The Donated House

The great big empty workspace is a peaceful sight as we finish the last of the braces. The main bits of the frame are now done.

Which is not to say that the work is over. In fact, the hardest stuff is yet to come, but still, we are all pleased with our little milestone.

Craig has been doing rather scary sketches of the kinds of joints we can expect to scribe and cut in the future.

And I had a go at scribing my first tusk tenon. I think I might have even done it right. I can’t quite get my head round how we’re going to cut it, except that it will take a long time and be very meticulous.

Had a week of just me and Craig on site, went pretty well, and was generally chilled and relaxing while still reasonably productive.

Then on Thursday night we welcomed a new recruit, Helene, who is Danish (aebleskiver! hooray!) and speaks with a lovely Irish accent. She is a delightful addition to the team.

Anna’s auntie and her friend came to visit on Saturday, and were very complimentary about the site, which is always lovely. They were delightful company and I hope they come again soon.

Back to work, we are fast-tracking Helene with the tools and techniques to get us on our way with the woodworking. She is taking to it all really well, though she is a bit like me in expecting herself to get it all, immediately, and gets frustrated when it doesn’t go perfectly.

But she’s really done wonders already, so I have no doubt she’ll be right in the swing by the end of the week.

And at the earliest opportunity I will make some aebleskiver. Go look it up if you’re not Danish.

Sarah-May turned up Friday afternoon and of course we put her straight to work.

For most of the weekend, everybody buggered off with other things to do, so I spent pretty much all weekend splitting wood and moving it around around.

There are so many offcuts of larch from this project, I may never have to buy firewood again. Some of the beam ends, if they’ve got very straight grain, chop up into lovely kindling, of which I now have boxes and boxes.

Sarah-May, when she wasn’t busy replacing the lino floor in her house, stopped by to help me chop it into manageable pieces.

I had to move quite a lot of the seasoned hardwood out of the wood store to make room for all this larch, so I went the whole way and split and stacked it outside my door for when it goes cold and just baking is not enough to heat my house.

Ruth’s birthday yesterday. And for her birthday we gave her…

Chisel sharpening lessons!

End of a very significant weekend, with the larger part of the team leaving, and Anna’s parents visit over, we are left with just me, Ruth, Craig and Charles to finish the cutting.

We had a nice weekend with Anna’s parents, and all went on a walk on Sunday.

The glorious weather kept up as we entered our first work week with the pared down team.

Ruth got lots of circular saw time cutting the rest of the braces to the template shape.

We’re nearly done with one section of the back wall.

Craig spent ages whittling down the new podging pins with the angle grinder. They seem to do the job perfectly well.

Jack drops by to check on our progress every now and again.

Artsy picture of the week. Chiseling is probably my favourite part of the job.

And finally, on our walk this weekend we spotted a cheap and quick alternative to the green roof. Certainly lighter than the real thing, and quick to install.