Tag: building a house

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Spring contentment and progress

I can’t remember how long I’ve nursed the fantasy of potting up plants in a warm greenhouse whilst sipping a mug of tea. Maybe listening to an audio book, or a podcast.

I’m such a party animal. I’m not ashamed to say that the quiet life is definitely for me.

Potting up

This morning I took my mug of tea out to the polycrub. I sat there in the warmth, perched at the camping table surrounded by the smell of damp compost and the sound of skylarks rising over the moors above us, and felt content. I even managed to pot up a few trays of young seedlings.

This was my first taste of pottering about in this sheltered space, growing things without being blasted by the south westerlies, and it was wonderful.

We’re slowly wheelbarrowing loads of woodchip from our tonne bag on the other side of the croft to make a weed surpressant covering over the cardboard. It’s about half way there, and whereas the old me would be stressing that I can’t complete it more quickly, the new me just accepts that it’s slow but that it will eventually get done.

There are several trays of young seedlings that will need potting up into my canvas grow bags over the next few weeks. It will happen.

The house is progressing well.

We have plasterboarded out some of the roof space walls upstairs now, so I have a much better idea of the bedroom dimensions now that the eaves have been boarded out.

A friend suggested a clever hack for extra storage in the often somewhat wasted space in the eaves. Most people put a cupboard door in the eaves, but it’s still a bit inaccessible.

Drawer units either side of the headboard space

We’ve bought a couple of drawer units and are building the eaves around them. Once finished, this will be plastered and painted white, leaving the two drawer units embedded flush in the walls. Easy to access, one on either side of the bed, and useful space.

I think it’s going to work well.

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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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Let there be light

One of the challenges with the design of our house is that the kitchen was quite small and potentially a little dark.

All of the Hebhome designs for longhouses have kitchens that are small and minimalist. This was one of the bigger ones!

We figured with the addition of the utility room and the pantry, however, that we would be absolutely fine. We’ve just carved up the functional areas differently.

Big, seldom used appliances like a dehydrator or bulky, noisy appliances like the washing machine and tumble dryer go into the utility room, and dried or canned goods storage that I’d normally have in the kitchen go into the pantry.

The kitchen space also faces an internal wall without light, except the light that the large, double floor length windows in the dining area provide.

To counter this we asked the architect if we could install a roof window that would channel light through the sloping walls of the bedroom above down to the kitchen ceiling. It would be plastered to close the walls off from above and would be hidden in the roof slope of the upper bedroom.

Up until now during the build this has just been a square mark on the bedroom floor and a slightly odd pattern in the ceiling joists. But yesterday the plasterers cut through the bedroom floor, opening up the light well into the kitchen.

I was holding out on final kitchen finishes and colours until this happened so that I could establish what worked best in situ. The amount of light in that space makes a massive difference to the colours I’d been looking at.

So, ever onwards and upwards! We’re ordering flooring wood, tiles and kitchen units next.

It’s coming.

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Knobs. That is all.

I have been circling around kitchen choices like a lost soul for many months now. For me, the kitchen is the most important room in the house, and I’ve been agonising about getting it right.

I’ve gone through the “definitely going handleless and sleekly modern” to “definitely preferring a painted cabinet finish with handles” stage. Several times.

I could quote you catalogue page numbers from all the major manufacturers with my eyes closed. I can tell the difference between grey stone and slate grey finishes in a heartbeat. Not for me the indecision about integrated J handles and true handleless doors. Oh no. No longer.

I think I’m there now, though. A final, tortured decision has been torn from my befuddled brain.

In the end it all came down to knobs.

All the sleek, handleless kitchens had a bit of a smooth, laminated finish that I decided wasn’t for me. I also thought about how I cook, with pastry covered hands and sticky fingers. I’m tactile.

Handleless kitchens look super streamlined, and would probably be more in keeping with the open plan style of the house, but I’ve thought long and hard about the way I use my kitchen and I’ve decided that for me at least, handles are more practical as a choice. And that I just prefer a matt, textured finish on my cabinet doors (less sticky fingerprints, I’m convincing myself).

Knobs! They can look good 😊

We’ve decided to splash out on a heatproof, scratch-proof worktop in the form of Dekton, a stone-based product that is super strong. I can chop and wave my hot pans and oven dishes about with gay abandon.

We’re going with painted cabinet doors, with either cast iron or steel door knobs. The ones I’m quite taken with at the moment are actually based on an ancient Georgian design and are forged steel with a beeswax finish. I may still look at other finishes that may be easier to keep clean, but I love the way these feel in your hand. Very solid, comfortable and tactile.

I don’t think that it matters that this is a contemporary house with modern, slab door fronts but old style cabinet knobs. Does it? They add character and I like them, and that’s the most important thing. I’m hoping that if they’ve been around for hundreds of years already that they’re not suddenly going to go out of fashion tomorrow. I will not be swayed by all the shiny bar handles in the beautiful peoples houses one bit.

Knobs. That is all.

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The midnight plasterer

Our plasterer has arrived at last.

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.

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Frankenfold the Manifold

When I see internal walls start to go up, albeit without plaster, I dare to imagine that the end is in sight. It’s definitely starting to look more like a house.

We continue to move slowly towards completion with plaster boarding, wiring and ducting all now happening simultaneously.

Husband has been fitting the ducting to take the mechanical ventilation pipes (the MVHR system) around the house. These pipes all come together in an interim pit stop over the appliance wall in the kitchen before snaking their way across to the plant room to be connected to their master.

To say that our architects were optimists and highly impractical would be an understatement. Watching husband try to adapt the manifold to fit the pipes into the area allocated to it on the plans was painful.

Speaking to other Hebhome builders it seems that others give up or don’t even try, and instead site the manifold in a cupboard upstairs, but husband was not easily deterred, and some days later Frankenfold was born…

A child born of ingenuity and galvanised steel drainpipe to cap off the unused bits, the manifold was adapted to fit the space. Not pretty, but perfectly functional. Our very own Frankenstein creation.

It’s now all in position and connected, looking purposeful.

I’m very proud.

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Choices, Choices

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.

We will get to an end of the choices. Soon.

Watch this space.

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Storm Malik

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

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Plastering, wiring, ducting & kebabs

Now is a really busy time for the build. We have two guys (the two Dereks) busily and speedily installing battens and erecting plasterboard panels, with husband wiring and ducting alongside them.

It means long days and not much in the way of breaks. He’s shattered when he collapses in front of the fire each evening. A good tiredness, I think – one born of a long days manual labour and visible progress, but certainly tiredness. We’re neither of us as young as we were!

The best I can do is provide tea and food as it’s needed, and finalise the many remaining decisions on bathroom and kitchen finishes from the caravan.

When I’m not browsing tile sites and bathroom fittings catalogues, or calling Home Energy Scotland for advice, I spend much of each day making flatbreads, cake, quiches, stews and soups.

My latest attempt at urban food is kebabs! Sliced leftover roast lamb, shredded red cabbage, garlic and mint yoghurt, harissa paste and baked soft flatbreads. When you don’t have a takeaway on the island, you make them yourself. Probably much healthier too.

I’m not even pretending that the pear frangipane tart was anything other than an indulgence…we need yummy things right now.

I’m also reading this. An excellent book, if slightly terrifying. It’s about the disappearance of insects due to pollution, pesticides, chemical runoff, changes in farming practices and climate change, and is written very accessibly and compellingly. Dave Goulson is well qualified to write about this, being a Professor of Biology, an expert on insect ecology and an Ambassador for the UKs Wildlife Trusts. Get a copy if you can.

So progress on the build is steady as we move through the highland winter. I’m starting to think about seeds and have ordered seed potatoes, onion sets and garlic. We’re still eating red cabbage and kale from the croft, at least what the deer haven’t eaten.

Soon, now. Spring is coming. Not long now.