Now we were sleeping in the house, with bathrooms, lights and sockets all connected, and – importantly fridge freezer and washing machine installed – spending longer up in Ardnamurchan was much easier. So the end of July saw us heading north for four whole weeks.
Key jobs during that time, as well as having some time off, was to make a good start on the garage cladding – including the East gable which I wasn’t so keen on the idea of doing by myself. We also needed to fix steel brackets between the garage frame and slab (straps should have been incorporated into the original blockwork, before the slab was poured but it unfortunately got missed), cut and fix soffits and fix the boarding down on the floor of the room above the garage. And now we had working toilets in the house, it was time to dismantle the outside toilet that we’d built the garage around.
There was, needless to say, a fairly long list of other ‘small jobs’ that I thought would be nice to get done in the house – things like finishing off all the door frames, skirting boards, doing more of the kitchen fitting. The stairs were also being fitted (see other post), all my family were up for a week at the end of the month and our final airtightness test was being done (more later). ‘Time off’ was perhaps a bit ambitious, and yes, the four weeks vanished in a flash!
new skill: horizontal board on board cladding
I made a bit of a start with the garage cladding in my July visit, so that I knew how to do it, and could get going a bit more quickly once had more help. Whilst we’d become reasonably proficient putting up the Siberian larch rainscreen cladding by the time we’d finished the house, this time we were doing horizontal board on board Scottish larch, painted in Sadolin ‘volcanic ash’ superdec paint – a whole new set of skills to learn! We chose to paint the wood both to add additional protection, and also so that it helped the garage to quickly blend in to the hillside a bit more (especially in contrast to the very bright blue membrane!).
Doing horizontal board on board in some ways was much easier than the rainscreen, as there wasn’t the need to be nearly so precise with the fixing distances – a few millimetres difference here and there with the overlap and it isn’t obvious. It still took me a little while to get the first couple of rows fixed, as I learnt how to do it. There was also the challenge of how to hold the boards by myself to get the first screw in – for the rainscreen, there was the option to sit the board on top of the one below, then slot the spacers underneath, which made it reasonably straightforward(ish) to do. I did a bit of googling though and the first video I came across was of a one-armed guy putting similar cladding up by myself, I decided that I should just get on with it!
Painting the boards was a bit of a monster job. The weather generally wasn’t reliable enough for me to be able to paint the boards outside (before they were fixed to the wall), so it tended to be an end-of-day job, getting 15 boards painted (the maximum there was room for laid out in the garage on trestles) ready for the next day. We also had lots of discussion about whether to paint the back as well as the front of the boards… the pros of doing both sides: greater protection and the boards wouldn’t warp so much in one direction. The cons: huge amount of paint and painting time, especially as needed 2 coats. Pragmatism won, and most of the garage boards aren’t painted on the back non-visible side. The exception is the west gable, which gets most of the weather, that decided I would paint both sides. Will be interesting to see the difference over time. As they are 25mm thick boards, hopefully the warping issue should be minimal – let’s see!
It was quite satisfying seeing more of the bright blue membrane being covered up each day. Steve’s son, James, joined us for the first week and having two or three of us working together made for fairly speedy work. Steve’s friend Stuart then joined us for the last week in August, and together he and Steve valiantly worked through a couple of days of midge hell to get the east gable completed. My brother also kindly helped on the final afternoon of east gable cladding. Another tricky thing ticked off.
Spot the difference…
August also saw us say farewell to Doris (the caravan). Stu extremely kindly offered to tow Doris back down south with him, as he suggested – rightly – that it would be easier to sell from there. Not only that, he was going back down to York to stay with his mum, whose next door neighbour just happened to have a caravan park. We didn’t need much persuading. She has been brilliant, but it was definitely a good time to say goodbye. And after a couple of weeks on Facebook Marketplace, she found a nice new home in Lincolnshire.