The Donated House

E-bay is a wonderful thing. I got nearly enough floor tiles to do the whole building, of very high quality, for £40 and a drive to Rochdale. I’ve laid all the brown ones, as you can see below, and I’ve been convinced to put in the kitchen before tiling the rest with the beige version of the same.

I guess my initial vision for the place had me building all the internal furniture myself, and therefore wanting the floor to be tiled in full so that I could stand free-standing (or lightly anchored) bits wherever I wanted and have stuff stored on the floor underneath. But a) we’ve got this ex-fitted kitchen with perfectly nice oak doors that is sort of designed not to go on top of tiles, and b) this will mean I can tile nearly all of the place, minus a bit at the entryway where I want to do a mosaic anyway, with what I’ve got.

In other news, I’ve also finished the base coat of clay on the interior, which I now need to allow to dry fully before I put the top coat on. A lot of it is dry already, since it’s taken me so long to do it, so I can be working on it in bits, starting at the bed end so that I can paint it and put a bed in (anyone know anyone wanting rid of a serviceable double mattress?) and start sleeping in there.

I also bought the first two coats’ worth of lime render for the exterior today, which I will pick up (the first of about four loads of) on Tuesday next week, and I am really looking forward to getting started on that. It’s been so nice to take down the tarp and the scaffolding and reveal the building in all its beauteous glory. Now I want to get it looking properly tidy and finished and have an enormous cabin-warming party.

And get started building the hot tub…

A roof! And a very big tarp ridgepole… not too sure how to get rid of it, but reckon if one person held up each end while another unscrewed and removed the middle bits, we could dismantle it from the top down. At any rate, if we managed to build and erect the thing with no more than three people at any given time, I’m sure we can manage to take it down somehow.

I’ll need to anyway, because I need the wood for my ceiling, which is the next job after (or during) claying out the interior and tiling the floor (got some really nice tiles off ebay for an absolute bargain price.)

Hoping the weather is alright for the upcoming bank holiday weekend, and that there are enough bored people wanting to get a bit dirty and very well fed who’ll come and help me get the place looking even better.

I don’t know what we spent our time on before we got electricity. And blogging is so much easier when you can do it the day things happen. Or the day after.

Alec and I spent a bit of yesterday afternoon mooching around Hebden Bridge, which I’d been really aching to do for ages. There are a lot of really nice shops with really nice dresses and stuff in the windows, and a shoe shop to absolutely die for. Sadly, I’m now so good at this not-spending-money thing, I’m not even properly tempted, just a bit despondent at not being able to have the shoes. However, it does inspire me to go get all my shoemaking stuff out and have a go again.

We tried out another coffee shop, which was fine, lovely sunny window seats and good selection, but I think Organic House is my favourite so far.

We also went to the stove shop to get a missing nozzle for the silicone sealant he’d sold me the day before. They’re really friendly and helpful in there, like pretty much everyone around here. He talked me through the whole process of installing my chimney, which I did entirely successfully (still got to do the silicone rain seal) and we set about trying to find any decent firewood on site, of which there was one bit of log that had been stored under cover and off the ground. I got out the axe and found that you can take the girl out of Vermont, but…

But we did the first couple of burns with offcuts of the roofing timbers, because we’re saving the good stuff for the Official Inaugural Burn when Elmo gets here tonight.

Quick update, mainly pictures… lots to do, can’t be writing all the time!

The weather remains absolutely gorgeous, though it does make bitumen spreading a bit messier with it dripping all over the place. We eat lunch outside as if it’s high summer. I am a little afraid we’ll be sitting in the rain in July looking back on this week as having been summer.

I planted some primroses in a bit of dug-up earth at the side of the driveway because Gordon Rigg’s had them at 55p each, so it wasn’t a bank-breaking investment for a cheerful little display.

Evenings call for a candle-lit game of Robo-Rally in the caravan.

Yesterday Alec and I tried out a cafe in Hebden Bridge on our way to Tod from picking up some tiles I bought on ebay. It was amazing, lovely service, friendly and talkative staff, and the best baked potato meal I’ve ever had. Will definitely return.

So much is going on I had to get my laptop out on this clay-covered table and use my shiny, beautiful electricity to update the blog.

Steven came up Friday and we got most of the top sheet on the back side of the roof. And got really covered in bitumen, but white spirit seems to take it off, so that’s ok. The weather was warm and hazy, almost summer-like and we had a rather fabulous lunch on top of the wall.

I’ve been up here since wednesday, so by Friday afternoon I was ready for a serious wash. I meant to do it during the warmest part of the day but Steven and I were being so productive I forgot all about it. I ended up doing it just as it was going dark, but I had been working so hard right up until then that I was actually quite warm and it wasn’t at all bad. Two kettles of hot plus a two-litre bottle of cold makes for a lovely warm shower. And I felt amazingly refreshed and energetic afterwards.

Today Elmo’s been working on the roof with Ryan all day and they’ve managed to lay two rolls of topsheet, complete with Elmo-style system of holding down all edges. I love him.

We’ve got a fire on now, with plans for pesto and roasted sausages for dinner. I’m starving.

The weather looks good for the forseeable future, so I’m planning to stay up here and keep working. If nothing else, I can finish claying out the building and start cleaning the floor ready for tiling. It feels really good to be here for such long stretches. It feels really good to have the shop owners smile at me and remember my name. It feels really good to look at my receipt when I buy something on my account at the builder’s merchant and under account no. it just says “Grace.”

I love it here.