Category: larch cladding

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Autumn cladding progress


Pictures taken on a blustery, rainy autumn day last week on the island. The first frosts were a few nights ago, so autumn is definitely well underway.

The larch cladding is nearly complete now. There seem to be a few bits left around the rear dormer bathroom window that have yet to be finished, but the scaffolding is down and we’re hoping that these remaining areas won’t take long.


We’re also still waiting for the water to be connected.

What’s needed before we can get approval to connect is a small value, simple return valve, but it seems that obtaining one and getting a plumber to fit it is holding everything up. It’s frustrating at this stage with just weeks to go until we will be living on site. We can’t live for long without piped water to the caravan, and with no date in hand for this to be done it’s a worry on a very long list of things to think about. It will happen.


I can’t wait for the larch to weather. It looks strangely stark in the landscape at the moment in its raw colour, and I much prefer the muted grey tones of weathered wood.

We have neighbours in a nearby  village on the island who have also just built a larch clad home and who are a few months ahead of us in terms of build progress. Theirs is silvering already, so I’m hoping ours will soften too very soon.



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Static Adventures

We had a busy three days on the island checking the progress on site, talking to the builders, getting the static caravan in place and meeting a few neighbours in a socially distanced manner. It was good.

We came home tired but happy.

The caravan arrived on Tuesday. Watching from the top of the croft I could see that the lorry transporting it had got part the way up the steep access road, but was losing traction on the hardcore surface of the track. It tried a few times, but rolled back in each instance. My heart sank for a few moments thinking that all our plans would come to nothing.

Luckily for us there was still a digger on the croft, and one of our enterprising builders used a tow rope to connect it to the front of the lorry and reversing, dragged it up the hill over the steep part of the track. Relief was not the word!

With help from a kind neighbour Donnie and his tractor, the static was manoevered into place behind the house, where we hoped it would benefit from some shelter from the prevailing South Westerlies.

It’s really exposed to the elements at the top of the croft there. There was a stiff 40km per hour breeze blowing on the day that we moved it, so we could guess what it would feel like in the more typical winter gales of 70-90km per hour….

Four one tonne bags of hardcore are being delivered to site today and friends have kindly arranged to strap the caravan down to them with lorry straps to anchor it until we get to site again at the end of October.

It needs proper stabilising on a base, some steps, a lick of paint, some small internal repairs and a good airing, but those things will have to wait until we’re there permanently now. Soon.

The builders have done a good job, and we were really pleased with the quality of the work. The cladding looks great and should be finished in the next week. The roof slating completed yesterday.

A few more weeks and the external elements of the build will be complete ready to hand over to us for the rest.

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The cladding starts

We’re up at the build site and it’s amazing to see it for real rather than just via photos. It’s so exciting! Last time we were here this was all a muddy hillside on the croft.

The larch cladding has started. We were up on site as they were working on it, and even outside with a strong Skye breeze blowing away from me I could smell the lovely, resinous scent of the wood as they were cutting it.

It takes me straight back to years of my childhood when we used to picnic in the pine woods of what was then West Germany. That scent from cut pine trees was everywhere.

This is Russwood Siberian Larch cladding. We’re really pleased with the quality. It has a good weight, colour and relatively few knots. It’s being secured to the house with stainless steel nails and is going up pretty quickly.

It was a bit of a shock to see the black disappearing, as I was quite taken with the black wall effect. But speaking to the joiner onsite he was saying that the colour will silver and the wood will harden within a couple of years, and that if we aren’t keen on the effect by that stage, that’s the time to consider staining or painting it. I like it, though, even without the weathering.

We think a further two weeks with the builders onsite and they’ll be done with the exterior.

Then it will be over to us at the end of a October to start the interior..