Freezing, but Beautiful

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.