My sister, Catherine, has been up to Ardnamurchan three times now. Each time she has been, she reminds me – through her reaction – exactly why we love it so much. It’s perhaps best represented by the fact that she apparently sleeps better when she’s here than anywhere else – and given 2 out of the 3 times she’s been sleeping top to tail with her sister in the double bed in Doris (caravan), that’s pretty good!
So as well as providing that ‘spiritual boost’ and good company, Catherine also was very handy with the paint brush. Ahead of putting the tongue & groove boards on the ceiling, we needed to undercoat about 1200 metres of wooden boards with (seemingly) one of the most expensive paints in the world – Thermoguard Safewood Insulating Base Coat. We had to use this paint for additional fire protection, given the large area of wood in proportion to the total ceiling/wall area, and in the event of a fire, whilst it won’t stop the house from burning down, it apparently will give us extra time to get out of the building. Fair enough.
We did have lots of discussion ahead of painting the boards whether would be better to do the undercoat when they were already in place rather than before we fitted them. Pros and cons. A major reason not to paint before is that it’s easier to install without paint on them (although arguably if you avoid painting the tongue, would probably be ok). Plus any wastage from cutting the boards to size could be re-used or used as firewood. The main reason for painting before installation was it meant less painting up ladders and scaffolding. I also try not to go up on the high scaffolding if no-one else is around, so made it a job I could do when I was by myself. And painting is quickly dull, so doing for an hour and a half at the end of day made it slightly less tedious. There was a maximum of 24 boards at any one time that could space out in the house to paint and leave to dry overnight. After a day of plaster-boarding, can’t say then spending 1.5 hours painting always filled me with too much enthusiasm so I was extremely grateful for Catherine’s help. Just need to persuade her to come up for the top coat part!
(Following top coat application, another reason to paint before installation is that you get a better finish at the ends, close to edges, as even when everything is taped off, it’s difficult to have totally even brushstrokes going right to the ends of each board when they butt up against the wall).
Sibling 2
Throughout the build, my brother Charlie has been my construction help desk (not sure he ever actually volunteered for the job, but it has been brilliant to have him at the end of Whatsapp). He managed to avoid any on-site help for the first 15 months or so – with I guess reasonable excuses like full time job, wife, 3 kids, own house renovations – but very kindly he agreed to come up to Glenmore in November. And it was a very easy decision what job we would do: putting up the ceiling boards.
Usually before each new task I spend a long time researching how to do it – watching youtube videos, reading loads of stuff, talking to people and also often waking up in the middle of the night for several weeks having dreamt about it! For the boarding knowing Charlie was helping meant for a much more relaxing time. A new tool was acquired – apparently it was a good excuse to add a 2nd fix nail gun to Charlie’s – fairly bulging – toolshed, and Charlie’s estate car was packed full with that and pretty much every other tool we could possibly need, an air compressor and a luxury £12 Z-bed purchased from Facebook Marketplace that chief helper was going to sleep on in the house for the week. (Sleeping top to tail with my sister in Doris is one thing, but didn’t think would work quite so well with my brother!)
As well as the stress-free build up, it was also novel being able to get going straight away, at a reasonable pace. When I, or Steve and I together, start doing a new stage, we get going at a snail-like pace as we work out exactly how to do something. We always get there in the end, and actually most of the time do a pretty good job, but it was very refreshing working with someone who just knows how to do stuff. Even when we managed to drop the nail gun (from a fair height) on day 1 and snapped the connector to the air compressor – which could have been a disaster – 10 minutes later, it was all working again (and tied to the scaffolding from then on!)
There was a little bit of friendly brother-sister ‘discussion’, but remarkably little, and apart from swearing quite frequently when the painted tongues of the boards refused to go into the painted grooves, we motored along pretty smoothly. Neighbour Pete also kindly joined us for a few hours one day, and we really felt the benefits of having a third person.
In common with most other jobs, 95% of the job gets done really quickly, but it’s that final 5% that takes an age. In this case, it was the final boards at the top of sloped parts of the roof that took a long time to measure and cut accurately so that they slotted in neatly. Similarly, around the windows took an age. I also learnt about the wonders of caulk to neaten up any slight gaps or rough edges.
Perhaps fortuitously, I had managed to under-order the amount of wood we needed, and at 4pm on day 6 – our final day – we nailed the last available board onto the master bedroom ceiling, about 20 boards short of the total amount. Two of the five rooflight window surrounds were also left to do. I say fortuitously though as we were both fairly cream-crackered. And I think if we’d had the additional boards we may have felt we should just get the full ceiling done, and that brother-sisterly love may have been less apparent!
This was another of those jobs it was such relief to have done – and to have also learnt how to do it, so I felt confident to be able to finish off by myself.
