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 are definitely progressing well now. In a short break in the rain today I sneaked into the house to take some photos of progress with some sunlight as a backdrop.
Looking towards where the staircase will be
I was initially worried that the colour of the boards would be too dark, but now that I’ve seen more of them laid, I think it’s looking good.
Looking back into the lounge area
As you can see, our grand plan of painting everything first before the floorboards were laid didn’t quite work out. My operation got in the way, other stuff took longer than planned and dates didn’t align. But it’s ok, that’s the joy of self building. We’ll be able to protect the floors whilst we continue the painting.
The kitchen recess
Every now and then I get a small frisson of excitement that it’s really real, that we’ll be in soon. Today was one of those days.
As I stood in the living room, the air filled with the smell of freshly cut oak and sawdust and with the light bouncing off the building rubble, I honestly thought “not long now”.
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.
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.
The day has arrived. The men from the mainland came, prepared, poured and levelled, and we now have smooth, thermally conductive concrete floors throughout the ground floor of the house.
Pouring
It was scarily quick and efficient. The advance guard came yesterday to take levels and prep the site, and the team completed the pouring and levelling in a few hours this morning.
This is a big milestone for us. It should be dry enough to walk on within a few days, although we’ll leave it longer, and we can move back into the house to start prep for the MVHR ducting in about a weeks time.
Things are progressing slowly but steadily now. We now have a flooring membrane throughout the house laid over the insulation sheets and edged with foam strip to allow for the screed expansion.
Exciting times, although the smell of the plastic was overwhelming for a bit!
We had originally thought to use a grid to lay the pipes onto, but as we’re tight for depth to the window base, husband decided to lay them free-form to save a few millimetres extra for the screed.
The cryptic markings which appeared mysteriously overnight apparently direct the traffic for the underfloor pipe layout.
These will be laid throughout the ground floor with the exception of the small room that we plan to use as a pantry, which we want to keep as cool as possible.
With a bit of luck we should be ready for the screed in the next few weeks.
The house ground floor is now fully covered with 100mm thick celotex insulation boards. These are cut and fitted neatly together to form the underfloor on which the screed will be poured.
Insulation boards down and taped
As the concrete subfloor beneath this is not entirely level, we have laid sand to compensate and to ensure that the boards sit as evenly as possible.* readers note – when I say WE I actually mean Husband…
Insulation boards down
The joints between the insulation blocks have then been taped securely to make sure that there isn’t any movement.
Finally a plastic membrane is laid and sealed on top of it all. This is the layer that the underfloor heating pipes will be laid upon prior to the screed being poured.
Membrane down
And I thought it was just popping a few boards down and running pipes over them… I guess this is why people often get surprised at how long seemingly simple jobs take. Like me 😬.
Ravencroft Skye 