Rafters

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.