Just as the house and site were beginning to be clearer, it’s being filled up again. Bathroom kit, doors, kitchen appliances, tiles (which of course we’d hoped would be down by now), door liners, insulation, velux windows and lots of every type of different wood for the garage are now all piling up both inside and outside the house.
Whilst we continue to wait for the tiler (hopefully by end of May it will be done – if not by a tiler, then by me), focus is currently on the garage.
First up: on Monday the Steico SpecialDry fibreboard arrived. You’d think getting two pallets off a truck could be done pretty quickly. Not these ones – took two of us a fair amount of effort and over an hour! Fairly stupidly when the large pallets were stacked at the far end (they were each 2.2m x 1.2m, stacked around 1.5m high), the pile of boards hadn’t been strapped to the pallets themselves so they had slipped during transit. Due to the width of the pallets, they were almost as wide as the truck, so being able to get to either side to help push back onto the pallet, so they could then be moved off the lorry using a pallet truck, was slightly challenging. We managed it in the end, and the pallets were expertly manoeuvred into exactly the right spot. And my new skill of the day was learning how to do the straps up on lorry sides.
In instances like this, I’ve definitely found it’s an advantage being a girl – not sure the driver in this case had ever had someone female helping with offloading, so he forgot to be grumpy about how much effort he’d had to make for this one delivery. I guess there have to be some advantages to counter the irritating number of times when someone I speak slightly patronisingly says ‘oh just speak to your joiner about that’, as in ‘don’t worry your little female head about that one’. There really do need to be more women in the construction industry.
Tuesday was all about the timber delivery from Caley Timber. I knew this was going to be a bit of a work out, not least because whilst the easy and actually only place to offload the timber was in front of the garage pad, this area – and the pad itself – needed to be kept reasonably clear for the construction process. It was a good measure of my increase in strength since we started building, as I managed to carry a full banded pack of 10 roof battens without a problem – previously I’d just about managed to carry a pack with someone else. So several piles later of two types of battens, 4.8 metre lengths of 6×2, 8×2 and 4×2, door linings, architrave, sarking boards and OSB boards, all was stacked and the stuff that needed to be protected was wrapped up. Phew!
Next up: Wednesday was steel installation day. The guys from G Welding in Fort William arrived bang on when they said they would on a beautiful sunny morning. I thought the fact that it was steel meant it would be a fairly simple process, but the two uprights were being connected to the long (massively heavy) horizontal beam on site. As you need fairly millimetre precision on not quite millimetre precision corners of garage pad, and are dealing with these big heavy pieces of steel, it took a little bit of jostling to get them positioned correctly. But by lunchtime, we had a very nice set of shining fully level and squared goalposts in place.
And then it was on to the cutting list for the garage timber frame itself. I had – needless to say – spent a very long time working this all out. As the weather was so good, I lugged the mitre saw onto the garage pad and set to work cutting all the pieces of timber needed for the walls, keeping my fingers crossed that I hadn’t made some gross error right from the start which meant all my measurements were wrong! (Spoiler: I hadn’t, and they weren’t). So by the end of Wednesday I had the 3 outside walls, plus the internal wall all cut, and the base plate painted and damp proof membrane fixed to it.
Joiner David joined me on Friday morning bright and early, and off we set. He was likely – understandably – slightly dubious whether the wood I’d cut was actually going to be right. But as the morning wore on, and I think I only had to take 10mm off 2 boards which I’d deliberately kept slightly long, we got into a good rhythm. It was so good to have someone alongside that knew what he was doing!! I’d probably have got there in the end, taking about 10 times longer, and with slightly unconventionally spaced studs and definitely much more readjustment of screws needed. But by the end of Friday, we had the base rails fixed and the three perimeter walls built and stacked flat.
Monday afternoon was truss delivery. All fairly undramatic – Forfar driver arrived exactly as arranged, despite it being bank holiday, and the three of us managed to lift all the trusses off without too much problem. With the Corran Ferry being off, it can sometimes be challenging to get trusses onto the peninsula, as there is a relatively low bridge at Glenfinnan on the road route from Fort William. Fortunately ours were just within the height limit. The trusses themselves aren’t too heavy (slightly less than soundbloc plasterboard) but are quite awkward to deal with, especially when the wind is blowing. I think being a girl again was an advantage, as the driver helped us without any bother. Apparently most often the driver simply stands and watches while those on site do the work, even if there are only two people.
Tuesday was about building the gables and preparing the trusses. I’d again been checking drawings and trying to work out exactly how we’d do the gables – as well as working out the angles. I’d just about managed the angles, and fortunately the day before David and I had managed to sort out the mitre saw so that we could cut them easily (rather than by hand). The actual structure of the gable against the truss though was still totally puzzling me. Shouldn’t have wasted time thinking about it though, as all no problem at all. So by lunchtime we had the first gable built and OSB fixed, and by 4pm the 2nd gable, plus all the trusses prepped and stacked in the order we would need them.
So we’re all set. It was tempting to continue this week and get the walls put up. However, we didn’t have enough days (before I head back south) to get the roof fully braced with the fibreboard and sarking. With the weather as it is here, even if we braced the walls well, David suggested there wouldn’t be much advantage of spending half a day getting the walls up, and would be better to wait, get hold of a telehandler to help with the trusses, and do it all in one stretch. 15th May we start stage 2.
And just a note in case you were wondering: yes we will be building the garage around the toilet. Because the tiling in the house hasn’t been done, we need to keep this toilet for now, and will just have to deconstruct from inside once we’ve finished. Not ideal, but should work fine.