Category: slates, roof

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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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It stops, and it starts again…

We’ve had a delay in progress on the build for the last few weeks because the roof light window flashings didn’t arrived as planned.

They’re coming from Poland, apparently, where our Fakro windows are manufactured, and they were delayed. As such, the slate laying had to stop, and from the looks of it nothing else could be done on site. The builder tried to start the exterior wall larch cladding to make up time but his man went sick and so progress stalled here too.

The good news is that we heard this week that the flashings have turned up at last, and work has restarted.

I shouldn’t be frustrated by this, but everything was moving so smoothly and so fast that even though I knew that there’d be bumps in the road, I’d sort of got used to the exceptional progress as normal. It wasn’t normal, of course. Problems and delays are the normal state of affairs in any project of this size.

We’re close enough to our actual site visit next month now for this to feel real and for excitement to build at the prospect of seeing our home in the flesh, so to speak. Pictures and videos are great, and have been so welcome, but this will be the first time that we will have been able to see and touch the house. I simply can’t wait.

Even the slightly daunting prospect of the flight to Inverness in these Covid-19 times isn’t enough to stop the anticipation building….

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Slates

A dreich day, with constant drizzle. A friend on the island visited site to take pictures of more progress for us.

The slates are being laid.

Loving the texture of these.

The windows are also now in place.

Can’t help thinking how good this would look in black – not a look that we’d seriously considered previously.

The only challenge with a black or grey stain is that it needs maintenance every few years, and probably reapplication to keep looking good. Natural Siberian larch is left untreated and it greys naturally over the years, needing nothing further. The wood hardens in reaction to the atmosphere and weather and protects itself.

It will be ready for its larch cladding in a few weeks time and we’ll see how its weatherproof wooden coat looks “au naturele” then.