The kittens have been exploring the new bathroom, generally getting into everything and underfoot as much as possible.
They’re fascinated by the bath tub.
They’ve been balancing on the rolltop edge, sliding down the slope at the back and swinging from the taps. It’s like a skateboard park in there for them, except for paws rather than wheels.
Here Fergus is eying those very tempting looking towels as his next potential piece of feline excitement.
Personally I’m just excited to have got the mirror that I bought two years ago up onto the wall at last. And that it fits the space for which it was intended!
In the race to get into the house before the highland winter really bit, we’re down to the wire now.
The weather over the last few days has been much colder as the winds have veered to the north east, and snow is forecast.
We are still at least a week away from moving in. Husband is trying to fit a toilet, sink and shower so that we have basic facilities in place, but it’s slow going. We have water to the upstairs bathroom now, we just need the fittings in place!
Mornings in the caravan are painful now. Temperatures drop to a few degrees centigrade overnight and even with the gas fire on full blast the caravan doesn’t reach more than sixteen degrees centigrade all day. I have dug out my fingerless gloves and thermals.
When it’s like this I retreat to the house and sit in the warmth of the bedroom whilst husband gets on with the plumbing. I can’t unpack anything whilst it’s still a building site, but I can sit and imagine. The solar gain from our big windows, combined with the underfloor heating are very efficient, and it’s warm!
Sunshiny day. But cold.
I dream of hot showers and drying off in a warm room without having to do the shivering dance to race into clothes before anything freezes.
Not long now.
I popped into the polycrub earlier this morning to see how things were faring. The temperature gauge recorded that it had dropped to 0.5C in there last night, but everything seems fine. The kale is looking perky, the slugs are having a bean feast with my pak choi, and the beetroot is looking pretty bulletproof.
I am still awed by the miracle of my winter lettuces.
We decided to tile the entrance hall, boot room, utility room and bathrooms. All of these are wet areas and need a practical, hard wearing floor surface.
I initially favoured stone or slate as a floor material here, but after I discovered that regular sealing and maintenance would be required decided to take another route. Life is too short to be resealing floors regularly.
We’ve chosen porcelain stone-effect tiles. They’re non-slip, easy maintenance, strong and hard wearing. I’m promised that an occasional mop down is all that’s needed.
Not too dark as the bathrooms and entrance hall are north facing, and not too light so that I’m constantly washing the mud off them.
Bathroom floor
The only challenge was that we’d need to find a tiler to lay them. Husband didn’t feel that he could do a good job with grouting, although he’d be fine laying the tiles. On this island it would seem that finding a tiler is a practical impossibility, so we were pleased when an alternative solution presented itself to us. Thank you Universe 🙏
Luckily one of the plasterers we had working with us had a nephew in Glasgow who was a tiler and who was interested in coming up to do the work and bagging a few Munro’s in his spare time. (For you non mountaineers, this means climb a few challenging mountains whilst up here).
First tiles down in entrance hall
The other walls in the bathroom will be half clad in wood. It’s a softer finish than tiles and will provide a strong colour and texture contrast. We’re still finalising the finish – either a simple Osmo oil stain, or more radically a charred Shou Sugi Ban finish. Watch this space!
Our lives seem to consist of plastering and ordering at the moment.
The downstairs of the house is all nearly plastered now. Just a cupboard and the light well to finish, then we move upstairs to do the bedrooms. It’s drying well.
Drying plaster on the big walls
We’re really pleased with the quality of the finish. I’m glad now that we didn’t go with tape and fill. I secretly like the colour of the raw plaster, which reminds me of the sun-warmed walls of dusty Tuscan cottages. It smells like damp mushrooms as it dries, though.. not quite so romantic 😊
I’ve made a half hearted bid to keep it as it is, except I know it wouldn’t stay looking like this. Husband and Cornish Jeff have counselled me against this, sensibly, I know.
Painted it shall be.
Dining room end
I strongly suspect that it’s looking so attractive to me at the moment because the alternative, which is many, many weeks with a paint roller, is next on the cards. The paint and rollers have arrived. It’s going to be a long job.
Linen cupboard
Back to the ordering. We’re working on bathroom fittings at the moment.
Who knew that there were so many variations on a tap? Who knew that everything was going to skyrocket in price as it has? What a time to build 🙈…
Now is a really busy time for the build. We have two guys (the two Dereks) busily and speedily installing battens and erecting plasterboard panels, with husband wiring and ducting alongside them.
It means long days and not much in the way of breaks. He’s shattered when he collapses in front of the fire each evening. A good tiredness, I think – one born of a long days manual labour and visible progress, but certainly tiredness. We’re neither of us as young as we were!
The best I can do is provide tea and food as it’s needed, and finalise the many remaining decisions on bathroom and kitchen finishes from the caravan.
When I’m not browsing tile sites and bathroom fittings catalogues, or calling Home Energy Scotland for advice, I spend much of each day making flatbreads, cake, quiches, stews and soups.
My latest attempt at urban food is kebabs! Sliced leftover roast lamb, shredded red cabbage, garlic and mint yoghurt, harissa paste and baked soft flatbreads. When you don’t have a takeaway on the island, you make them yourself. Probably much healthier too.
I’m not even pretending that the pear frangipane tart was anything other than an indulgence…we need yummy things right now.
I’m also reading this. An excellent book, if slightly terrifying. It’s about the disappearance of insects due to pollution, pesticides, chemical runoff, changes in farming practices and climate change, and is written very accessibly and compellingly. Dave Goulson is well qualified to write about this, being a Professor of Biology, an expert on insect ecology and an Ambassador for the UKs Wildlife Trusts. Get a copy if you can.
So progress on the build is steady as we move through the highland winter. I’m starting to think about seeds and have ordered seed potatoes, onion sets and garlic. We’re still eating red cabbage and kale from the croft, at least what the deer haven’t eaten.
I can hardly believe that we’re in July already, but that seems to be where we find ourselves. The house build progress has been slow, but at last we are through the bulk of the sealing, taping, foiling and re-taping of the house walls and have moved into the next stage. Thank the stars that my husband doesn’t give up easily through what has been a marathon of a process.
Floor insulation slabs
He has been laying the insulation slabs on the internal floors in this past week in preparation for the underfloor heating pipes to go down. Then it will be the screed pouring before finally we have a level, warm floor for the house!
Work in progress
We have the plasterers booked in for September, so we need to complete the floors and basic pipe and wiring installation in the next two months to make sure that we secure their time. I know how quickly eight weeks will go, so it will be another busy time.
Our tinfoil-wrapped sitting room!
In parallel, I’m re-examining all the kitchen and bathroom material choices we made over a year ago. Prices and suppliers have all changed, and we need to get selections finalised and fresh estimates in so that we can secure fittings when we’re ready.
We’ve also sourced an excellent local lady joiner to make us custom built wardrobes and bookcases for the main bedroom, hall and sitting room areas at the end of the year. Hugh could build them, but having done everything else by then I suspect he will be on his knees. And the quality of her finished work looks excellent.
I’m especially excited by the prospect of the extremely high bookcase taking up the whole of the back wall in the sitting room. We’ll need a ladder to gain access to the upper shelves! But it will take a huge quantity of books. Just what we need.
It seems that there are always a thousand things to think about at any given point in a house build project.
At this precise moment we’re appointing a Quantity Surveyor to manage and oversee the build quotes, and get a more accurate projection of build costs for budget. We’re hoping to have costs through and an idea of possible build start dates in the next few weeks.
We’re also looking at flooring in more detail again. The bathrooms, entrance hall and utility room will all be tiled for practicality, and although I started off considering stone floors, the maintenance requirement for regular re-sealing has put me off a little, and I’m now thinking more of big, matt finish porcelain tiles.
Samples will be winging their way through the post over the next few weeks so that we can narrow down the selection.
In parallel, we’re waiting to hear whether the Forestry Commission managed to get out to the croft before Christmas as they were hoping to in order to survey the land from a tree planting perspective.
It all feels as if it’s on the very cusp of happening. Just a few inches further…☺️
Now that the building warrant is in, we need to spend the next few weeks finalising decisions on kitchen, bathroom and flooring options. I started the process earlier this summer, but parked the initial designs when we got consumed with such things as the access road, electrical points and window types, all very essential for the warrant submission.
I didn’t really dare breathe much more on the more cosmetic elements, almost feeling that it was in danger of jinxing things somehow to spend time on this without having all the permissions in place. But on Friday I picked up the phone to the kitchen designer in Scotland, sent him the final room dimensions, and told him that it was time to re-engage.
Lock and load, kitchen designer! I’m back. And with some new ideas!
Poor man….
In some ways the break of six months without fully considering things like tile colours, tap designs and shower fittings has made things easier, and my vision of what we want clearer. I’m more convinced than ever that simple is best, with good quality, natural materials wherever possible. Most of the ideas that I originally hatched six months ago still hold water, but some things have changed, and I’m grateful that we have had that time to alter things.
The inner project manager within me is now itching to list out all the decisions we need to make, create mood boards, check out suppliers, arrange samples, agree visits wherever possible to physically try things out (like the bath), estimate costs, and get on with it…
I love a good bath. There’s something about the ease that it provides to a chilled and tired body after a day of work that a shower just can’t match.
So, despite the modest proportions of the bathroom in the new build croft house, we have decided that in addition to a free standing shower, that we must have a bath.
Husband is nearly six feet tall. I stand at a diminutive (although magnificent…) five feet and four inches. You can start to see the dilemma when it comes to a comfortable soak.
For husband to be able to stretch out luxuriously, I would have to learn to float like a jelly fish, my feet not able to reach the end of the bath. For me to wedge comfortably in for a long soak, husband would be left folded up with knees protruding from the water like an origami grasshopper.
We have found a solution, Dear Reader. It is a slipper bath. Supremely comfortable, the bather assumes a supported, semi-seated position, not requiring any wedging on my part to avoid drowning, and yet long enough for grasshopper legs to be comfortable.
The other wonderful thing about this bath is that it is excellent for reading. For those of you who know me this is an equally important consideration. There is nothing like a soggy page and neck ache to ruin an otherwise sublime bathing experience.
We are feeling rather smug about all of this, and I am going to try a number of them next week in order to find The One.
Only those of you of a certain age and a certain lack of delicacy will get that….I am not going to explain for those of you who don’t.
Apparently, the latest thing in bathroom chic is to have your bathroom appliances (eg. toilet and washbasin) suspended from the wall. Nothing between them and the ground except fresh air and a tremulous fear of suspension.
Why? I asked the bathroom consultant. What’s wrong with them being floor mounted? Have they not been that way since time immemorial?
Difficult to clean, he said, delicately. You have men in your home?
I sort of get that swishing a mop under a wall mounted toilet is easy, but seriously? How difficult is swishing it around the base of a floor mounted toilet?
Perhaps it requires manoeuvres that the current generation haven’t evolved or mastered. Maybe I get that. But I also get that the process of house specification has a lot to do with trends, and I had seriously missed that even a basic croft house would be subject to that.
I am finding the process of specifying flooring, sanitary ware, tiles, kitchen units and worktops much more tiring than I expected.
It’s such a privilege to be able to do this in some ways, and so important to get right, but the endless choice is so wearying. Some days I just want to curl up and have someone present me with my perfect kitchen/bathroom and say…
Only those of you of a certain age and a certain lack of delicacy will get that….I am not going to explain for those of you who don’t.
Ravencroft Skye 