House Warming or any excuse for a party

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Well the house wasn't quite finished but with not too much imagination it was partyable. (well - it had its first party when it was just an empty site without so much as the slab, so a house with functional plumbing, cooker and fridge was more than adequate for the occasion).

Anyway to our tale, Wendy and I went back up the road on Monday after visiting many DIY outlets over the weekend in search of tiles for the kitchen, utility room and both bathrooms, (as well as a visit to Glasgow to see Bob Dylan).

We had a day priming doors and Tom and his dad Big Tam, came to connect the solar panels to the rest of the heating system.

On Tuesday, Ewan returned from Holland and Jonny from Dundee. Jonny continued with the staircase, Ewan continued making doors for the two upstairs rooms, to fit in the not-rectangular doorways upstairs.
Keith came back to fir floors and Douglas came back to fit a wire

(at this point I take over... Willy has already returned to his house, leaving me with the pc)

We left them to it and headed down to the Central Belt in search of kitchen worktops. We failed, but will continue our quest at a later date - we've got some temporary worktops anyway, so there's no rush.
While back in civilisation, (ie a kitchen without a bench saw and worktops blessedly sawdust-free), I made some biscuits and cakes for the party.

We hired a van and went off to Musselburgh to collect a wardrobe and mattress from Gavin & Niome, then back home to fill the rest of the van with chairs, stools, sheets and a duvet before heading back to Tombreck. Next day we returned the van, did some party food shopping and headed back to Tombreck in the car. At this point it's only Thursday and we've already made 7 journeys between houses and I'm starting to feel a little travel-weary.

While we were away, Jonny finished the staircase and Ewan moved all the heaps of wood out of the kitchen, as well as making a couple of doors.

On Thursday night we made up the bed with proper sheets and a duvet and went to bed feeling pretty smug!

On Friday, Ewan fitted the doors he'd made earlier in the week for the wee bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. Meanwhile, Willy and I cleaned the house. We swept the floors umpteen times and even mopped them, so they looked quite good for a while. Willy cleaned the 6 metres of floor to ceiling windows inside and out, while I did the 6 veluxes and the other 13 windows. That's not quite true - I couldn't work out how to clean the central veluxes which start 3 metres above ground level, so I left them. I'll do them when I learn to levitate.

Saturday was party day, so in honour of the occasion I started the day in clean jeans and t shirt with no holes in either, fully intending to slip into my party dress later.

A party ensued with the first guests arriving at 12 and the last guests leaving at about 5.30 on Sunday.
I never did get into my party dress.

Beer flowed freely from the keg thoughtfully located by the back door - thank you Andy. Wine seems less popular, as we ended up with more bottles than we'd started with... though we did come across a fair number of empties.

John brought a huge box of food - the thing I remember best is the deliciously gooey chocolate cake - but there was bread and dips and loads more. Katy was cooking all day and came with a pan of soup (industrial size - enough to feed about 50 folk), pear tart, rhubarb tart, Dolan's bread, salads, cous cous, a haunch of vension and some homemade pate from Iain Grindlay, and loads more besides. There was an incredible amount of really fantastic food.

With the guests came a fiddle, a banjo, three guitars and a double bass: music was played in the kitchen and in the living room and if anyone wanted to listen to anything else, there was Willy's ipod which has been playing the same tracks continuously in the house for almost a year now.

Malcolm, Calum and Zoe started a bonfire, which Willie and Evelyn looked after for much of the evening.

I went to bed after 2 and woke at 4.30 - by then, the guests had all left for their homes or their tents and I wandered round trying to work out where the light switches were, so I could switch out the lights.

Next day, the party continued at a more sedate pace and much food was consumed. To my great surprise, the cauldron of soup was all eaten and most of the puddings consumed.

Then down to earth and back to the Central Belt for another gripping week of work.

Somehow I feel the house will see more parties before the summer is out!

I could write much more, but a picture's worth a thousand words, so here's 25 photos... practically a novel!

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Photos

Limewashing the stairwell
Being very careful not to drip limewash on the unvarnished stair rails. It had been difficult to paint this before, because the scaffold tower had been against the wall

starship enterprise controls
Merely the hot water cylinder on your right, the electricals where all the wires come together, the equaliser is a grey thing with copper pipes, and the white thing's the exansion vessel for the solar heating fluid. The rest are all meters that tell you things and thermostats with "Set this one at 40" or "leave this one at 60" written on them to assist those who do not have a qualification in thermodynamics or fluid mechanics

View from stairs to bedroom
It almost looks like a house

Kitchen - complete with bread knife
Ok it's a couple of saws

first meal
the first meal cooked on the new cooker in the tidy kitchen

confluence
where the two floors the tiles and the staircase meet

Keg of beer
all ready for the party... and in the background scaffold and a digger

Sedate tea party
David, with Evelyn and Willie early in the afternoon

and less sedate
live music ! I said there was a fiddle and a double bass and a guitar.

The rival band
Notice that Andy's playing in both!

Not hardened drinkers then
This is the wine that was left over

Blowing bubbles
These were left over from David's 60th birthday.

Garden - ripe for a makeover
and Hamish, who we met on a straw bale course a couple of years ago is a landscape architect. On Suday morning, he designed us a garden, so all we need now is a bunch of energetic volunteers to turn it into reality... oh and Hamie and the digger to re-arrange the rocks and the topsoil first!