Tag: Russwood

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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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More flooring progress

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”.

Not long now
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The cladding starts

We’re up at the build site and it’s amazing to see it for real rather than just via photos. It’s so exciting! Last time we were here this was all a muddy hillside on the croft.

The larch cladding has started. We were up on site as they were working on it, and even outside with a strong Skye breeze blowing away from me I could smell the lovely, resinous scent of the wood as they were cutting it.

It takes me straight back to years of my childhood when we used to picnic in the pine woods of what was then West Germany. That scent from cut pine trees was everywhere.

This is Russwood Siberian Larch cladding. We’re really pleased with the quality. It has a good weight, colour and relatively few knots. It’s being secured to the house with stainless steel nails and is going up pretty quickly.

It was a bit of a shock to see the black disappearing, as I was quite taken with the black wall effect. But speaking to the joiner onsite he was saying that the colour will silver and the wood will harden within a couple of years, and that if we aren’t keen on the effect by that stage, that’s the time to consider staining or painting it. I like it, though, even without the weathering.

We think a further two weeks with the builders onsite and they’ll be done with the exterior.

Then it will be over to us at the end of a October to start the interior..