Tag: house build

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Meanderings

It’s raining as I write. A grey, incessant rain that takes hold and makes you feel glad that you’re not out in it. The house is enveloped in water.

I’m having a low, quiet day. I get them every now and then – no energy to do anything and a feeling of wanting to hide from the world. These days come, and they go. I feel increasingly anxious about being out there, with people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?

I baked another sourdough boule this morning. I’m slowly getting back into it and the newly developed starter (Feisty Fran II) is now maturing nicely. She’s a home-bred local girl from natural Skye yeasts, so is well used to our weather.

Feisty Fran our Skye rye sourdough starter

A few loaves a week will soon get me back into the swing of things. I’m trying an 85% hydration recipe with rye that tastes great but spreads like a big-bottomed girl and doesn’t give me the crusty “ear” that I like, so I need to work on that.

Earless wonder

It’s a very loose dough so needs better tension to hold the slash and to be able to create an “ear”. It’ll get there. I’ll eventually work it out. Bread-making is just alchemy.

“Earless” sourdough

Husband has done a great job with the hedging around the deer-fenced orchard and vegetable area of the croft, which is all now in, and mulched. Some of the seedlings and twigs are in bud already so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.

Husband has now returned to indoor jobs, building shelves and working on our big bookcase in the sitting room area.

Our carpenter Ben had to leave unexpectedly and didn’t get time to install the big bookcases as planned so husband has been left to finish them. It’s been weeks of cutting, osmo oiling and assembly. It’s coming together now at last. I know it’s all been meticulously measured but I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw it, thinking that it wouldn’t fit on the wall under that roofline. Husband assures me that we have 2cm of clearance..

We can’t wait to get the book boxes unpacked.

There are four of these to go on that base

The seedlings are coming along well and I’ve moved the hardier of them, the lettuce, beans and kale, out into the polycrub. The cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines and more heat-loving tender plants remain indoors for now, the green wall of food lined up against the big south-facing windows.

Cucumber babies doing their thing

Whilst I was in the polycrub the other day clearing old grow tubs, I found a surprise stash of carrots! All good, perfectly firm and sweet. These are a batch of St. Valery carrots, a heritage variety sowed last year from Real Seeds that I’d forgotten. We’ve been snacking on them raw with homemade humous and olives and I’ve been so impressed with the taste that I’ve bought more seeds for sowing this year.

Nature is just amazing. We’ve managed to eat kale, purple sprouting broccoli, tatsoi and carrots throughout the hungry gap.

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Floors ‘n Doors

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.

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Tiling

We decided to tile the entrance hall, boot room, utility room and bathrooms. All of these are wet areas and need a practical, hard wearing floor surface.

I initially favoured stone or slate as a floor material here, but after I discovered that regular sealing and maintenance would be required decided to take another route. Life is too short to be resealing floors regularly.

We’ve chosen porcelain stone-effect tiles. They’re non-slip, easy maintenance, strong and hard wearing. I’m promised that an occasional mop down is all that’s needed.

Not too dark as the bathrooms and entrance hall are north facing, and not too light so that I’m constantly washing the mud off them.

Bathroom floor

The only challenge was that we’d need to find a tiler to lay them. Husband didn’t feel that he could do a good job with grouting, although he’d be fine laying the tiles. On this island it would seem that finding a tiler is a practical impossibility, so we were pleased when an alternative solution presented itself to us. Thank you Universe 🙏

Luckily one of the plasterers we had working with us had a nephew in Glasgow who was a tiler and who was interested in coming up to do the work and bagging a few Munro’s in his spare time. (For you non mountaineers, this means climb a few challenging mountains whilst up here).

First tiles down in entrance hall

The other walls in the bathroom will be half clad in wood. It’s a softer finish than tiles and will provide a strong colour and texture contrast. We’re still finalising the finish – either a simple Osmo oil stain, or more radically a charred Shou Sugi Ban finish. Watch this space!

Waiting for the grout to dry
Bathroom tiles
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Woodburner in the house!

I’ve always had a woodburner in my previous homes. I’m drawn to flames and the smell of woodsmoke. Some would say I’m just a socially well adjusted pyromaniac… maybe not even that well adjusted.

There’s nothing more relaxing on a cold winters day than curling up on a comfy sofa with the woodburner softly glowing and crackling away in a corner.

A SIP house with as much extra insulation as ours and underfloor heating to boot isn’t really in need of an additional heat source.

However, electrical outages and power cuts are common here in the islands during the colder months. Suppliers can take days, and sometimes weeks, to restore power to these remote areas.

The logical part of me reasoned that a secondary power source not dependant on the grid would be sensible for such times, providing warmth and the ability to heat basic food on the top, or potatoes in the body of the stove.

The wildly romantic and emotional side of me admitted that this wasn’t the main reason to have one at all.

The woodburner arrived with the installers yesterday afternoon. It’s an Opus 5kW stove, DEFRA approved and Eco design ready, meaning it matches the European regulations being brought in to clamp down on emissions of wood burning stoves that’ll come in later this year.

A day of hard work by Mathew and Kev and she sits resplendent in her corner ready for action. We need to repair the plasterboard on the ceiling where the flue has been cut through, but it’s nearly there.. We have a wee chimney too, firmly braced and tied into the roof against the prevailing winds. We will have fires this winter.

We’re receiving threats of visits with marshmallows on sticks…😊

One more step towards this house becoming a home! 😊

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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.

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Fuelled by Tunnocks

Watching a film recently, cosied up in the caravan on a cold winters evening, I couldn’t help but notice that there were over 15 minutes of film credits at the end of the footage.

It got me thinking how complex things have become in life (as well as how every single person involved in the film in any capacity now gets a mention).

It also made me smile when I thought of what the credits reel would look like if our house build and croft regeneration were a film. I’m saving up most of the honourable mentions for my long suffering husband, but there is one outlier that I think also deserves a shout-out.

Tunnocks wafer biscuits.

There is a caramel wafer biscuit made in Glasgow, Scotland, a part of daily life here and every bit as Scottish as porridge, haggis and single malt. It’s just called Tunnocks locally.

Tunnocks is an institution. I always have a packet of them in to fuel the day with a strong cup of tea.

The plasterers shun the dark chocolate variety as too sophisticated for their tastes, and go for the milk chocolate ones with their tea and two sugars every time.

Husband likes the dark chocolate ones best.

I think he’d smile at being thought dangerously sophisticated…😊😘.

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Flying insulation

A friend commented that there had been precious little recently in the way of house build updates. Which is very true. Progress has been slow, and we are still taping and foiling some months into the process.

A number of things have conspired to make what should have been a relatively quick job a complete marathon.

Husband has had to fill and tape all wall, door and window seams throughout the house BEFORE foiling, as well as taping everything again AFTER foiling.

This has turned into a huge, time-consuming undertaking which he felt was necessary because of gaps left by the builders. Gaps that if left open would have compromised our structural water and air tightness.

His faith in the quality of the work by the builders has been severely dented as these are not cosmetic problems that we felt could be covered over, sure to cause us issues some years down the line.

He has been doing this work alone, and other time-critical work has taken weeks away from this process, such as installing the house guttering and the start of work on the croft as Spring approached.

However, the end is in sight. The floor insulation for the next stage has arrived.

It arrived on a thankfully dry day, but a windy one. About 50 huge sheets of insulation which blocked the drive on arrival and which we had to manually carry between us into the house.

These sheets are big, requiring two of us to manoeuvre, but very light in weight, only 10kg each. They exhibited impressive aerodynamic properties as the wind caught them, acting like a sail, taking both our body weights to counter their desire to take off down the croft.

It took a whole afternoon to get them wrestled safely under cover into the house.

They’ve also provided me at least with a bit of a morale boost. They are a nod to the promise of progressing onto the next stage, which is laying these, then the underoor heating pipes, then screed, and us being a few steps closer to this being a house.

We will get there. Courage, mon brave!

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Shiny wallpaper

When you have 6m high walls in the living room, and sloping walls following the roofline upstairs, the process of applying VC foil is a lengthy and slow one.

Before we got to this stage we had to seal the SIP panel gaps and tape them all. After we’ve got all the VC foil up on the walls this will also be taped.

This is all to ensure that we have as much in the way of air and moisture barrier and insulation as possible before the plasterboard goes on.

It looks like shiny wallpaper.

We are gradually getting there.

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Snowy days and wall foil

It snowed again overnight. We awoke to brilliant white, and the strange, blanketing silence that a covering of snow brings to the world.

Silence that is, apart from the raven, who called loudly from the old pine as the sun came up.

Husband managed to get out to insulate the water pipes yesterday, just in the nick of time. We had running water this morning for coffee, despite the overnight temperatures.

We’re cracking on with the interior wall foiling now, fuelled by hot coffee and egg butties.

Even though the house is a shell without insulated flooring or plasterboard yet, the solar gain from the big, south facing windows, coupled with a small 3kw heater is maintaining a temperature of about 13 degrees centigrade.

Which considering the temperature outside, and the volume of air to heat in this 200m2 space, is pretty good.

We think that this bodes well for when the house is fully insulated and sealed. It should be very energy efficient and cheap to heat.

Just what we need.

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Gaelic singers, fires and venison

Our first island Christmas.

Last night we attended an outdoor meal with friends around a fire, with local musicians and Gaelic singers. They sang traditional carols but also songs that we didn’t know, hauntingly beautiful in the open air and the darkness of the night.

It was a cold night but we honestly didn’t feel it. Such a lovely introduction to Christmas here.

We returned home smelling of woodsmoke and with heads full of new melodies and happy memories.

This morning, Christmas Day, and it was a day alone for us. The wind howled around the caravan and we sat in front of the fire with big socks on and shared a zoom call with the boys in Manchester.

We ate venison and drank red wine and enjoyed the feeling of peacefulness and nothing that we absolutely had to do.

It’s been a very unusal and quiet Christmas, but a good one for all that. It’s made us remember what’s important and has made us look forward to next year’s celebration with family (and a proper kitchen!) all the more.

Merry Christmas to you all. From the fireside of the caravan on the windswept hillside of the croft I’m sending you all good wishes for health and happiness, wherever you are.