The Donated House

Calling all volunteers who are not afraid of heights (and believe me, there will also be work for any who are). I’m really hoping this weekend we can put the roof on this thing, subject to:

• Rae being available
• Me having got the appropriate flashing kits for the skylights
• Me having bought an appropriate scaffolding tower

But even if any of that is not the case, we can be framing the floor of the porch and putting some plywood on it, possibly even putting the porch rafters up with temporary fixings. All in all, a decent weekend’s work for as many people as can make it!

Catering quality will depend on responses, so do your part and come along as a vote for chocolate cake and apple pie!!

Well, we’re just short of a roof and we have a building. The walls went up Friday and Saturday and the “lid” or top plate is nearly finished (doing a bit more tomorrow) and will thereafter be ready to take the roof. Windows and skylights are ordered and we’re getting a door donated by Mrs. Next Door (she’s so good).

Here’s how it went:

The weather was  G O R G E O U S  for the end of the week, during which we took bales from the tents and put them in place. To be honest, it was too hot in the sun, but under the tarp it was alright as long as you didn’t work up a sweat, which we all did.

Steven did a proper marathon of volunteering, three days running, all day long, staying positive and enthusiastic. He was talking about doing another day this weekend, but he sensibly took a day off.

Alec took a turn (as did most of us) whacking bales from the outside while people pushed on them from the inside, trying to get them into vaguely straight walls so they could be pinned from above with hazel pegs through the top plate. Unfortunately, the head of the hammer is not visible, but it’s a huge, flanged hammer that looks like something out of a bugs bunny cartoon. Although Barbara calls it The Persuader, we took to calling it the comedy hammer.

It did seem to make the bales comply, though, occasionally with alarming success. In the end we got something sort of approaching flat walls, with the occasional wobble, which I’m actually quite pleased with. That’s one of the things that attracted me to straw buildings, their wobbly, oatmealy texture and shape.

One of my jobs, as I had some previous experience with a hatchet, was to sharpen the coppiced hazel stakes for pounding down through the bales to anchor them together. My aim got worse and worse as my wrist got tired though, so I had to use my swiss army knife to finish a lot of them.

Once again, we didn’t finish til after dark. Here’s Elmo nailing the lids on the top plate, having stuffed the cavities with straw.

It was a hive of activity, and quite dark under the tarp even before it was properly dark outside. But we got so close that there’s only a couple of hours of work left to do tomorrow, though I have a couple of hours of tidying the site as well

Mike and Heidi came to help out, and on the way they spotted a (recently ex-) fitted kitchen with oak doors marked FREE (down from £250) in front of somebody’s house. Complete with fridge freezer, oven, hob and sink, several drawer and cabinet units and some corner shelves. They took a picture, I jumped at it and called Elmo to get him to pick it up on his way over with the trailer. It arrived, and is crazy-heavy, but it will be absolutely marvellous in the little house. When we get to that point. There’s a lot to do in the meantime, so it’s stashed in the marquee where the bales used to be.

Today’s “other news” is that the rope swing has finally gone up. Rob came with his climbing gear and scrambled up the tree (while me and Alec held a safety line attached to his climbing harness) and hauled the tyre and rope up after him. The tree officer was kind enough to tell me the way to hang a rope swing that is not harmful to the tree, which is to take a piece of old tyre, cut it and notch it to fit round the branch and knot the rope round that so it doesn’t rub on the tree.

With some swearing and a long few minutes of muttering to himself, Rob managed to secure the tyre round and tie the rope. Anna gave it a quick tug and I had the inaugural swing (first of many; I can’t wait to get a bit of strength back. I’ve had nothing to swing off for a year!) but my cute, sweet Elmo was the one who got his picture taken.

You can never have enough prawn stir-fry with coconut and lime.

Right, down to business:

The frame for the tarp went up without too much trouble (depending on your definition of too much trouble) and Steven built a central pole to support the middle, replacing the haphazard system you see above, which we cobbled together to get it through the night, since we finished after dark again.

It took 5 ropes and a lot of finessing to get the tarp over the ridge. It’s almost as heavy as a person altogether, and there’s a fair amount of friction, not to mention grommets getting caught. But we got it there in the end and pegged it out so as to withstand the forecast wind (none) with Lorna tying about a zillion of the same knot, one for each grommet.

I expect it will prove wise if we replace the foot-long tent pegs with proper stakes that won’t pull out as easily. A decent wind under that thing is going to be a force to be reckoned with!

Anyway, other progress made includes getting all the door and window posts in place, stuffing the floor perimeter with straw and ordering all the timber needed, which is being delivered early tomorrow. So I’m going to bed now, since I have to be up at 6 to get on site by 9.

Here working on building with Elmo and Rae, enjoying beautiful sunshine and light breeze.

About to make prawn stir-fry with coconut and lime. Hungry.

Gotta go.

A very long weekend with a very great deal of volunteer help has resulted in a major milestone: all three floor sections are on the foundations, in the correct order, and ready to be stuck together and built upon. This happens to coincide with the only long stretch of decent weather forescast for this year (or so it feels) so I’m taking a single day off and then heading up to Tod tonight to just build build build all week and see if we can get this f***er roofed before it starts raining in earnest again.

The workforce this weekend were amazing. We had an average of maybe 8 or 10 people at all times, though people came and went. Everyone did amazing things, some going home with more aches and pains than they maybe bargained for. Everyone with staw in their hair. It’s inevitable.

The first thing to go down was the section of floor that had had its walls dismantled earlier and had been sitting under a haphazard tarp for a few weeks, hopefully not rotting. It seems to be fine, though it got a fairly thorough soaking at one point when I was gone for a few days and returned to find the tarp collapsed and forming a sort of lake-and-ponds aquatic system on top of it, slowly dribbling through tiny holes in the tarp. Bit of a nightmare. But it seems ok now and sending it down the ramp went without a hitch.

The second section had its top plate taken apart by Elmo and we managed to get it off with quite a lot less difficulty than the other half had been (mainly because we had a lot more people.) We pretty much just flipped it up and slid it down a couple of 2×4 runners with all hands guiding it down. After that it was easy for four people to carry.

We then had to set about marking and sawing the clay on the inside of the building to allow the bales to be dismantled without harming the clay any more than necessary. We all took a turn with the saw, and ended up using the decent, sharp one in addition to the old, rusty, knackered one, just for speed’s sake. Steven carried a monumental number of clay-covered bales down the steps and into the tent, and everyone will have had sore shoulders and forearms after all the hefting and carrying that went on.

It came down amazingly quickly though, and the next day we were able to build a road out of spare bits of plywood (to stop the rollers just sinking into the very soft soil) and roll it down to the top of the ramp. The top picture of this entry is of the safety brake rope that stopped it just crashing down into the trees. Luckily it’s pretty much all downhill, or I’m not sure we could have moved the thing.

The second section came down the slope exactly as the first had, only faster because we were more confident this time.

Having used it for a ramp, we were hoping (and we were right) that we could just lift and carry the central floor section. We had to get it out of the way so that we could roll the end sections into place along the rail system we’d created to get it on the foundations. It turned out to be heavy, but not too heavy, and 8 people were able to get it up and moved without too much trouble.

Having got the floor section/slope out of the way, we had very little trouble rolling the end bits along the flat rails and plywood.

There was an interesting moment wondering whether the metal pipe we’d hammered into the ground as a rope-brake would hold. There are no trees in the walled garden to use, so we picked a sturdy, fat pipe, hammered it about two feet in and wrapped the rope round it. It pulled foreward quite alarmingly in the first few seconds, but after that it held and Liz and I just tried to keep the rope as low on it as possible.

The rollers worked really well on the rails we’d constructed, and the thing moved quite quickly along, sometimes a little alarmingly, from the shouts.

After this point, it became a bit of a sprint, so I didn’t take any more pictures, though Alec did and I hope to add some when he sends them. The light was fading fast and we wanted to get as far as we could with the people we had. We had to jack up the building, remove the rails (which were only there so we could roll the building along) and settle each section on the tyres themselves, which took ages because the jacks only had about eight inches in them, so it had to be done in stages.

The other end section went into place first, so that all the rails could be removed before we moved the last, central bit of floor. Out of sheer luck more than any kind of calculation, we got both ends in place with almost exactly the right shape and size of space to put the floor in. A couple of inches out in a few places, but pretty damn close.

A mighty cheer went up when it dropped neatly into place. It was pretty well full dark by that time, though so we just got out the mega-tarp and unfolded it to cover the whole lot, did a quick scan for discarded tools and called it a day. The volunteers went off home one by one and Liz, Alec, Elmo and I took another hour to drift about sorting the place out before heading off home to a very well-deserved bed.

So that’s where we left it, pretty much ready to start building it up again into a little house! The exciting bit, at last!

Can’t have an entry without reference to food, though, so here’s a picture of the potatoes we planted, which should be edible size by Christmas. If it can be done, I’m hoping it’ll be Christmas in our little cabin.