December 11th - Cladding

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.

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