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!
Our builders wanted to bury the rubbish they left, as was normal for them. They usually dig a pit and throw everything in there to clear up.
We couldn’t countenance them digging leftover plaster, plastics, insulation and chemicals into our croft soil so asked them to leave their rubbish for us to dispose of. Can you image the pollution that this would have caused if we’d let them do it? There is no AWAY. Just because it’s covered over by a thin layer of soil doesn’t mean it’s not still leaching toxicity into the ground and harming wildlife.
As such, over the last three years the piles of building rubbish have steadily built up around the house as trades have come and gone. Pallets, broken slates, empty tubs of adhesive, sodden plasterboard, bits of wood, plastic wrapping, tile offcuts.. you name it, we have it.
We’ve often been peering at the view through a mountain of building rubbish. Its really caused me anxiety at times but until now there’s been no easy or cost effective way of disposing of it.
But today the first skip arrived, dragged bumping noisily up our steep croft track, and we started the mammoth job of sorting the building rubble through and clearing up. We are going to need a few skips to complete this job as our efforts this afternoon with only a few hours work have already half filled this first one. And we’re only a small way through .
We’re keeping anything that can be sensibly reused. All wood offcuts and old pallets are being segregated for croft repurposing or firewood. Broken slates are kept for plant labels or plant bed or pot drainage. Rotten plasterboard, plastic wrapping, empty adhesive tubs, old irn bru tins and building rubble are being thrown away.
I’m holding fast to that vision of a stone terrace with some comfy outdoor seats on it, heathers and sea buckthorn planting and a clear view to the horizon. But for now, it’s heavy labour, aching backs and rolled-up sleeves.
Things are moving in the right direction with the build. We’re gradually making cupboards, wardrobes and shelves so that we can utilise the storage spaces in the house. And get some of our boxes unpacked. Husband wants his shed back!
This is the wardrobe in one of the bedrooms under construction. It will hide the remaining exposed ducting and provide good amounts of storage.
Internals being built With the doors on
This one below is the boot room cupboard. As soon as the doors have been osmo-oiled for protection and we’ve attached handles we can start to fill it.
With the doors on …
We’ve got a loaned dog staying with us right now who delights in rolling in the puddles on our drive, and this space is proving very useful to dry him off in before he plasters mud over the rest of the house.
Great practice for when we have our own dogs again.
We’ve also started the process of building the huge bookcase in the living area. Progress has been temporarily halted whilst we await the arrival of some batons (isn’t something small but essential always missing?) but the base storage unit is built.
We are still wiring sockets and lights, have another bathroom to build and have only unpacked the most basic of our things awaiting completion of these elements, but it’s comfortable, dry and warm. And so good to be in.
We have snow on the tops at last. I always compare the weather at this time of the year with when we arrived on the island two years ago in the teeth of a storm, and both subsequent years have been warmer. I was beginning to wonder if we’d see any snow at all, but temperatures plummeted a few days ago and we now have a glorious white dusting on the high peaks.
Dusting of snow on the hills
The MVHR and the heating are operating well in the house. It’s already significantly warmer and more stable in temperature than the caravan.
As we shiver and dress in the damp cold of 5°C mornings I hold onto the fact that we’ll be in the house in a few weeks time. No more icy mornings playing the duvet game trying to dress without exposing any bare flesh to the elements.
After a wait of several weeks the wood for the sills arrived this afternoon, cheerfully delivered by our local sawmill guy. In the end he decided that the pews would be rather wasted if we were to refinish them for sills, and that he would prefer to preserve the original patina, so declined to sell them to us and found us suitable 4m lengths of local Douglas fir instead.
4m Douglas fir planks
I can’t say that I blame him, although I was quite taken by the idea of old wood having a second life in our new home. But at least that patina, burnished by the bottoms of the righteous as it was, will be protected.
Husband has been fitting sockets, switches and lights like a demon and will move onto one of the bathrooms next week. Once we are electrickified and have a working toilet and shower, we’re in!
The fact that the house is still stuffed to the rafters with building materials, tools, equipment, wood and boxes of everything that you can think of is another hurdle to get over. Once everything is connected up…
In the meantime I have tried a new recipe in my sloping caravan mini oven. This may be one of the very last cakes I bake in here, isn’t that such a strange thought. My new ovens await, sitting there, smugly level, shiny and pristine.
This is Nigel Slaters orange and poppy seed cake, sticky with a fresh orange and marmalade glaze which I hope won’t taste any less good for it’s signature 45° slope.
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”.
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 hallTrade 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!
He’s a wonderful guy, imbued with a quiet energy and zen-like focus with long grey hair and beard. I didn’t notice if he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
He’s been here just three days and we already have four of the downstairs rooms taped, edges reinforced, sealed and the first coat of plaster applied.
Rather than travelling daily, he’s camping overnight in the house whilst he works. As far as I can tell from the depths of my cosy bed in the caravan he seems to be up and working by 6am, and as I write this at 10pm I can hear him still working away under the building lights in the house.
Our midnight plasterer is working like a Trojan. His plastering looks to be excellent. Even the basecoat that I looked at yesterday was as smooth as the icing on a wedding cake.
The rooms are slowly taking shape. It’s fascinating to watch the structure of the house gradually swallow up the kilometres of insulation, cable and ducting under a smooth skin of plaster.
Whilst storm Malik rages, whipping the tarpaulined piles of material stored at the front of the house into a frenzy, progress inside the house continues slowly.
The wind was huge last night. It was apparently gusting to about eighty miles per hour, and it was so loud that it was almost impossible to sleep. The caravan was dancing in the wind, walls flexing and straining hard against the webbing straps that hold it down.
Piles of building material on a calmer day
Morning brought a damage assessment between the storm flurries. Nothing too serious thankfully – a few pipes blown out of place, the bin and bits of wood and building material blown across the croft, and the cover on the rotary clothes dryer totally disappeared . I suspect it’s flown all the way to Norway by now.
We have a few more days of this predicted so we will be battening down the hatches and riding it out as best we can.
On the house front, we have an almost plasterboarded corridor and hall now. Progress.
Corridor
It makes such a difference to see walls inside rather than just spaces. I’ve been struggling with the kitchen design and colours, unable to tell how much light the room will have, but over the next few weeks I should be in a position to see exactly what it will look like. Then I will need to get my skates on and get finalising selections..
It’s true that these days we almost have too much choice. Although having said that, I can never find quite what I have in my minds eye. I seem to have a remarkable ability to love what is not trending at the moment, making it difficult to source. I will slap myself into decisions soon.
Kitchen still awaiting plasterboard and the light well
The two Dereks are plasterboarding for all they’re worth, and we are starting to have rooms emerge from the chaos.
The boot room
Husband has been working long hours to keep pace with the wiring and plumbing. The house is full of strange ducts and metalwork, like something from an industrial post-apocalyptic novel. It’s all slowly taking shape.
It’s strange how a bit of plasterboard changes the aspect of rooms. When we had open studs for walls and you could see through them to the next room, it was difficult to get a real sense of the solidity and space. Now the rooms have opaque, solid boundaries, giving them a feeling of volume. Makes it much easier to visualise fittings and furniture.
The plant room
As I write I’m sitting in the caravan in a burst of unexpected sunshine. It’s streaming through the windows infusing a bunch of gifted, slightly overblown tulips with an warm orange glow.
Spring is coming. Each morning it’s lighter a little earlier.
Ravencroft Skye 