The Donated House

It’s been a good couple of days for having things without paying for them.

Just as I was finishing the floor of this porch, which I made out of offcuts and leftovers from the shed, and was thinking I’d have to break down and go and buy some 2×3 to build the rest, my neighbour showed up with a van full of 2×3 that had previously been a stud wall. There’s exactly enough to build the posts, roof and seat, plus a nice bit of firewood to add to the pile.

I did find, however, that I haven’t got the right width of roof, so I won’t build the rest of it until I have been to B&Q for a bit of that.

The same neighbour also brought a steel bath in good nick, which will have to get stashed in a corner somewhere until I think of a good place to build my prototype outdoor hot tub.

And in a truly serendipitous moment yesterday, I walked past a skip in town that had rolls of unused lino flooring, which I’d been thinking I’d have to buy to use in the caravans. So I popped a few of them in my boot (too bad I couldn’t take the perfectly good wooden bedframe that was also in the skip) and now just hope I have time to lay it before my parents arrive.

Gosh, I am constantly amazed by how much gets done when I have volunteers over. It’s been a beautiful weekend and I’m so glad to have spent it outdoors getting lots done, but I sure am knackered.

Elmo, in addition to tending a fire, found the end of the water pipe that should bring us our much-hoped-for running water down on the neighours’ garden path, under a stone slab. But it was unconnected. So a bit of plumbing is in order. Still, progress is progress!

Veronica and Michelle removed this glass and much, much more from the soon-to-be vegetable plot, which is nearly ready for planting (if it ever gets warm enough.)

Bob and Lisa were detailed to design and build a bench from some of the thicker bits of reclaimed wood. They seemed to take well to the task, and the resulting bench was a beauty.

In celebration, they sat on it while roasting sausages over the fire for dinner, and there was no collapse, so we counted it a grand success.

But the big news was the path. I wanted to get as far as we could with a gravel path so that my parents would have an un-muddy walk to the caravan when they stayed in it, but I never imagined we’d get so far.

Lizzy, Ange and Tom spent much of Saturday scraping the topsoil off the hard-packed gravel track beneath, which was much easier to do in places where we didn’t have to hand-excavate carefully around tree roots. Though to imply that it was easy anywhere would be a disservice to the team. It was very hard work.

But with a large team it quickly got done and we added the first gravel, flanked by bits of old skirting board, on Saturday evening.

The gravel filling had to stop while we finished the extremely time-consuming task of scraping the soil from around the large and established tree roots that crossed the path, but I an not allowed to harm the trees, and wouldn’t want to anyway, so it had to be done.

We also had to wait for Lisa, who turned out to be the best dry stone waller among us (which, I’m afraid, isn’t saying  much, though she did a very good job) put up a bit of a retaining wall around the area of the caravans, where the path had to widen into the hillside a bit to make room for the porch I will be building in the coming week.

By the end of Sunday, we had a complete path from as near to the drive as we could get without moving the trailer right to the door of the caravan my parents will be staying in.

I am very, very pleased.

In the quest to build a dry path to and from the caravans in advance of my parents’ visit, I went looking for gravel at the local quarry. I’m glad I did a recce first because it was pretty hard to find and a ridiculously bad road, but the extremely positive result was that I got a ton of gravel (and very nice gravel, thank you) for £8, when I could have been lucky to pay £60 for it at the builder’s merchants. Thanks, Jim Monahan, for that little tip!

I just called up the local quarry and asked if I could bring my trailer and buy some gravel and they were very helpful and friendly, so I drove my trusty van and my little comedy trailer among the huge lorries, down into the quarry, and they dumped a ton in it (which it slightly struggled to cope with, I think I might get a little less next time) and I drove away.

Absolutely marvellous.

So then I spent the afternoon shovelling it into a wheelbarrow and depositing it into piles along the soon-to-be path. I moved about two thirds of it, but then my arms gave up.

In another corner of the plot, Michelle was single-handedly turning over the whole of the future vegetable garden. And, she was up at 7:00 to start again.

And I finished sorting out the freegle wood, putting aside the bits I need to build a few fireside benches today.

Having also finished cutting up all the wood for the summer’s bonfires, I though we should go ahead and use some. It was still a little chilly, if I’m honest. But the sausages were very much worth it. Bring on summer.

…out of recycled waste wood from a house down the street.

They matched the mix of blue and white in the sky today.

I’ve been working like a horse yesterday and today, collecting wood from a house being gutted and refurbished down in town, and figuring out what to do with it all. Some bits are good enough to make stuff out of, including hanging “doors” for the woodshed to keep the worst of the rain out without hampering airflow (pictures of those tomorrow) but a lot of it is only suitable for burning on a bonfire. Good thing we have a lot of those.

One look in the shed where we keep that sort of wood, now that it’s got slowly melting snow on top, told us that the driest bit was straight down the middle. So now there’s a long stack of firewood cut to useable lengths there. Which is amazing, considering that previously there was this cement mixer. Elmo managed to move it with brute strength and force of will.