What better way could there be to disconnect from work for a week between Christmas and New Year than be up a ladder or on scaffolding in all weathers, installing larch rainscreen cladding on our house gables? I think Steve was convinced…
We started pretty slowly first thing morning of 27th December. After all the initial prep in the preceding weeks, there was one more bit to do: fixing some plastic ‘Kompefix’ strips to the batons (which apparently help with moisture management). And then we were off.
It took what seemed an age to work out exactly where to fix that first plank . We knew that we wanted a full board running above the windows all around the house, and we only had a certain amount of flexibility at the bottom of the wall, so it was a question of working out how many planks we could fit between top and bottom with the right amount of air gap in between. Not quite sure why it was so difficult – we got there eventually.
The priority for the week was getting the gables done before the scaffolding was taken down. We started off on the East gable as westerly winds were blowing, so we were quite nice and sheltered. We were then lucky that the wind changed direction mid way through the week as we moved to the West gable, although did have some pretty gusty 40mph winds on a couple of days. Temperatures were fortunately pretty warm though until the last day, which was slightly more challenging when the northerly winds came in and the temperature dropped by about 8 degrees!
Every day – funnily enough – we got more proficient at the basic measuring, cutting and fixing part. And gradually got better and quicker at dealing with the slightly fiddlier bits, like cutting bits out so that the planks fit under the windows, working out exactly how the window trims would work, and cutting the angles on the boards going in the top part of the gables.
Days 7 and 8 were by far our most productive. We didn’t quite make it up to the top parts of either gable – both time but also the 2nd tier of scaffolding wasn’t in place – but were pretty happy with our progress and our new skills!
end of day 2 
end of day 3 
day 4 
day 5 
day 7 – as high as we could get on the West gable 
day 8 – final board of the week (just below the round window on the East gable)
Cladding bootcamp continued (solo)…
The challenge had been set: 10 more rows of cladding on the West gable and about 18 more rows on the East, most to be done on the 2nd tier of scaffolding. I had a few vivid dreams during the week before I travelled back up to Ardnamurchan on the 9th January, and had spoken to a couple of neighbours to see if they could help me in the event I couldn’t do by myself.
In the event, like most things in life, the thought was much worse than the reality. The weather gods were on side, and the winds were fortunately really light all week. I deliberately decided slow and steady was the way to go, and all went fine! I was definitely relieved when I cut the final piece of angled board to slot in at the top – and also have to admit I felt pretty chuffed with myself.
Once I started on the South (loch-facing) side on the last couple of days, doing straight cuts and not having to go up the scaffolding each time made for very swift progress. Small incremental adjustments we’d made in the process along the way also added up to major improvement in how everything worked. And even learning to use the jigsaw to cut out notches on some boards was actually pretty straightforward. Didn’t quite trust myself to cut out the circle for the window – have asked the carpenter with 40 years of experience if he would do that for me!
As always, would have been good to have ‘just one more day’… but I’ll be up again next week to finish off.
decent view from work