The Donated House

Well, it’s been a lovely week off, just came back from Tod having not been there all week, did a bit of tidying away of stuff (the marquee stank of mildew, though Elmo couldn’t smell it. Maybe I’m sensitive, coming from a comparatively dry climate.)

I brought home or put in the caravan all the textiles or vaguely porous items, and left the small doors in either end open for through-draft, which helps with condensation drippage as well as just general damp. We’ll go up there every few days just to check nothing’s flapping free, but I’m not actually feeling energetic about making progress. That and we’re FLAT broke.

However, we’ve just had a whole caravan(!) donated, yes a proper, functioning touring caravan, similar to the one we bought on ebay earlier in the year. Alec will be delighted with the upgrade from a tent, I’m sure! And a bit more mildew-free storage will be great.

Also, we managed to get our planning application in. We’d been sent notice that they’d had “complaints” from someone about the fact that we were building contrary to the existing permission, which we were. If I’d thought about it, in amongst the billion things I’ve been in charge of, I’d have known we needed permission even for the temporary accomodation, and there are of course rules and regulations to be followed, so fair enough. Anyway, we’ve applied now and I really really hope it sails through. I’d totally settle for having to make a few changes. But of course, I’m scared s#!*less there’ll be some terrible problem and we’ll have to go back to the drawing board. It’s good to have it submitted though, and although we didn’t really feel we’d done enough research to know we made all the right decisions, this (if it passes) will buy us a great deal of time to look at other ideas and make sure we’re building the right thing.

Anyway, while we were up there, we also went for a lovely walk in the mist (it was supposed to be sunny, hmph) and a delicious lunch at the hippy-dippy-lentil cafe that I love. I need to spend more of these relatively relaxed days up there, but I am resigned to the fact that I may not feel entirely enthusiastic about it all til maybe… spring?

Well, it was a great party, but I managed not to take a single photo, except this one of the refurbed park bench, which we got the cast iron bits for from our neighbour who was throwing them out, and the slats are just cheap pine. So cheap the thing had pretty much fallen apart by the end of the party, but I might try to fix it and do it a bit better this time.

The party was really fun, lots of neighbours came and those who didn’t mostly phoned and wished us well. Joanne from down the road made us a big pot of soup, though we had overcatered anyway, so we will be freezing a lot of it (it was delicious.)

Alex brought fireworks and most of them went off fine. One catherine wheel needed a bit of encouragement with the burning tip of a long stick (don’t try this at home) but the exciting bit was when Elmo swept up the debris afterwards and chucked it on the fire and a few seconds later there was a bright green glow. Good thing it wasn’t a rocket.

I’m annoyed that I forgot to take pictures, but glad I enjoyed myself enough not to think of “business” for a whole day.

I did take pictures of the cake I made, so here it is and that will have to do.

It’s been a while since I posted; got myself in a bit of a tizz trying to get as far on the build as possible before today’s party. So here are some pictures and notes on what has elapsed in the past few days.

We put the front of the porch together from the recycled ceiling beams from our other house and hoisted it (barn raising style) into place with some triangulating supports to keep it upright while we sorted out the rafters.

I was looking back over the pictures I’d taken and realised there were almost none of the everyday stuff like living arrangements. So I took a picture of the marquee interior, where I spend most of my time.

Elmo managed single-handedly to bring all the plywood for the roof down the hill.

I didn’t get round to hand-crafted individual invitation, but bought a pack of prefab ones from the post office, so I thought illustrating the envelopes was the least I could do.

The tarp has been through enough wind storms to be needing repairs, so I’ve been making patches and sewing them on as needed.

Roofing progress!

My new (charity shop) candle holder and a glass of wine at the end of a hard day. I am going to take it a bit easier after this for a while.

It has been pointed out to me that it’s Bonfire Night on 5 Nov (I’d forgotten such things as holidays existed) and that we have sort of proven ourselves as being pretty good with bonfires, so we’re having a party that night, to which all neighbours and all volunteers are invited. I will provide food (veggie and non-veggie) but you should bring your own drink. Please let me know you’re coming so I know roughly how much to provide.

Bring a tent (or book the guest tent) and bedding (10 duvets should do it!) and lots of very warm clothing.

Yay!!

The autumn is definitely underway, with the leaves turning colour and the veiw opening up a bit. But the cold air outside the marquee and the relatively warm air inside it means that it’s sometimes raining inside when it isn’t outside. I’ve had to put things away much more thoroughly so that they don’t get soaked, though I hope that before the cold weather really settles in we’ll have a covered porch with some storage area and a shed being donated by some neighbours which I intend to insulate.

We put the window frames in, and I managed to put the glazing in, hopefully something like correctly, though I had not a lot to go on, having never really done it before. It was a matter of putting little worms of putty around the perimeter to form a seal, pressing it into place and then more worms of putty under the beading, which got tacked in place. I need to tack some hardwood strips over the seams now and pack in sheeps wool from the inside to fill the gaps.

The famed oak cabinets, seen here, got audited. There’s a bit more of it than we need, including several lengths of fairly ugly work surface that I may or may not use, and loads of little bits of kickboard and stuff I can’t even identify.

It’s not a style I would have chosen if I had all the world to choose from and all the money in the world to pay for it, but it will certainly save us a fortune in materials over designing and building that much storage out of any other material.

Alec made a diagram made of the space they are to occupy so that we could push squares of paper around to try to fit it all in. It’s going to be a challenge, but I think we came up with a decent solution, which leaves only a few leftover units that can be put on the porch and used for stuff that doesn’t mind if it gets cold.

It all remains a bit fluid til we can actually bring the bits in and see if they fit, but it was nice to be able to make a stab at a layout and know that it will fundamentally work, and hopefully we will not find it terribly daunting having only that much storage space. I don’t intend to have a lot in the way of posessions up here, most of that stuff will live at Alec’s for a couple of years, but it will be nice to have a lot of food storage space, especially once I get an oven (being donated by Val) and can start baking for my lovely volunteers on site.

The front door is at the bottom of the page, and that’s a window at left. Elmo’s desk will go in the space by the window. Off the page to the right is the bed, the couch/guest bed and the wood stove. And that’s Alec’s scale drawing of me standing in the kitchen.

I stayed away from a lot of the heavier work because my back was complaining, but luckily (and extremely satisfyingly) it was getting done in my absense and I could just stick my head in and appreciate it every now and again. I am more and more tempted to try to pay other people to do a lot of the work on the proper house when we build it, though I go back and forth on the issue. I love working with materials and there are jobs I’ve really enjoyed and felt I’ve been good at, but the whole thing is a pretty long slog and it’s easy to get feeling like it’ll never end and it’s not even really progressing. Having a day off and returning at the end of it to find progress had been made was really healing to my soul yesterday.

By the end of the day most of the rafters were up. There’s now only the front of the porch to be constructed, the porch rafters to go on, the skylights to go in, the boarding, underfelt and bitumen felt and a ceiling to construct and insulate and we’ll have a roof. I have no idea how much actual time that all represents. I don’t want to think about it.

Ok, the cheerful stuff: Loxey the building site dog, who belongs to Barbara, is the cutest, funniest dog ever. She likes little tiny flying things, like snow and sparks and bits of chopped straw being thrown in the air. It sends her mad with delight and she snaps at the bits and barks. It’s hilarious.

Between barking and snapping at small flying objects, she pretty much just curls up wherever she is and sleeps. Very often just where you want to be walking.

And I have to say I really enjoy the night life at Boggart Hall, even if it does begin to start quite early these days. And next weekend is clocks-back, which will make the electricity issue begin to be felt. Still, we manage with one gas light (bright, but expensive to run) and a couple of battery and rechargeable electric lamps. And several candles. And a fair amount of alcohol. And about 4 fleeces each these days.