Category: painting

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Painting underway

We’ve spent the last few days (and will no doubt spend the next few months!) painting the walls in the house.

They’re all white, which we decided to live with for a year in order to assess the light and decide which colours would work best for us.

After first living with silver walls with the foil, then terracotta walls with the plaster (which I personally loved, although it’s not designed to be left unpainted), white seems remarkably bright. We’ve both got snow blindness after painting it for two days.

Plaster walls in the entrance hall
Trade white paint

The first coat, a mist coat, has just gone on in this picture. You can see that it’s a bit streaky and blotchy where the raw plaster has sucked up the thinned paint. It’s much better now that the second coat has gone on.

The first coat of white

For a slightly dark, north-facing entrance hall, with this picture taken on a grey and rainy day, the white really reflects what daylight there is and makes the most of it.

Interestingly, having brilliant white on the walls just reinforces that I love colour! I just need to get it right!

It’s increasingly starting to feel like a proper house now!

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Plate Spinning

It’s all happening on all fronts at the moment.

I feel as if we’re spinning lots of plates and at any time they’re going to come crashing down and make a proper mess of the floor.

Let’s hope not.

Whilst the plasterers continue strapping, boarding out and plastering upstairs, the plaster has now dried fully downstairs, and husband has started painting the first of the rooms.

Large tubs of paint

The walls are going to take three coats of paint, as the new plaster sucks up the pigment like a sponge. I suspect that we are going to be heartily sick of decorating by the time we’ve painted the whole house. Painted the whole house three times.. I’m not sure how well the plan to live with it for a year to get used to the light then redecorate with colour is going to hold! We may never feel like painting again 😊

I’m trying hard to focus on how much money that will save us and not the stiff backs, sore arms and paint splattered hair.

Whilst final ducting and plastering goes on upstairs we’re ordering the bulk of the things needed to finish the build now.

We always knew that the costs for flooring, kitchens and bathrooms would all come out at the same time, but it is a bit terrifying to watch thousands of pounds disappear like smoke from the bank account. The joys of self building, eh. And prices go up every time you look again at an item. Craziness, at the moment.

We’ve ordered the kitchen and utility room cupboard carcasses and are just about to do the same for the cabinet doors. The cabinet knobs all arrived last week. The external lights, spotlights and plug sockets are all here. The sinks, taps and bathroom fittings have all been ordered and will start dribbling in over the next few weeks. The floor and bathroom tiles should be here shortly.

Kitchen sink arrived!

We’ve still got doors, skirting, architraves and a staircase to order, but we’re getting there.

Plate spinning will continue for the next few months. I can’t say when, if ever, normal service will be resumed.

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Plastering progress

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 🙈…

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Everything aches..

The first job we’ve had to do is to make the caravan habitable. For those of you that have been reading for a while, you’ll know that we were given a free static caravan in September, which was a hugely generous gesture.

However, it was very basic and hadn’t been lived in for a while. We had it transported to the croft and had to leave it empty for a further two months until we were able to move to the island, which didn’t help in the habitability stakes..(if that’s not a word, it should be).

When we opened the door for the first time on Saturday it was quite clear that it was damp and needed drying out before we could move in.

Storm Aiden made the process of working on the caravan too dangerous for the first few days that we were here. It needed levelling properly before we could do anything inside, but the 60 mph winds were rocking it like a boat. We had to wait until the storm passed.

The morning dawned calm and bright and the wind had at last dropped considerably. Husband had managed to secure the caravan so that it was safe to work in, and hooked up the propane supply to the gas fire so that we could start to dry it out. Whilst he worked on preparing the electrical supply I started the seat repairs and the painting.

As we suspected, everything ached by the end of the day. We are more unfit than we thought!

We got back to our B&B room weary in body but happy in spirit. We’re here at last and making progress, however slow that may seem.

We will get fitter as time passes, and despite the aching limbs and backs it’s still all worth it to be here.

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The Sound of Sleat

I managed to procure a copy of The Sound of Sleat by Jon Schueler, an American contemporary artist and a man who fell in love with Mallaig and it’s skies.

This was an inspired recommendation from a fellow blogger Linda (thank you Linda http://lindasgoluppi.wordpress.com/) after reading my last book list for the weekend.

The book is sadly no longer in print but I eventually tracked down a copy held by a bookseller from the US, so it took a few weeks to arrive.

It was worth the wait.

It’s a bleak but passionate read of the life of a great painter whose work was inspired by Scotland. Brutally honest, and with a spare beauty in it’s prose, it’s compiled from a series of letters to lovers, wives, agents and artists.

What shines through the pages, and what resonates so strongly with me, is Jon Schueler’s attraction to the ever changing light and mood of the sky in this part of the world.

It’s something that draws me to the island too: the weather, the light and the colours that are constantly changing. Increasingly this inspired Schueler’s work and the colours of his “nature abstracts”. His work is very powerful and his use of colour is wonderfully subtle.

Definitely worth a read if you manage to get your hands on a copy.

The Sound of Sleat, Jon Scheuler, 1975