Calm before the storm?

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I headed back up early Monday as Wendy returned to the carnage/chaos that is the current financial world. It was a gorgeous morning. the early sunlight showing the various trees along the way in their full autumn glory - the golds, yellows, bronzes of the beeches and birches, the occassional flash of vibrant reds and maroons from rowan, cherry or maple and the remainder a scintillating spectrum of greens, reds, yellows etc. The journey up was also improved by the fact that the road was now empty of caravans... but then again, maybe they knew something about the coming weather .

Main task for his week was to prepare for the coming of the lime. Main job was to cover wool insulation with plastic whilst tidying up other odds and sods (eg painting facings). Ewan was busy trying to finish the lime pointing on his own house so I ploughed a lonely and solitary furrow. Have I got the sympathy vote yet?

The insulation seems to be working as despite chilly nights the temperature in the house has remained between 10 and 14. Nights were magical with the full moon flitting between light cloud and the mountains and woodland a luminous silver.

Tuesday evening went down to manse to return Pebbles who seems to have adopted me while Dolan and Katie are out. Spent a pleasant evening discussing the imminent end of capitalism, land rights etc over a glass or 2 of wine.

Weds Bounce arrived and built the brick plinths for the balcony posts so weather permitting we can now do that whilst waiting for lime to dry. Spent evening with Tober and a couple of glasses (bottles) of wine.

Completed covering of both gable ceilings on Thursday and headed down the road.

The following weekend, there was more preparation for lime with metal lath being stuck on the walls by Willy and Ewan and wooden wedges knocked into the walls as fixing points for light switches, sockets and curtain rails by Pat... who is tall and therefore didn't need a ladder!

The most bizarre pre-lime preparation involved wrapping the exposed beams and posts in what looks like florists cellophane to protect them from the lime.

Willy and I were assisted in this process by Maria, Anna and David Donnelly, who all go to Aughton & Town Green Primary School. Hello to any readers from Aughton and Town Green Primary School!

Maria is doing a project on materials, so she took lots of photographs of the different materials we are using in the house.

If it had been a nice day, we would have gone for a walk, but it was horribly cold and wet, so we stayed in the house with hats and coats and gloves on.

The Final Straw.

This week, the inside of the house is being limed by Dean and John, ably assisted by Ewan and Willy.

The week was the usual mix of hard graft and good humour. Despite all our eforts the amount of work needed In addition to the hard slog we did manage to fit in the occasional pleasant evening and glass of wine. Despite our best efforts (over 10 tons sand 2 tons of lime and approx 6 tons of water), although we did get the lime on the wall we didn't get it to the finish we'd hoped. John and Dean agreed to stay over to the Saturday lunch time to show Ewan and I how to get the lime to a finish suitable for limewash. Wendy joined us and after a meal at the Lawers hotel with Dean and John (and three very welcome pints for me) it was down to the manse for a Samain party (for any non celts Samhain was the Celtic festival which became Hallowe'en). A good night was had with music from Donald, Becca, Katie and Ewan.

Saturday Dean finished off part of the upstairs and showed Ewan the rudiments of working lime to a finish, so Wendy and I prepped the walls (assisted on the Sunday by Sue and Richard (Sue and Tober's latest Woofer)).

Monday and Tuesday Ewan worked (trowelled) the walls to a finish the effort reqired increasing as they dried out while I prepped and did window sills. Eventually finished and after a celebratory drink, sitting on what will be the patio, admiring the view and the increadible cloud patterns, I headed down the road for a couple of days r and r (rest and recreation emphasis on the rest) It's been a tough 9 days. Unfortunately I left the camera so pictures of finished walls will have to wait for next time. Thanks to everyone involved especially, as ever, Ewan.

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Photos

Ash Tree at Dawn
Wendy's ash tree almost stripped of its leaves

Full moon over Meal nan Ptarmigan
Couldn't resist this one another beautiful if cold morning

The roof
took a long time and caused my tennis elbow aka RSI (caused by wielding hedge trimmer above head height whilst trimming straw bale walls) to flare up

Anna David and Maria
Anna David and Maria were the last to see the house while you could still see the straw bales

David's photo
David took this photo of us standing by the window

Snow in October
Snow doesn't usually lie this low doen in October. The green tarp is the shelter for mixing lime plaster

Snow on the Ben
This is a bit more usual in October

Thumper wants to play
None of the dogs were deterred by the lime - Willy had to keep sending them away, cos quicklime burns their pads.

Beautiful morning
Cloud rising from the loch on a beautiful morning

Ewan trowelling the walls
Ewan has the best technique with a trowel, so he gets to smooth all the walls

Downstairs
Ewan trowelling the living room walls - only three more walls to go - must be over half way now!

From the bottom of the garden
Today was a gorgeous day, so I walked round the house taking photos.

JUst when we thought we'd see no more straw
The gap between some of the posts and the wall was so narrow we filled it with straw and then sealed it with a layer of plaster

West gable
Isn't it lovely in the sunshine - it was absolutely awful last week in the torrential rain

From the kitchen window
I went round the house taking the view from each window - unfortunately most of the windows are splashed with lime and the photos were not very good. This one is OK

East gable - plastered
Can you tell there's a straw wall underneath?

From an upstairs window
Next door's shed is the building you can see

West gable
The west gable has been plastered, most of the roof has been sealed with green plastic, as required by Building control, but in the centre you can still see sheep's wool

Curvaceous wall
This bale just would not trim down to a nice regular shape. Dean has turned it into a very curvy feature