Topping out

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Ally the roofer, whose apprentices roofed the house last summer when Ally broke his leg playing football, came back to make a hole for the chimney and some holes for extractor fan vents and fit them into the roof. The roof is now kind of busy: it has a chimney, 4 extractor fan vents, a vent for the soil stack, 2 solar panels and 6 veluxes.

It is traditional, when the chimney is completed, to have a drink on the roof in honour of the event.
I don't think that happened, (surprisingly, given the number of events which have given rise to the consumption of alcohol).

I was going to say that we are now the proud owners of a chimney, but we have actually owned the bits that make up the chimney for several months now: so, we are now the proud owners of a fully assembled chimney that sticks out of the roof at one end and is joined to a not-yet functional wood burning stove at the other.

All that remains is to connect the stove to the water supply and the heating system, then fill it full of wood and light a match. That first bit might turn out not to be as easy as it sounds, but Ronnie the plumber is coming back to do it in another few weeks.

There is now more plasterboard on the upstairs ceilings, though it's not quite complete - and the landing area has been floored. It looks fantastic. It also looks bigger again with the flooring down (or maybe its because we've moved lots of stuff out of the way.

I made my first visit for a while at the weekend and helped with some lime-washing. I also did some draught exclusion - I stuffed straw between walls and pillars it the bits where it was just impossible to get plaster on to the straw walls just behind the pillar. it'll need to be finished with lime next time I'm there. I also put some more wool insulation up into the eaves, again where the space is too narrow to work easily -
and I don't know how to finish that off elegantly.

Oh - and I slept in the house too - in the small people's bedroom with the sloping ceiling - which is just like the sloping ceiling in my bedroom when I was younger. .

Patio design is being worked on by my dad, who has an impressive portfolio of hard landscaping and will come up with a much better design than I could. It's very difficult to imagine that the pile of assorted rubble outside the house will become a comfortable seating area, but it will happen.

Plumbing has been delayed, so next week Sue's son, Ben, is back to help finish the upstairs floors and ceilings and the following week, Dean and John are coming from the far north east to skim the upstairs walls and ceiling. Meantime Douglas and Robert are continuing fitting in bits of electrics around things they're doing elsewhere. We now have working sockets in the living room, entrance hall and study.

Then it's plumbing and Easter and I get 4 days in a row off work, so I can do some building - or more probably tidying up after the builders. I think Easter may bring visitors and that'll be fun.

If it weren't for all the piles of stuff waiting to be incorporated into walls and ceilings, it would look like a house.

Better stop ranting and put some photos in

Its much as has been said. Its kind of funny, things keep getting done but that only seems to lead to more to do where is the end of the tunnel?

Great thing is its now light till after 6pm, that plus the weather - brilliant sunny days, the temperature in the house (no heating) reached 20 degrees C so the solar gain works pretty well. Ewan and I both working in T-shirts.
Some old friends, Ben and Margaret turned up Weds evening so we had a couple of bottles of wine with dinner then a couple more afterwards. Another very enjoyable evening, the lateness ingetting to bed regretted, as ever, in the morning.


You wouldn't think the Willy went to school in the olden days, when grammar and punctuation were taught properly and all sentences were required to contain a verb, whilst I went to school in the sixties and seventies when grammar and punctuation went completely out of fashion.

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Photos

Bed time
This ceiling now has plasterboard and you can't see the green plastic any more

Without the green plastic
The first upstairs ceiling to be plasterboarded... it almost looks like a room now

Return of the roofers
Ally and his lads returned to fit vents and chimney

Oor New Lum
Doesn't it look shiny

Guess what thi is a picture of?
No, it's not that big snoe capped mountain in the background... it's a picture of our new chimney

Pebbles
Finished early on Tuesday as Ewan had to take his car to garage so took Pebbles for walk down to the loch

Another floor finished
Upstairs landing before we covered it up with sterling boards for protection

Landing aka observatory
All good Scottish larch frae Fife.
This spot has a view of the sky through the big veluxes - it'll be better when we've taken the temporary bracing out

The electrics are coming
This is the kitchen... it will have electrics soon

Chimney
The chimney pipe emerging from our wardrobe

Sheeps wool insulation
This one's for Maria... this piece of insulation is about as tall as you are and about 60cm wide. It gets put under the floor boards and also gets sandwiched between the bits of plasterboard on the walls. It makes each room cool down more slowly and also muffles the sound so that you can't hear people talkng in the next room or downstairs.