The Donated House

Spring is making an attempt to arrive, depite the very cold weather, hard frosts every night and bits of snow here and there. I saw crocuses beside the road on the way to the land yesterday and all sorts of things are pushing their way up through the leaf litter, especially on the south-facing slope above the wall.

There’s one early bloom about to come from the clump of daffodils above the driveway. I expect the place will be full of colour in a month.

The electricity may or may not have been connected and turned on today; the guy from the electric company came and put a meter in, but he then told me I needed the electrician back again to hook it up and make it useable. I asked the electrician to come, and he said he would, though possibly not til after I’d left. And when I left, he hadn’t. But I’ve got my fingers crossed, because I’d really like to be using my tile saw this weekend to tile the plinth I poured for the stove.

I stopped at the hardware store to get some screws and they had all the normally EXTREMELY expensive edging tiles on sale *stupidly* cheap, so I bought some wonderful gold glass ones and have a really good plan for the stove area. I bought some dark gold metallic paint for the fireproof board, and big, matte black tiles to go on the plinth and the lower part of the wall. It will all be very dramatic and beautiful.

I also bought all the timber for the bed and started cutting it to size. There are some complicated joints that have to be figured out, which is taking a lot of mental effort, meaning that I spend 10 minutes at a time standing on a chair and staring at the place where ceiling beam, rail, rope and ceiling will meet and still can’t quite picture how it all goes together. And you sort of have to be able to picture it before you can cut pieces of wood to fit.

Anyway, I figured out that the ceiling beams had to go in first, so I cut them to sit a couple of centimetres below the ceiling, both for the way it will look and because I couldn’t figure out how I would make the ceiling go around the fixings if I didn’t. It looks good, and I almost sort of have a plan for how to do the rest of it.

The four fruit trees arrived, and want to go in the ground pretty quickly, though I am not much good for digging. Perhaps Anna will be feeling strong. Elmo’s back is bad, so he might be only there for decoration this weekend. Still, he makes excellent decoration.

And finally – my lunch:

I felt I needed a little shot of summer.

I’m off up to Boggart Hall to get materials in so that we can be working on useful stuff this weekend, including my intricate rope-hung raising-and-lowering bed, which I have all the hardware for. Between that, a bit of gardening (several plants need to go in) and a bit of path laying, we should be very busy.

Hope to see lots of people there!

Headed out to Tod this morning because a couple of the electricians I’d asked for a quote for hooking up the new supply had said they could come and look at it today. The first one was quite obviously the man for the job, did an out-loud mental calculation of what the bits would cost and what the labour would be that was in line with what I expected, gave me a good price, and could do the work Friday. Sold. Had to cancel the other guy later in the day to have time to make it to Jewson to buy the other white box he’s going to put the sockets in.

The weather in the morning was absolutely lovely, warm and occasionally sunny, all the birds singing. The resident woodpecker was at it when I took this photo.

I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to, but then I’m usually a bit ambitious with my goals. I set up the ebay shelves I’d bought for the shed, bought the last bit of flooring ply and the sand/stone mix and cement for pouring a plinth for the stove. Lea helped me insulate the last bit of floor and cut and lay the plywood. I wasn’t going to have time to get the form built for the plinth, so I threw together a roof for the entirely un-water-proof postbox out of offcuts of plywood and bits of 1×2 instead.

Probably should have measured the width of the postbox first, as it didn’t fit when I got it down there, but I can turn it sideways with some creative adjustments and it’ll actually work better.

However, I had to leave at that point to get the white box on the way home. That gets installed Friday moring and they’ll hook me up so that all that’s left is for the electric company to put in a meter and turn on the supply.

At which point we can turn our attention to the water tap, which evades us yet.

This weekend was incredibly beautiful, though extremely cold, and wonderfully productive.

Bob came for the first bit of the weekend, and once we managed to drag ourselves out of our warm beds at about 10am (having stayed up til 2 Friday night playing RoboRally) we set about nailing up the quarter-inch ply under the floor joists to hold up the insulation. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as the bit I’d done a few days earlier, where there was only about 8 inches clearance, and we got the whole lot done in an hour or so.

We put two layers of sheepswool (totaling 150cm) in the floor and put some shuttering ply over it, suitable for tiling onto. The sheepswool was really easy and pleasant to work with, but we were a bit horrified at how little our £100 had bought. I don’t think we can afford to do the rest of the insulation with it, really. Will research alternatives, but our neighbour is doing up some bits of his loft and chucked out some perfectly sound, reasonably new plastic-clad fiber glass insulation, so I’ve nabbed that and intend to use it. Can’t get greener than that.

Bob was immensely helpful and a pleasure to work with as always. He didn’t complain about being made to roll around in the dirt under the building and his sawing arm puts mine to shame. I let him do all the hard work.

Elmo, meanwhile, did an admirable job of leaving me to get on with what I was doing, and made a lot of progress toward getting the shed roof ivy-free. We’re not entirely sure there’s anything else holding up the roof at the bottom end, but I guess we’ll find out. He said he could see daylight from inside, so that’s not a very good sign for its waterproofness…

On Sunday, Steven came up and got the fireproof board installed on the wall behind where the stove is going to go. I haven’t got pictures because I’d buggered off by then to go to a sewing bee at Lorna’s house, which was lovely and a good networking opportunity. People do seem to be really interested in what we’re doing, so I try to pick up volunteers anywhere I go. I really must get some cards printed.

The same neighbour who was throwing away the insulation also had some very thin tongue-in-groove panelling taken out, about half of which was vaguely salvageable, so I’ve separated that out and if I can find somewhere to store it briefly, I’m sure I can find a good use for it in the building. And if not, it’ll make wonderful kindling.

After a fashion.

Two guys came and dug a hole, at the bottom of which was found the capped electricity cable. They dug a trench to the spot on the wall where we hung the white box, and then two different guys came and installed a cable. So there’s not supply yet and no useable sockets… but it’s a step!

We’ll be up there this weekend, hopefully finishing the job I started on Wednesday, crawling under the building with 8 inches of clearance to try to nail up sheets of 1/4 inch ply to the underside of the floor. Hands down the most frustrating, uncomfortable, vile job I’ve ever done. I’m hoping to make someone else do the rest of it, though the difficult bit is done now.

We also bought a bunch of sheep’s wool insulation that a local person had going spare after using it in their project. It was sort of sold to us as a bargain, but we were surprised at how much it cost and how little we got for it. I think we might go with conventional recycled glass insulation after this.

Anyway, going to be a cold, clear and still weekend if the forecast is correct, which is my favourite conditions after warm, clear and still. Looking forward to it.