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!
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.
The winter gales are well underway now here on Skye, howling around the house and singing in the woodburner flue. The good thing is that the house feels solid and warm, despite being perched on the cusp of this very exposed hill overlooking the sea.
A break in the storms
I still haven’t got used to the lack of rocking motion that we used to have in the caravan whenever the wind blew! I’m sure I developed sea legs in the two years that we lived in it.
Woodburner doing its thing
We’ve decided not to unpack any further boxes until we’ve finished the electrics in the house and got some storage built. At the moment we have no lights or live power in about half the house and no bookcases, wardrobes or shelves. Just the essentials. As most of what we will bring in from the boxes will have nowhere to be put away it makes sense to hold off for a while.
Husband is continuing with the fitting of lights and sockets. Once he’s finished that, a good few more weeks work, I’d say, we can start building the shelving for the linen cupboard, server room and pantry. Then we can start unpacking a bit more.
We have just ordered the wood for the bookcases and wardrobes and have a joiner lined up to build them for us in February. That will be a big step forward in making the house a home. At the moment it’s still feeling a bit echoey and empty.
Sunrise this morning
But we’re loving waking up to the most incredible sunrises. The bedroom faces South East and often on even the most grey and dreich of Scottish winter days there’s a brief, glorious burst of early morning sunlight before the clouds swarm across the sky.
Borrowed friends croft dog living it up on the sofa in the sun
The sunlight in the house during the day is fabulous. The low winter sun fills the rooms. Once we have finished I think that this will be a wonderful space to live in. I can already see that we will need to agree on blinds soon..
My job this coming week is to osmo oil the oak interior doors. There are fourteen of them to do, and each door needs two coats, so that will keep me busy for a while. It’s good to be useful beyond feeding us both.
In the race to get into the house before the highland winter really bit, we’re down to the wire now.
The weather over the last few days has been much colder as the winds have veered to the north east, and snow is forecast.
We are still at least a week away from moving in. Husband is trying to fit a toilet, sink and shower so that we have basic facilities in place, but it’s slow going. We have water to the upstairs bathroom now, we just need the fittings in place!
Mornings in the caravan are painful now. Temperatures drop to a few degrees centigrade overnight and even with the gas fire on full blast the caravan doesn’t reach more than sixteen degrees centigrade all day. I have dug out my fingerless gloves and thermals.
When it’s like this I retreat to the house and sit in the warmth of the bedroom whilst husband gets on with the plumbing. I can’t unpack anything whilst it’s still a building site, but I can sit and imagine. The solar gain from our big windows, combined with the underfloor heating are very efficient, and it’s warm!
Sunshiny day. But cold.
I dream of hot showers and drying off in a warm room without having to do the shivering dance to race into clothes before anything freezes.
Not long now.
I popped into the polycrub earlier this morning to see how things were faring. The temperature gauge recorded that it had dropped to 0.5C in there last night, but everything seems fine. The kale is looking perky, the slugs are having a bean feast with my pak choi, and the beetroot is looking pretty bulletproof.
I am still awed by the miracle of my winter lettuces.
This will be our third autumn in the caravan, although we should be in the house at last before winter sets in and so it will be our last.
The tiny caravan kitchen space and mini oven have certainly been a challenge, but it’s amazing what you can do with a bit of ingenuity and a single cake and roasting tin. If I’d thought we’d be here so long I would have packed more.
As the season turns and the evenings get colder, my thoughts for food turn to more autumnal fare. Sausages, roasted squash, chestnuts, warming soups.. and wherever possible recipes adapted to work in a small space with the minimum of fuss and need for utensils.
One of my favourite ways to cook at this time of the year is a tray bake. Last nights supper was sausage, butternut squash and apple roasted up with onions and garlic and finished with honey and mustard for the last ten minutes in the oven.
If I’d picked blackberries I would have added those in too. Next time.
A supper like this is a meal in itself, both warming and filling, not expensive to produce, and most importantly, leaving very little washing up.
Birthday cake for a friend
September is also the month in which many local friends have their birthdays (as well as my own), so for the last year my one square cake tin will get pressed into action.
Next year my baking tins will be unpacked and I will have a proper oven, and I’ll hardly know myself! But for now my offerings are slightly lopsided, as the caravan is not entirely level, and always the same shape.
I hope that they’re well received regardless, baked as they are with love.
We awoke to a bright but cold morning on the island. There was a heavy dew on the grass, a sea haar clinging to the Sound, and a definite touch of autumn in the air.
Cold, sunny and clear
The butter was cold and hard in its dish in the caravan kitchen.
We clutched our mugs of hot coffee at breakfast for comfort and put the fire on to take the chill off the air. The season is on the turn as we move into September, and I feel a new sense of urgency to be in the house.
Breakfast coffee and all-bran (and yes it’s nearly time for porridge)
The installers arrived this morning to fit the Dekton worktops in the kitchen. They bumped up the track in a rusty old van which looked as if it was struggling to make it, and were unloaded into the house and working away within minutes.
I have worktops! Worktops that won’t melt if I put a hot pan down on them by mistake! I’m stupidly excited by the prospect of that. This pattern of Dekton is called Fossil, and I spent a good ten minute looking for ammonites bedded into the material, but without success. And I still love it.
PS. that long mark that looks like a crack is meant to be there – all part of it looking like fissured stone, apparently..
Now that the worktops are in, we can go ahead and fit the drawers and doors into the kitchen carcasses.
Then start to build the appliance wall. The hob, sink, dishwasher and freezer are here already in boxes waiting to be fitted, and the rest will be on order shortly.
It’s a constant juggle for space. The light at the end of the tunnel is that the barn is going up next week and for the first time since the build began we will have storage space.
It’s been a busy and successful day. I managed to drive the car for the first time since my recent operation, and drove to lunch at a local community cafe with a friend. It felt so good to just get up and go, and not to have any pain. I almost felt normal again!
Ha. As if I’ve ever been normal..
Our local community cafe, An Crubh
We had a great coffee, sandwich and catch-up, in the way that only two women can, and on the way out I remembered that I had a loaf of Mallaig Bakery Sourdough waiting for me at the community shop.
Driving back along the empty road on the way to pick it up I watched the sun break through the heavy clouds over the mainland and illuminate the Sound, turning the water a glorious, luminescent turquoise.
Gloriously turquoise seas
I pulled over and just had to snap a few pictures. The iPhone can only capture a fraction of the magic of the moment, so fleeting and so transient as it is.
The Sound
It’s at times like these that I hug myself in disbelief that we live here, and that we have this stunning natural beauty on our doorstep.
However, back to earth and home again after the bread collection I was pleased to see that we had the start of the oak doors going up in the house. They still need architraves, skirting boards and a couple of protective coats of Osmo oil, but it suddenly seemed like a proper house. Doors!
The wet non-summer continues with rain and chilly temperatures closer to autumn.
A gap between the rain showers
We’ve had rain just about every day for months now, and I can’t help watching the blazing summer and terrible droughts and water shortages across the rest of the UK and Europe in despair. Whilst we’re drowning. There has to be a better way to share this. Somehow.
Incoming
Whilst I recover from my operation I’ve been reading books, pottering in the polycrub (which at least provides shelter from the rain) and sewing.
Rainy days
I had a sashiko panel and some threads tucked away in my sewing bag from when we first moved here, so I’ve spent many happy, peaceful hours sewing away.
Sashiko panel
Sashiko is just a running stitch, so it’s repetitive and soothing to do. I’ve finished the main panel now, but need to sew a border and frame to complete it, and to do that I’ll need until we’re in the house and the boxes are unpacked. I’ve got material and a sewing machine in storage that will finish this nicely. This was a progress photo from last week. For now I’ll just pack it away.
Nearly done
The floorboard laying will finish upstairs in the house today, and husband is installing the back-boxes for the sockets in the kitchen this week, so although there’s not much to see, progress still continues. We’re getting there!
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”.
The floorboards arrived several weeks ago after a protracted negotiation to have them delivered to the island.
I’m always perplexed when companies say they won’t deliver here – we have a land bridge to the mainland so it’s no more difficult to get a lorry here than it is to Glasgow. But you’d be amazed how many companies simply refuse to deliver to anything other than a mainland address. It’s infuriating.
They arrived in driving rain (of course) so husband and I worked like fury to get them indoors and stacked before the rain soaked through their protective wrappings. This was before my recent operation, thank goodness.
Stacked floorboards
They’ve been stacked in one of the bedrooms for some weeks now acclimatising to the humidity levels in the house, which will hopefully ensure that there’s no warping when we put them down.
We now have them laid in the living and dining room areas and hope to complete the installation in the remaining ground floor areas next week.
In progress
These are engineered oak boards from Russwood, a local Scottish company, finished in Osmo oil. They’re designed to be compatible with the underfloor heating that we’ve installed.
We really wanted natural flooring and there are so many options these days with bamboo, stone, porcelain, cork, lino, rubber etc. that it took us a while to sift through the alternatives. I’m hoping that these will prove classic and easy to live with.
The price of wood has gone through the roof over the last twelve months and if we’d waited another year I’m not sure we could have afforded these, but taking the long term view we figured we’d be living with them for a long time, so we should buy the best we could afford.
I’m so glad that we did.
We’ve just ordered the wooden staircase and we’ll be onto the interior doors and skirting boards next.
Ravencroft Skye 