It all went on last week! And now back south for a bit of a break.
There are advantages and disadvantages of lovely long light Summer evenings: great to be able to get lots done in the light, but having worked an 8am – 4pm day with tradesmen on site, the tendency is to then ‘just get a few last bits done’. Most evenings I found myself suddenly realising it was 9.30pm and I hadn’t yet had any food.
wooden floor
Late – very late – Thursday evening of the previous week, two small vans delivered the oak flooring for the house. We’d ordered via a Polish contact of Steve’s. It wasn’t necessarily cheaper, but the idea was that we would get better quality boards for the same price. It would also come pre-finished, which would save us a lot of effort on site. All sounded great. As – back in early February – we weren’t in a particular rush to have the boards in the house, we suggested end of March would be a good time to aim for. April rolled on, and then May. And we were getting very close to the date we had booked in with a floorer we knew from Oxfordshire – he was going to come up with his wife for a combination of few days flooring work and few days holiday.
This was our first experience of post-Brexit importing… fortunately the transport company worked with a freight forwarding agent who was used to dealing with this stuff. Needless to say the 20% customs duty was a slight surprise (it probably shouldn’t have been) and it’s unclear whether we will be able to claim back as we would have been able to claim the VAT. Slightly more concerning was the timing. Having had loads of time, we were now slightly down to the wire. There was also another bank holiday to put into the mix, so when the freight company said “it will be with you either Friday or Tuesday” (Friday being ok, Tuesday totally missing our floorer by the time the wood has sat in the house for the required minimum 48 hours before being laid), things became slightly more tense! After a bit of ‘discussion’, rather than going into the pallet network, specific end-to-end delivery was booked. As it was too heavy for a single small van, we ended up with two vans – clearly booked via a Shiply/Anyvan type of service. The first arrived about 9.45pm, just as the midges were at their most ferocious! And the second arrived about 10.45pm – when the midges had gone, but it was also getting dark. Second van finally emptied and on his way around 11.30pm… phew!
Ed arrived early doors Monday, and by the end of Wednesday our downstairs was fully laid, plus the first couple of rows of upstairs (so that we can fit the stairs). We’re going to do the rest of upstairs ourselves – another of those ‘how hard can it be?’ jobs…! That said, I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to attempt the downstairs – aside from being way too visible, the glue that had been supplied to stick the boards direct to the concrete slab had about an hour timeframe before it started to go off. Whilst I generally can work out how to do most jobs, they tend to be done at snail pace, so this was definitely a job for the professional!
The long trip north seemed to work well for Ed and his wife, Liz. They absolutely lucked in with the weather – the west coast of Scotland was definitely the place to be weather-wise last week, with glorious sunshine every day.
fascias and barge boards
I had had to do a fair amount of house clearing (into newly built garage!) over the weekend, and then keep an eye on floor laying – so that would know what to do on the first floor – my true main focus for the week was finishing off the garage roof prep. And this was definitely one of those snail jobs!!
Fascias and soffits are not things that I have ever paid much attention to. I remember when we got to that stage with the house that I found them extremely confusing – especially fascias/barge boards, with the angles of the roof, and how the boards meet together… For the house, I could just leave it with the builders. I obviously didn’t have that luxury this time.
First up though was to saw the ends off all the roof trusses: 14 spans, but 5 of them doubles, on each side. You wouldn’t think that this would be that hard, but they were just the wrong height, just too thick chunks of wood, just the wrong angle so basically it took me a very long time.
I finally worked out how big the spacers needed to be at the end of the sarking, how to maintain the air gap between the membrane and the sarking, what height the top of the fascia board needed to be to provide the ‘kick’ for the first slate and then how to actually fix and overlap the two fascia boards together. After doing all of that, it was then just a case of physically wrestling with the 4.5m boards to get them fixed – I’ve got better at that over the past few months, and in this case built a couple of support jigs which provided the extra pair of hands I needed to get the first nails in.
All of this wasn’t helped by the fact that the timber merchant had delivered mostly 4.2m boards rather than the 4.5m ones that we needed. With a length of 8.6 metres, including the gable ladders, using only the 4.2 metre boards would have meant a piddly little add in piece. So more wood was needed, and to be painted – which finally arrived late on Thursday evening (roofer coming to look on Friday).
Once I had eventually got all the fascia boards on (still a bit of painting and filling nail holes to be done when I’m next up), it was then onto barge boards – the boards that go on the gable ends, and the side of the sloped roof. In theory these should have been much simpler. And they generally were, except that need to ensure that the angles at the top exactly match, and then there was the question of how you match the ends of these boards to the fascias, especially where the first line of slates kick up. I made sure that the ends were broadly right, but the tidying up has been left for later. There was then just the small matter of how to fix a 22x195mm x 4.5m board from the top of the gable by myself – it’s basically impossible! Luckily for me, star helper neighbour Nick very kindly came over for a couple of hours to help. And the job was finally done, and most importantly the roofer was happy – slating can begin in the next week or so!
paving
This week also happened to be the week that we had booked in Henry from Ardnamurchan Landscaping to make a start on the paving at the front of the house. Again one of those jobs that on the face of it you’d think would be straightforward – make the ground basically level, and chuck a few paving stones down? Unfortunately not. Sorting levels and accessibility regulations definitely make things slightly more complicated. For accessibility, you need to have a relatively flat and flush threshold with the front door – with at least 1m2 flat area in front of the door and then a slope down from there as required. As a regular reader of Melanie Reid’s column in The Times, I definitely understand more than ever how critical these seemingly inconsequential areas of a building are. That said, having a step up to the front door would have been a whole lot easier!
Dealing with slopes, how they join with the building, how then to do the lowest boards of cladding, what to do with the front of the slope, how to layout and cut the big paving slabs over the edge of the slope, and also thinking about the level of floor inside the house vs outside. I think we’ve just got about there. Henry hadn’t quite finished it all before we left, but I put a few shovels of gravel around to see how it was going to look (and moved the pile of garage cladding) and it’s already a huge improvement.
Getting closer… lights in the house are already on, and hopefully both plumber and electrician will be back in next couple of weeks to get sockets and toilets connected.