The floorboard installation is now complete. I’m loving the natural finish and colour now that it’s down, and it’s completely transformed the rooms.
I’m almost daring to imagine furniture in here! Something I haven’t done so far. It’s felt too much like a building site.
The internal doors have also now been delivered, and they’ll start to be installed next week.
We’ve gone for oak panelled doors, some with glazed panels for where extra daylight is needed, such as between the internal hall and the boot room.
Then it’s architraves, skirtings, window sills, the build out of the kitchen, utility and bathrooms, installation of lights and sockets, and completion of the painting… still lots to do.
My main concern is getting in before the bad winter weather hits. Despite all the delays, and recognising that all this may not be finished in time, we are still hoping for October.
The floorboards arrived several weeks ago after a protracted negotiation to have them delivered to the island.
I’m always perplexed when companies say they won’t deliver here – we have a land bridge to the mainland so it’s no more difficult to get a lorry here than it is to Glasgow. But you’d be amazed how many companies simply refuse to deliver to anything other than a mainland address. It’s infuriating.
They arrived in driving rain (of course) so husband and I worked like fury to get them indoors and stacked before the rain soaked through their protective wrappings. This was before my recent operation, thank goodness.
Stacked floorboards
They’ve been stacked in one of the bedrooms for some weeks now acclimatising to the humidity levels in the house, which will hopefully ensure that there’s no warping when we put them down.
We now have them laid in the living and dining room areas and hope to complete the installation in the remaining ground floor areas next week.
In progress
These are engineered oak boards from Russwood, a local Scottish company, finished in Osmo oil. They’re designed to be compatible with the underfloor heating that we’ve installed.
We really wanted natural flooring and there are so many options these days with bamboo, stone, porcelain, cork, lino, rubber etc. that it took us a while to sift through the alternatives. I’m hoping that these will prove classic and easy to live with.
The price of wood has gone through the roof over the last twelve months and if we’d waited another year I’m not sure we could have afforded these, but taking the long term view we figured we’d be living with them for a long time, so we should buy the best we could afford.
I’m so glad that we did.
We’ve just ordered the wooden staircase and we’ll be onto the interior doors and skirting boards next.
The rest of the country is living through a Met Office severe weather warning with temperatures hovering around 40C, but Skye today is a cool 22C with balmy sea breezes.
Blue skies and sea breezes
I don’t think that we would have survived that heat if we’d still been living in London.
The house we were renting there was badly insulated :- a town house with three floors, our bedroom being at the top of the house. There was no airflow or air conditioning, and the heat would rise to the top of the house and make sleep simply impossible.
Even with fans we found it too hot to do anything, and whole months could be lost to weariness and bad temper through lack of sleep. There was also a continual sense of grubby stickiness from the proximity of the crowds and the air pollution, which was palpable.
London does not do summer well, like most cities.
I know that people think it’s bizarre but we genuinely like the cooler temperatures up here. There’s nearly always a wind blowing, and it rarely exceeds the mid 20s. That’s comfortable, as far as I’m concerned!
We’re so glad that we got out. The air is clean and cool here, and we enjoy the wide open spaces of the croft. Today was a good washing day and husband hung sheets and a duvet cover out to line dry in the warm breeze.
Washing day
I’ll take the cooler temperatures and the rain over the pressure cooker of the city any day.
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 🙈…
I have been circling around kitchen choices like a lost soul for many months now. For me, the kitchen is the most important room in the house, and I’ve been agonising about getting it right.
I’ve gone through the “definitely going handleless and sleekly modern” to “definitely preferring a painted cabinet finish with handles” stage. Several times.
I could quote you catalogue page numbers from all the major manufacturers with my eyes closed. I can tell the difference between grey stone and slate grey finishes in a heartbeat. Not for me the indecision about integrated J handles and true handleless doors. Oh no. No longer.
I think I’m there now, though. A final, tortured decision has been torn from my befuddled brain.
In the end it all came down to knobs.
All the sleek, handleless kitchens had a bit of a smooth, laminated finish that I decided wasn’t for me. I also thought about how I cook, with pastry covered hands and sticky fingers. I’m tactile.
Handleless kitchens look super streamlined, and would probably be more in keeping with the open plan style of the house, but I’ve thought long and hard about the way I use my kitchen and I’ve decided that for me at least, handles are more practical as a choice. And that I just prefer a matt, textured finish on my cabinet doors (less sticky fingerprints, I’m convincing myself).
Knobs! They can look good 😊
We’ve decided to splash out on a heatproof, scratch-proof worktop in the form of Dekton, a stone-based product that is super strong. I can chop and wave my hot pans and oven dishes about with gay abandon.
We’re going with painted cabinet doors, with either cast iron or steel door knobs. The ones I’m quite taken with at the moment are actually based on an ancient Georgian design and are forged steel with a beeswax finish. I may still look at other finishes that may be easier to keep clean, but I love the way these feel in your hand. Very solid, comfortable and tactile.
I don’t think that it matters that this is a contemporary house with modern, slab door fronts but old style cabinet knobs. Does it? They add character and I like them, and that’s the most important thing. I’m hoping that if they’ve been around for hundreds of years already that they’re not suddenly going to go out of fashion tomorrow. I will not be swayed by all the shiny bar handles in the beautiful peoples houses one bit.
In a world where there are a million variations on every theme, buying fittings for a house from scratch is not the fun job that you might imagine. It’s an endlessly exhausting task.
For those of you that have followed this journey from the beginning, you’ll know that we’re running a few years behind the original build schedule. Many of the design decisions and selections that we made in 2019 are either no longer available, now too expensive, or our thoughts have changed.
Things viewed in London don’t look the same here in the cool northern light of Skye.
I’ve been struggling with the kitchen design of our new build for years. The kitchen is the most important room in the house for me, cooking as much as I do. Part of the challenge I suspect is that these days every kitchen has an island. Ours doesn’t. So the photos that I see daily of kitchen designs and finishes just don’t look anything like the space we’ve got.
The second challenge that I have is that I don’t like “shiny”. Shiny, or gloss kitchens, can be wonderful in the right setting, but I’ve always preferred matt, natural, textured surfaces. It’s just the way I am. These types of kitchen have gradually started to come more into vogue in the last eighteen months, so it’s not as difficult as it once was to find selections, but every kitchen professional that I’ve spoken to has started from this point, and I simply get exhausted explaining preferences and correcting assumptions over and over again.
The third challenge is that I want a work surface that is as bulletproof and as maintenance-free as I can get it. I cook a lot and I know that at some point I’m going to cut on these surfaces, splash something on them that will stain, or put a red-hot pan down as I rush to run a burnt hand under a tap. What can I say, I’m a messy cook.
All of these things are possible to protect against in some of the modern materials available today, like Silestone or Dekton, but they come with a steep price tag.
The last challenge is that no matter what your budget, large or small, in this Inflationary, Brexit, Pandemic Britain, costs have gone through the roof in the last eighteen months. Which means in very real terms what you want now becomes increasingly expensive. Compromises become the norm.
Choices are, however, slowly being made. The poor Postie hefts box after box of flooring and tile samples over the caravan threshold with a pitying smile.
I vacillate between tasteful, subtle Scandi grey/blue/moss colours and a need for bright, warm tones. I’ll end up with a weirdly eclectic mix, I’m sure of it. Which is absolutely fine. This is home.
Husband is keen to have good, strong kitchen carcasses. I’m keen to have good worktops, plain slab cabinet doors painted in a matt finish, and well designed lighting.
I’m already thinking of my rapidly approaching dotage with dimming eyesight and shaky grip.
Ravencroft Skye 