We’ve received quite a lot of “you should have done Grand Designs” type of comment over the past year or so. Aside from having absolutely no desire to ever be on television, or have film crews around our house build, in every Channel 4 reality programme there is a requirement for that moment of jeopardy. And this need for jeopardy is probably largely responsible for why there seems to be an expectation in the UK that self-build projects will go wrong at some point!
If we had been inclined to go the Grand Designs route, the first ‘jeopardy moment’ of our build occurred a couple of weeks ago. A delivery was made to site and for whatever reason – as lots of vehicles had been on site previously – this driver was very unlucky and got stuck. Nothing that a tractor from the local distillery couldn’t help with and the lorry was pulled out, the lorry went on his way and the track directly onto our site has now been reinforced. In Grand Designs world, I’m sure the tractor-towing-lorry would have been the scene that was featured in every trailer/ before every ad break! In our case, there wasn’t anyone around other than the lorry driver, and then the distillery tractor driver, to witness it. And as we also weren’t on site that week, we don’t have any photos to share sorry.
Our site is now looking like a proper building site as lots of materials have been brought in for the next stages of the build – including pea gravel, sand, insulation for under the slab, blocks, more type 1, a large container to store everything and the all important portaloo.
Our timber frame kit – plus a whole load of other boxes of tapes and screws etc, and rolls of various membranes – also arrived last week. Fortunately no jeopardy moment there – although our building contractors, who happened to be following behind, took considerably longer to get to site that day as the lorry driver from the South of England definitely wasn’t used to single track Highlands roads. Rarely did he get over 10mph on the 32 mile journey from the ferry, taking things extremely cautiously. He also hadn’t apparently considered that the weather may be different in the Highlands, and whilst it’s been sunshine in Ardnamurchan for most of the last few weeks, of course the rain poured down the day the kit arrived and the driver apparently didn’t look that comfortable in his shorts and t-shirt!
The lorry didn’t attempt the drive up our track from the road, so everything was transported up to site using the builder’s digger. Added benefit of the multiple journeys up and down has been a definite improvement in the track surface, with lots of the loose stones now bedded in. And all the various wooden frame elements are now wrapped tightly in black polythene, ready for use later this month.
Once the concrete had been left sufficiently long to cure, the brickies came to site – and once again, it was a pleasure to watch such highly skilled people at work. We’re now moving into the final stages of this ‘getting out of the ground’ phase of the build – with a fair wind (and assuming that more steel mesh becomes available – the latest building material shortage), the house and garage pads should be poured in a couple of weeks, and then on to the kit itself towards the end of the month.
We’re still also waiting for our electricity meter to be installed… we are up to about working day 48 of the promised 17 working days for this to happen, and a lot of emails and telephone calls, but not yet anything from the person who arranges the installation appointment. Given we ordered (and paid for) our full electricity connection back in August last year, this final bit should have been the easy part.
