in an already gorgeous room.
We'd set the aperture up assuming the window would be set back in the wall a bit, so once it had all been fitted we had to frame up a section above the pitched elements and sark it before we could start on the flashing.
Around lunchtime, Jack, a faithful friend of and participant in the project turned up from Liverpool with my parents in tow. It was good to have him back on site, and great for my folks to see in the flesh an endeavour they'd only been able to follow each evening on this blog.
The afternoon was well advanced by the time we started on the flashing. Here I had the advantage of familiarity, having fitted all the previous rooflights single-handed. With frequent recourse to the instructions, it all went together very smoothly, and by about 5pm we had it all ship-shape and weather-tight.
With the exception of the heating system, this was the last big phase of the build that I was unsure about tackling myself, and having knocked it off so satisfactorily with Mal on his last available day put a very happy seal on his enormous contribution. Without his knowledge, drive and enthusiasm the build quite simply wouldn't have got out of the ground.

131007

2007-10-12T18:09:00.000Z

A full complement on site again today, along with an assortment of kids of varying shapes, sizes and degrees of naughtiness.
By the time I arrived after a trip to Kelso to draw cash for the workers and pick up one or two things from the builders' merchants, Mal had knocked off half of the sarking of the porch, which is what I had decided was my job for the day. The tapers had sanded the stairwell and Mal had started on the stair components. We've splashed out on oak newels, spindles and hand-rails, and without all his nice sharp tools, which are already on their way back to Oz, he was struggling a bit with my blunt tools and very hard wood. I did, however, fit a new balde to the mitre-saw. The original blade has cut practically every stick of timber in the house, and the new one glides through oak like a cheese-wire through lard.
Melvin had been digging and backfilling the stormwater trenches, and happily moved to fitting the mortice lock in the oak front door when I took over from him. He was similarly hampered by a lack of sharp chisels, and the operation took him the rest of the day. I finished the day by building a scaffold under the waterfall window. The support timbers arrived mid-afternoon, after a cock-up in the ordering delayed them by over a month. Somehow it seems fitting that Mal's last day will be spent installing possibly the main feature on the front of the house - admittedly a task he's been gleefully avoiding for months!

121007

October 11th - porch etc

2007-10-11T20:26:00.000Z

Yesterday was a down-day on the plot, apart from the tapers who put in a full day (I hope!). I did pay a brief visit just as they were packing up, to deliver the remaining structural timbers for the porch and verandah, which I'd hauled from Abbey St. Bathans on the roof of my poor old wheezing car.
Today we were back in strength. Mal and Melvin worked together for the morning on the porch, while I finally polished off the kitchen bulkhead and the boxing-in of the stack in the pantry. Melvin then fitted a load of joist-hangers and the rest of the rafters on the verandah. At 3pm I had to leave on a school-run, and asked Melvin to take over from where I had been extending the storm-water drainage trenches to accommodate downpipes from the porch. The porch structure completed, Mal moved inside and started marking and cutting the timbers for the installation of the stair components tomorrow.
I made a late run to the site with the hand-rails and base-rails, and also a load of untreated spruce boards for the porch ceiling.

111007

October 8th & 9th - Taping, verandah & porch

2007-10-09T21:28:00.000Z

The one aspect of the build for which none of the team has any appetite has always been the taping or plastering. I've therefore brought in a couple of proper tradesmen, Stevie and Rab from Edinburgh. They rocked up yesterday morning, took a leisurely breakfast then got stuck in. They work a short day with generous breaks, but my goodness they rattle through the work when they're actually on the job!
I was feeling absolutely horrendous yesterday, with a racking cough, no strength and a bit of a fever. A fair bit better today. I've spent the two days plodding through the plumbing in the kitchen bulkhead. Melvin carried on with the final bits and pieces of sheeting, trying to keep ahead of the tapers.
Mal beavered away outside on the verandah, installing the remaining floor joists, then starting on the roof. I had him reduce the pitch from the 30 degrees he initially set it at to about 20 degrees, which I though looked a bit better. Today he switched his attention to the porch, which he's been wanting to do for weeks and weeks. It seems to be his pet project, and I must admit it's something I've given almost no thought to, other than ordering up posts and sockets for it. He worked with a will all day in the rain, and by day's end had the posts and ring beam in place and the first couple of rafters nailed, so you can see the outline below.
The tapers will be by themselves tomorrow, as I have a pub to alarm in Jedburgh, Mal is packing for Australia (gulp!) and Melvin is away gallivanting.

091007

October 6th - verandah

2007-10-06T18:35:00.000Z

With the sheeting almost finished - probably about a day's work left on it - I asked Mal to get cracking on the verandah. I'd planned to finish the plumbing in the kitchen, but it was such a gorgeous warm sunny day that I decided that the verandah was the place to be. GZood decision, as we worked as a team throughout the day. I drilled and bolted down the post sockets onto their concrete pads while Mal prepared the posts for standing. Once all the posts were in place we started on the ring-beam. Mal cut the timbers and while he was working on the next, I was bolting the previous one to the uprights. I cut and fitted seven of the 14 floor-joists, before running out of timber. Somehow the 16 joists I ordered, and for which I have been invoiced, have turned into just seven on site. I suspect the remainder are still at Willie Dobie's sawmill.

061007

October 5th - sheeting, doors & plumbing

2007-10-05T20:43:00.000Z

Another big day with very visible changes. Mal, Melvin and Phil all joined me again, and Anna fitted in a few hours between school runs. I was working at about a quarter strength and felt pretty miserable with some kind of chest bug, but the lads forged ahead with the remaining sheeting and knocked off most of the reveals. A huge bonus was when a delivery of gyproc arrived from Doves just as we were running out of sock. The funny thing was, I hadn't even ordered it - it was sent by mistake!
Mal hung both front and back doors and framed up the bulkhead in the kitchen. I pottered around with bits and bobs, including removing the glazing from the two front bedroom windows - both have to be replaced with something more suitable - and dismantling the access equipment from the back roof and inserting the omitted slates where the roof brackets had been.
Finally after weeks of procrastination, I bit the bullet and got stuck into the plumbing inside the bulkhead, running all the soil pipes from the bathrooms into a manifold and stack assembly inside the pantry. This will be boxed in and hidden when it's complete. I've been putting it off for ages, and hoping one of the others would do it, but in the event it went pretty smoothly, although the big soil pipes are a bit of a struggle to fit together.
The place is looking excitingly like a house, and will look even better tomorrow when the new patio doors are fitted.

051007

October 4th - sheeting & stairs

2007-10-04T19:55:00.000Z

A big day on site, with Melvin reunited with the team. Mal spent the day installing the stairs, while Melvin and Phil sheeted reveals, having separately finished the shower-room and bathroom (Melvin) and the beam (Phil). I drifted around doing odds and sods, including running wiring for the smoke detectors and a light in the new cupboard under the stairs. I also had to drive to Kelso for ten sheets of gyproc and a box of collated screws to keep the lads going. The remaining windows and patio doors arrived from Rembrand, and will hopefully be in place by the end of tomorrow.

041007

October 3rd - sheeting

2007-10-03T22:13:00.000Z

Had a full complement today - minus Melvin. I had a few errands to run, so Mal collected Phil, our new volunteer and set him to work immediately fitting bits and pieces of plasterboard upstairs. Mal was sheeting downstairs when I arrived with a frame for the front door. He installed this and tidied up the reveals while I sheeted the stairwell. Anna was on site again with her demon brushes, priming the fascia at the back of the house until she tired of the wobbly scaffold and turned her attention instead to the window frames.
I had to nick off to a meeting at lunch, after which I collected the stairs from Galashiels. They look grand. Very pleased with them, assuming they fit!

October 2nd - Slating & sheeting

2007-10-03T22:08:00.000Z

Another glorious day. I'd set myself the easy target of finishing the slating at the back of the house, but spent the first few hours inside doing a bit of plasterboard work incase the taper turned up, and because I was scared of Mal's reaction when he returns tomorrow and finds that I've been frittering away my time sunning myself on the roof.
Anna arrived around lunchtime and dispatched me with a stern look to the slating, to which I dedicated myself for the remainder of the day. Made it to the ridge-line, which was very satisfying. Looking at the roof from the top of the banking it's very easy to see the gradual improvement in workmanship as I learned what I was doing.
Anna finished painting the post sockets. Mal back tomorrow - hurrah.
Collected volunteer Phil from the bus in the evening.

021007

Slating

2007-10-01T20:57:00.000Z

Difficult to express what an amazingly beautiful day it was. Warm and sunny, with the moon being the only spec of non-blue in the sky all day. Spent the whole day on the roof, and almost reached the top. Felt pretty sun-frazzled by knock-off, which is pretty good for October! Started cold and misty (see photos), and London and Gloucester had rain, which merely enhanced the pleasure!
Anna was on site for a few hours, painting the steel post sockets with sticky bitumous goo. She also did a sterling job sweeping upstairs in readiness for the taper, whenever he shows up. Seems to be call-screening...

011007

September 30th - mostly slating

2007-09-30T19:34:00.000Z

Had a rare lie-in, and left in a panic to get the verandah timber to the plot and the Edgars' Land Rover and trailer back before they got shirty. Had to off-load the timber manually - the big 4m posts proving a bit hefty!
Collected Hamish and a couple of his pals, then spent an hour or so cutting plasterboard to size, but not fitting it because I'm almost out of collated screws and I'd left all Mal's tools at home.
The weather was getting better and better, and I spent the remainder of the day on the roof in a T-shirt, slating in soft and surprisingly warm Autumn sunshine. Made pretty good progress, bearing in mind the number of slates that have to be customised now that I'm at the end of the roof. Another good day up there should see the back pitch completed, which really will be a landmark.
Not sure if Stevie the taper is coming tomorrow, but if he does I might need to spend the day indoors in an effort to stay a step ahead of him. Hopefully I'll have Melvin back tomorrow.
Hamish joined me on the roof for the last hour, which he enjoyed immensely. Clearly inherited his head for heights from his dad, rather than his mum!

September 29th - Haulage

2007-09-29T19:05:00.001Z

Borrowed a trailer and Land Rover from Tom Edgar, a local farmer and our ex-landlord. Anna and Ellie were in Perthshire for the day, so I bundled all three boys in the back and drove to the sawmill in Lilliesleaf to collect the spruce cladding they've cut for me. There was too much for one load, so we split it in half and I delivered the first load to Abbey Timber, just over an hour's drive away in Abbey St. Bathans. Here it will be dried and planed by our friend Willie Dobie. I was feeling bad about having the boys in the cargo-hold all day, so I rang Anna's mum and she happily agreed to lok after the scallywags for a few hours while I did the second run. Very long day's driving on twisty roads with a heavy trailer. After dropping the last of the cladding with Willie, we loaded up all the structural timbers for the verandah - a mixture of douglas fir and larch and I brought it home. It was too late to take it to the plot and the boys were starting to freeze in the back, so it'll stay here overnight.
Forgot my camera, so just two pictures taken on my phone. The first shows the whole cladding consignment of 550 planks of 3600 x 150 x 25mm spruce, and the second, which is intended as a "before" shot, shows the unplaned timber. The "after" shot in a few weeks should show a shiplap profile.

September 28th - sheeting

2007-09-29T19:02:00.000Z

Spent the day until mid-afternoon framing and sheeting around the three velux windows in the bathrooms. Fiddly, time-consuming task, but happy with the end-result. I'd planned to get on the roof in the afternoon, but by lunchtime the weather had turned nasty.
Left early to do some work at home.

September 27th - Roof & Sheeting

2007-09-27T21:15:00.000Z

Nasty rainy morning, and we discovered a few worrying puddles in the house. Once again, I aborted the upstairs sheeting for a few hours and replaced all the omitted slates where the roof-brackets had been. We had to remove a sheet of plasterboard in the twins' bedroom to let the structural timber behind to dry.

Finally fininshed on the roof around 3pm, and spent the last couple of hours framing and sheeting around the velux units in the twins' room and the shower-room. Fiddly and slow job, but we're getting there.

270907

September 26th - Sheeting

2007-09-27T07:20:00.000Z

Spent all day sheeting around the windows in bedroom 2 and the upstairs lounge. Seemed like prety slow going, even with Anna on site for a while, putting screws into boards that I'd fixed in place.
By the end of the day the bedroom was finished and the lounge just has the reveals around the waterfall window to do, once the window has been installed. This can't be done until we have the support timbers, which have been on order for a month.
Had a long chat in the evening with a chap called Magnus Wolf Murray, one of my potential volunteers. Turns out he works with carbon-efficient energy systems, and has offered to work out the heating requirements of the house, and suggest a couple of different ways to meet them.

September 25th - Roof repairs

2007-09-25T19:46:00.000Z

Had Anna on site for the morning, tidying some of the accumulated clutter. I started sheeting around the picture window in the lounge, but almost immediately diverted to the roof to carry out some emergency repairs before the next rain. There were three areas of concern: The velux in bedroom 1 is only half-flashed, as my scaffold didn't quite take me to the end of the roof when I was slating that side a couple of weeks ago, and the temporary flashing I put up was leaking quite badly. One of the velux units in the bathroom was also leaking, as was an area beside the aperture for the waterfall window. I spent most of the day on the back roof, slating along to the end, and by late afternoon had passed the top of the big velux, flashing it as I went. All the flashing is now in place, and hopefully that problem should be sorted. The bathroom velux transpired to have a soaker missing, and the leak by the waterfall window was caused by rain blowing up under an unsecured edge of membrane, which I secured with gaffer tape, along with several other similarly flappy edges. All of this was carried out in dry weather, while the boys larked around in the straw-shed. Just as we left in the evening it started to rain, so I should know on arrival tomorrow whether the place is now tight.
Spoke to the taper, who should be with us on Monday... or Wednesday! Also set the wheels in motion for a cable to be run to the house by Scottish Power. Need to send over a scale diagram of the site.

250907

Fenestration

2007-09-24T22:51:00.000Z

Mal and Melvin's last day for a week, and I wanted to get the bigger windows fitted if possible. Melvin had to travel down from Edinburgh, so we were slow getting off the mark. Mal had dreamed up a very nifty method of installation, involving fitting batten to the outside of the frames to allow the windows to self-locate in their apertures. In the event we fairly sprinted through the installation, and had fitted all the windows we had by about 3pm. The only ones remaining are the two small units for the front bedrooms and the patio doors for the living room. I had set aside tomorrow to get to where we left off today, and it looks like I might have to use the day in hand to get on the roof and do some emergency slating. It rained buckets last night and there was a fair amount of water in the house. I looked in the loft and was heartened to see that there were no leaks where I have slated, but there are still plenty on the unslated sections.

240907