Nearly there...

The larch cladding is almost finished, and it's lovely. The skew has been remade today, so the roof join between the old and new should now be water tight - we hope!


The plumber is expected on site tomorrow, and the builders are planning to get some plasterboard up on the internal walls. I'm told that from this point on, it all comes together really quickly. Exciting stuff.

Progress

The larch is looking good, and the "ceiling" of the verandah is being fixed - there will be three down lights so we can sit out at night. (Midges? What midges?)

Back to work

Returning home after a few more days of holiday - surprise surprise - we find that the project has started to move on again. In fact, for just a couple of days work it's pretty impressive progress.

The outside walls have been framed up and the first of the larch cladding is in place.

The doors and windows have arrived and are all fitted. You need a university degree in window technology to open and close them I think, but they seem very well made indeed. The big bedroom window doesn't open, but it's an impressive big bit of glazing. Worth the long wait while they were manufactured for us in Norway.

Inside, the nice woolly insulation has been tucked into the walls. Suddenly 'indoors' actually feels like indoors should.

And, they say, they will be back on site tomorrow!

Holidays

Thursday update as promised.

The slating is finished. The building company are, we are told by the architect, on holiday this week and will return on Monday 18th. Good for them. So all is quiet for another week.

Since there are no pictures of building progress, here is one from our wee holiday in the hills of Torridon.

This is Angela at the summit of Tom na Gruagich. At 922m it is the lower of the two Munro summits on Ben Alligin. The higher summit seen in the background is Sgurr Mhor, where we went on to have had our "lunch with a view". The weather was just perfect - warm, clear and still. It's not at all bad to be out in short sleeves at 1,000m height in the NW Highlands in October.

We got home last night to find the delivery man had left a couple of new toys on the driveway for us. Getting back (tenuously) to the subject of 'building', we had already constructed stands to hold them - and they fit - and they didn't fall over!

This morning we went out to try the kayaks. We expected to potter around a bit by the shore, but loved it so much that we paddled all the way to the end of our sea loch and home again. Great fun indeed!

That's it for this week then. Who knows what next week will bring?

...and another

Another week has passed with little to report. Nobody was here on Monday or Tuesday. The slater has been working alone for the last three days, during which he has almost finished the second side of the roof - and it's looking great.

We are off for a few days of holiday next week. I have no idea at all what progress we will see when we get back home next Thursday. Perhaps there will be none - but whatever happens, that's when you can expect the next update to this Blog.

A slow week

The past week has been the least eventful we have had for a while. The larch boarding has been lying undisturbed on our driveway for more than three weeks now, and we've seen nothing of the builders themselves for a while now. The owner and boss has been in Teneriffe for the last two weeks (which may or may not be relevant!) and there is some kind of high priority work going on on another job at present. Given time, there may be some high priority work going on here as the contract deadlines approach...

Meanwhile the electricians have been finishing off their first fix cabling, including telephones and some nice purple network cable. The plumber has finished the lead work on the roof. I didn't keep count of the number of days it took, but it's much, much more labour intensive than I would ever have guessed. The final section where the lead meets the GRP took days, with lots of shaping, welding and hi-tech epoxy work. The final product looks good to me, with just the rebuilding of the skew to be done.

Having finished the flat roof, Donnie has moved inside and is beginning the first fix of the plumbing. So all is well, but we would like to see some more excitingly visible progress next week!

Lead on...

Donnie the plumber has been beating the lead sheets onto the roof for several days now. It is evidently skilled work - it takes hours to hammer each section into shape and to fashion all the joints to keep things watertight. It is also hard, tiring work. He was here today putting in some weekend time to take advantage of the dry weather we have at the moment.

Most of the sheets are in place. The remaining ones will be the most challenging, as they will include the join to the roof of the existing house. That involves removing part of the skew (the cement capping on the gable) and some of the roof tiles, fitting and welding the lead into place and then replacing the tiles and casting a new skew.

There is also the challenge of making a watertight join to the GRP of the existing flat roof. It can't be glued because of the differential in the expansion and contraction rates of lead and GRP as they are warmed and cooled by the weather. It can't be nailed - for obvious reasons.

Donnie looks confident. He says he has 'a good plan'.

When he is finished, we should see the rest of the slates going onto this side of the roof.

How To Drill Part II - How to drill a hole in the wall

"Areas to avoid when drilling: Before drilling into any wall, you must make sure that you are not about to make contact with electrical wiring or pipes..... "

Could I also suggest that misjudging the bedroom wall for the attic can also cause you problems:

I'm told it will be fixed tomorrow.

Getting the new electricity supply, phone and CAT 5 cables from the extension into the old house was never going to be easy - metre wide solid stone walls are somewhat of an obstacle. The attic of a one and a half storey house doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre either:

An altogether new definition of "builder's bum".

Still, the cables are now through:

The verandah posts have also been concreted in today, so work can now continue on the lead roof:

All too much excitement for one day - pass the gin.

A tonne of lead

Just over a tonne of lead arrived this morning. Each roll weighs 112 kilos, and is well beyond what I could lift. I reckon even a Skye hurricane should have trouble shifting it from the flat roof once it's in place. Those are not full rolls you can see in the picture - those are the bits cut to size for each panel. I can just lift one of them!

The person who has spent the day here preparing and shaping each section ready to be fitted is the plumber. As well as doing all the usual plumbing work involved in the extension - pipes, tank, shower and taps - he will fit all the roof lead. I didn't realise that modern plumbers still did lead work. I suspect most of them don't, but simply plug together lengths of push-fit plastic pipes and joints. Our man seems to have the skills from an age when plumbers were true to their name.

Watching him forming each sheet to the rough shape needed makes me feel pretty humble. It looks like very skilled work indeed.

I'm not certain how long it will be before we see any of it on the roof, but with that weight involved it better be after the permanent support posts are in place!

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch...

The Monty Python references are coming thick and fast now, but because the weekend has been lumberjack themed, it seems unavoidable. I'll spare you the YouTube link though.

Yesterday our neighbour and tree specialist came down to help us open up the view from the new windows. He felled two decent-sized Sitkas and a stunted Elder, cut back and reshaped our Rowan and tidied the lower limbs of the huge Elm.

I spend the day doing the suitably unskilled labouring work - ferrying and stacking the logs and feeding all the branches into the chipper. I reckon we have enough wood on the log-pile now to last us a few cold winters.
But that's incidental. The important thing is that the work did what was intended. The before and after views from the bedroom window give an idea of the effect.

No.1 - The Larch

Yesterday, the builders' boss drove through to Newtonmore to collect the heartwood of Scottish larch timber that will be used to clad most of the outside of the building. It's the same wood that was used for the new visitor centre at Culloden Battlefield - so it should be good stuff. It certainly looked, and smelt, great when it arrived here this morning.

Fortunately, as a result of having watched some pretty educational TV in my youth, I was able to recognise right away what it was...

More on than off

In fact, none came off at all. The wind was less fierce than yesterday's forecast - still blustery, but not damaging. Now we have both the bedroom Velux windows in place, and the slated area is slowly expanding.

By recent standards the progress this week seems a bit slow, but we are expecting more than one workman tomorrow. No idea what's next on their plans - but then that element of surprise is part of the fun!

How many slates make five?

The answer is (as you may well have guessed):
Two slates, another slate, a slate and a half and half a slate.

I didn't know until today that there does exist such a thing as a 'slate and a half' - which makes slates far superior to beans. The 'slate and a half' is, perhaps obviously, 50% wider than all the standard slates on the roof. Every other row starts with one of these to get the required overlaps. I'm told that on a second rate roof, the slater just cuts a slate in half and starts the row with that, as in a brick wall. Armed with this new knowledge we are now examining other peoples roofs with interest...

Anyway, with just one person on site, today's progress includes the fitting of the first roof window (with reassuring dangling electric cables!), the chasing-in of the lead flashing that will stop the elements getting between the old gable and the new roof, and the nailing on the first of the slates.

The Skye forecast for tomorrow reads: Winds southeasterly; 40 to 55mph gusts in excess of 60mph at low levels and 90mph on higher areas. Severe gales or storm force winds will make mobility almost impossible on higher areas. Ferocious gusts will will run down into many valleys. Severe wind chill.

Wish the roofers luck...

Slates arrive

A slow day today. The slater arrived this morning with a lorry weighted down by a load of Paramo slate from Spain. The slate is beautiful - a very dark grey colour with flecks of gold through it. The rest of the day was spent building the scaffolding, pulling out the fence on the other side of our entranceway so that we can still get vehicles in and out (albeit across the grass!), and sorting the slates into piles on the scaffold. I expect we'll see them going onto the roof early next week.

The builders' boss came round this afternoon with a great idea that hadn't occurred to us before - putting a pressurised hot water system in the void space above the utility and shower rooms, and using it to feed not just the extension, but also back into the main house. Given how much valuable space our current hot water cylinder occupies, and how poor the flow rate is from it, this is a brilliant way to do things. It will also save us putting in an electric shower and two under-sink water heaters. So we can have a proper big shower head - joy!

(All of the above depends a bit on how much extra it's going to cost. We don't know that bit yet.)

Not only...

We have been away from home all day today. When we got back this evening, not only has the flat roof been reconstructed with the required step in it...

...but we found the electric windows lurking in the workshop...

...and the electricians have been here to start the first fix of the cabling...

All seems to be on track again.

Oops!

Remember this lovely roof from last Friday? Well, it's not there any more. The reasons are more complicated than I fancy explaining here - not that you'd want to read them even if I did - but it's to do with having missed out a wee step that will be needed to allow for a welted joint in the lead cladding. So tonight it looks like this.

Tomorrow, I'm told, the problem will be solved.

Meanwhile work is carrying on indoors, with the addition of masses more timber to frame up the light wells from the roof windows (which apparently are going to have sensors on them so that they will close automatically whenever it starts to rain - how cool is that?), together with lots more pieces that will eventually support the plasterboard.

We have been having discussions about some of the ancillary works as well - the repositioning of the fences and entranceway, the possible replacement of the gate by a cattle grid, the re-profiling of the driveway and garden to match the new floor levels. There's lots to think about...

A look inside

A couple of views of the inside show that there has been plenty going on in there as well. The workshop is now separated from the rest of the building not just by a timber partition, but with a full height wall of blockwork.

That will give enough isolation to allow safe storage of paints, fuel and suchlike. The area above the ceiling beams here will be floored, lighted and fitted with a hatch and access ladder. I can envisage a nice wee den up there.

This picture gives a sense of how high the bedroom ceiling will be. The beams are so far above the floor that, even at 6' 4'' tall, I can't jump quite high enough to touch them.

The verandah

The flat roof section that covers the front part of the bedroom, the hallway and the outside walkway has begun to take shape today. This morning there was nothing. By lunchtime the beams were all in place. By the end of the day the sarking boards and membrane were there too.

This part of the roof will be finished with lead. Quite a lot of it. That needs to be in place before the main roof is slated.

This outside section of the building was envisaged simply as a convenient route from the house to the workshop in a downpour. Now that we see it taking shape, it has real potential as a verandah on which to while away an evening with a good chair and a glass of something. Angela has a fancy for slinging a hammock between two of the supporting pillars.

By the way, the three cheap looking planks propping it up are indeed cheap planks. They will be replaced by some substantial laminated larch pillars, bolted into steel footings buried in concrete. I'm told they will be more than a match for a good Skye hurricane...

Blue

Today the roof turned blue, the roof windows became invisible again from the outside, the top of the gable was built and more blockwork appeared - including the internal wall between the bedroom and the workshop. Perhaps the most noticeable thing tonight is that being inside the building now feels like being properly indoors.

It suddenly struck me this morning that the roof windows in the bedroom are going to be a long way above human reach, whether to open and close the windows or to open and close the blinds. So - a quick rethink and a change of plan to include remote controlled and electrically operated windows and blinds.
Very James Bond - "Closhe the blindsh pleash, Mish Moneypenny"...

The result of this late change may be a bit of a delay. The basic windows have already arrived in Portree. They will have to be returned and the remote control versions sourced to replace them. The slating was due to begin soon, but that will probably have to wait a while now. Still, I'm sure there's plenty more to get on with.

The mystery of what's under the tarpaulin remains - though Sorbie may be close. Our insulation is going to be mostly rigid sheets, but the specification does include some nice woolly duvet in the roof. (But none of the itchy nasty stuff!)

Looking at what we have tonight, it's hard to believe that it looked like this just one week ago. I'm amazed at the amount of progress in just five working days.

Half a roof - and a new window

We have been out all day today and arrived home to more good progress. The roof timbers that went up yesterday have been cut and framed to form the spaces for the Velux roof windows and the sarking boards are fitted on one side of the building. The hole for the window in the en-suite has appeared above the first stage of external blockwork.

Intriguingly, we noticed that there is something hidden underneath a tarpaulin in the workshop. I wonder what it is?

The Flitch Beam

We are learning about building. We know what a Flitch Beam is. In fact, we have one of our very own now. It is a big beam made of a sandwich of wood and steel plate, bolted together with great big bolts. In this case it supports the section of roof above the bedroom, where there is no wall below it.

The Flitch Beam in situ

With the beam constructed and in place, most of the rest of the roof timbers are up. Other than the covered walkway - yet to be started - we can now see for the first time the extent of the building. 

Just before close of play, a lorry delivered a pile of sand, a big cement mixer and some blocks...

All wrapped up

Today was wet, and one of the worst days for midges I have ever known. The two joiners worked right through it. They were wearing the full anti-midge gear though, wandering around the site in hoods, brandishing big staple guns and looking a lot like baddies from Dr Who.

They have wrapped the timber frames beautifully in silver-coloured insulating breather membrane - the first stage of what will be a pretty energy-efficient construction.

And, as you can see, the beginnings of the roof are in place.

All of a sudden

So far there has been a lot of work put into the foundations and floor without too much to show for it. Today's work has produced a somewhat more spectacular result.

Back door and bedroom window

Bedroom window and workshop door

Looking out the workshop window

Angela in our bedroom window

The bedroom

It's looking big again...