Walls!!

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We have walls!

It's been a long time since we had much real progress to report. The last couple of weeks have been a steady slog, cleaning lime from windows and frames and continuing with limewash plus general tidying up as we try to get ready for putting in floor insulation, first fix plumbing and electrics, internal walls etc.

This last week (since Tuesday) we've started on the internal walls (Ewan doing the stud walls and Bounce the block walls) and Wendy has sorted out insulation and screed and we have plumber and electrician lined up for first fix so all being well we'll have a floor by Christmas!

The stud wall is up between the living room and the bedroom/office, though there's no plasterboard on yet. It does make the living room look a bit small, but I think some of that is the optical illusion that the metre and a half beside the windows and beyond the posts is somehow not part of the room. It's about 4.5m square, which is not huge, but it's bigger than the living room in a modern house.

There's also a stud wall between our bedroom and the north bedroom. You have to walk through the wall to get into our bedroom, which has become the temporary kitchen.

The masonry walls also change the house tremendously - you can see the shape of the kitchen and it requires very little imagination to see the larder in its finished state.

Socially it has been relatively quiet, I guess its that time of year but Tombreck did welcome back Marcus Moon with a "wee ceilidh" at the manse. We also manage a "wee party" for him at the farmouse when he arrived on Wednesday evening.

This week the weather was much on everyone's mind despite quite heavy snow all roads including track down to manse remained usable and the insulation in the house proved its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, we're off to Holland on Thursday just for a long weekend and we aren't going to talk about the house at all!! Willy thinks I'll crack first but I won't!!

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Photos

From a distance
Shows the collection of buildings in the courtyard

Wendy plastering the eaves
This was really difficult - I ended up using an icing bag filled with plaster to "pipe" the plaster into place - it didn't work very well but was easier than anything else I tried

Mouse in the larder
Ewan made this - it's supposed to frighten away other rodents!

New window cills
The cills in the west gable are stainless steel - in sunlight they look very similar to the granite ones on the rest of the windows

Ash tree in the snow
This is a lovely tree - and even nicer in the snow

Gordon's shed
From our patio area

Snow on the Ben
Unfortunately the snow wasn't deep enough to disguise the heaps of rubble around the house

Livingroom
You can see where the stud wall is going to go and also part of the block wall

Stud wall again
This time the sun was streaming in through the big windows and Willy had brushed the floor

View of Ben Lawers
As seen from downstairs bathroom window

Through the study window
Is the cart shed, Mill House and Ben Ghlas

The Kitchen
On a sunny day

Willy sweeping up
Willy sweeps up every day and every day more dust and gunk collects to be swept up. Building houses is a really messy process

Kitchen wall looking south
The limewash has dried now and the walls look white