The Donated House

Another major step toward weather-tightness has occurred.

The dream team were back together again, Craig down from Scotland and Ben up from Lincolnshire, with me on baking and handing things to people.

That doesn’t quite do me justice, I did actually do a lot of the proper work as well as the baking and handing of things. Just for the record.

And all the photography, or course.

The usual care was taken with health and safety.

The middle two panes at the bottom will have to wait til I have more money, but will eventually be glass doors for getting out on the gin drinking terrace.

Craig’s cover plates are beautifully finished and expertly installed. MASSIVE thanks to him for sorting all that out. Always a huge pleasure to work with both of these guys.

Back inside, since it’s just storm after storm around here. Anna and I had previously finished the insulating in the attic…

And since Lisa and Other Anna were kind enough to come down from Edinburgh to visit, we thought we’d conscript them into helping hold up plasterboard while we screwed it in place.

They also helped with measuring and cutting, and we got quite a bit of the stuff up.

One step closer to having that space enclosed, insulated, kind-of-medium-finished and ready to act as our First Room, keeping spirits high while we plod on with the rest.

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It’s nearly the end of rendering season, and I don’t quite know why I have not got my skates on before now, but what with one thing and another, I am suddenly keen on getting all the rendering done that can be done before it gets too cold. My priorities are a fecking mystery even to me.

Here’s me wetting down the wall, though not enough. Boy, you really have to wet it down a lot it turns out. Otherwise little cracks appear and have to be patched. Sigh. Still, it’s the final coat and it only cracked a tiny bit and I can just fix it. And now that I know, I will wet down the next bits a lot more.

I showed Anna how to do it and we got the whole top bit of the west wall done.

Anna declared it “not a horrible job to do” and is wiling to do it again someday.

Daisy and Andrew came over on Saturday and put in a day on it as well.

Good thing Alec and I had put in a whole day of render making the day before.

In other news, we have a flat driveway again, which is great and a bit of it covered in gravel which is AMAZING.

And Anna has perfected the recipe for Butterbeer. But it’s a secret recipe, so I can’t tell you.

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The driveway is a big pile of mud because they came to dig this ditch and put in a drain and then they went away to do other jobs and it rained and rained and rained…

But hopefully they’re coming back tomorrow to finish the job.

Meanwhile, I render.

Alec mixes the render for me.

And I spread it like icing onto the house. Making progress.

Well, let’s start with a cheerful picture from Alec’s birthday dinner of steak and kidney pie and scalloped potatoes.

And then we can follow that up with some destruction and chaos.

Yes, it was finally time for the demise of the bunkhouse. It had been a sauna, a site office, a four-bunk sleeping hut for volunteers and finally a leaky shed for stuff we hadn’t yet sorted. It was time for it to go. I rescued all the interior cladding because it can be used again, but the rest was firewood. And well-rotted glass fibre insulation.

At the same time that I was dealing with this, Steven and Pierce came to dig mains drainage for me. So it was utter carnage.

At the weekend, Anna helped me take down the last of the walls and burn them. Alec took the many bags of glass fibre insulation to the tip.

And Steven continued to make my drive look like a canyon.

I got two tons of pea gravel delivered because that’s what you put round drains when they’re more than 900mm below the surface. The rest will need concreting, but hopefully that’s not much.

And here’s the beautiful bit. Yesterday I did my first window sides with the long straw and lime muck and some hessian and a final skin of render. I’m really pleased with it.

But now it’s raining cats and dogs and I’m sitting inside wondering whether I can just have the day off.