Our regular readers have been complaining about the absence of a weekly blog from the island… sorry for the delay... we were out at neighbours for dinner last night and the weather today was good so we decided to “crack on” with the build.
The start of the week was actually a bit of a holiday. We had our first “staying guests” - eldest daughter Lucy and husband Mike (it was them who hijacked the blog last week) and so the first chore was to remove all the tech and supplies from the spare room in the static caravan and make it habitable. Julia ordered the required bedding (from Amazon of course), I built a bedside table from chip board (took me 30 minutes so not exactly cabinet making) and hey presto… the spare room was ready...
It was great to have Lucy and Mike here - especially as they have never visited the island before. Most of their trip was covered by Lucy’s "guest blog" last week but suffice to say, lots of beach walks, a BBQ and a swim, a fruitless fishing trip (although I lost a whopper), a meal in the hotel and quite a few bevies… and of course 2 EAGLES!! (Sadly no basking sharks though). We took 3 days off which felt rather strange but it was really fun to host them and to be able to actually show them why we love it here.
I've always fantasised about riding a horse on a beach...
Mike and Lucy also came bearing gifts! It seems I have my very own brand of beer! I've been working my way through them since they left...
I can strongly recommend the Larger Keith! They also (along with Tillie who joined us on Zoom) gave us our joint birthday presents ... 6 tickets for the Rugby world cup in France... !!!! Thanks Tillie, Lucy and Mike ... that is going to be a lot of fun...
So apart from having time off, what have we been doing this week? Well, it’s been a bit of a roller coaster to be honest. You might not know this but the construction industry is in some disarray right now with serious shortages of materials and hyper-inflation. The price of some wood products have increased by 300% (!) in the past few months and everything is in short supply. Jewsons were quoting lead times of 50 days for stuff they normally deliver within 3 days. Some say “Brexit” others “Covid” but I think it is a perfect storm of the two. This has lead me to spending a lot of time at the computer and on the phone over the past weeks doing “procurement”. The good news is that this week, in spite of the chaos, we have managed to get the rebar, the blocks and the cement for the house foundations delivered to site. We now have the critical ingredients to bake the cake!
One pallet of blocks weighs about 1.6 tonnes and is too much for Rob's tractor so Brian (very kindly) came round with his shiny new telehandler and unloaded the lorry for us. What fantastic piece of kit that is!! It lifts 3 tonnes and extends to 6 meters. I know that's gobbledygook to most of you but … I want one!
This is me relocating the rebar with Digby…anything to spend a few minutes in the high castle...
And this is what 1,000 blocks looks like... our very own version of Stonehenge!
Now that the shed is a dry space (apart from next to the gaping hole where the roller door will go), we’ve decided to focus on the house foundations and, when we are rained off, we will return to the shed to work on the doors and windows. Thankfully this week it’s been all foundations work. The shed, in the mean time, has been commandeered as a drying room…
So what of the house foundations? Well, we’ve now packed 50 tonnes of hardcore into the trenches on top of the bedrock and we’ve packed it down with Tyson. That is a lot of stuff! We are now working on the wooden “forms” for the footing concrete. This is very fiddly carpentry and not helped by the fact that we cannot bang posts into the ground where we have packed the hardcore. We have to bang them in a bit away and construct elaborate bridgings to keep the forms in place. On the bedrock bits, we have drilled holes in the stone to secure wooden battens. To add to the complications, and because the house is on a slope, we need to build “steps” - a bit like locks on a canal - to connect the levels. Each drop has to be the exact height of a wall block (including mortar) so the rows of blocks line up. This is not easy and it seems that we are creating the horse of Troy… a great big wooden "means to an end" which, in itself, has no purpose.
And is that a builders bum I can see?
I've also been slightly engrossed in the topography of the site and have had a lot of chats with both our engineer (who designed the foundations) and my brother in law Chris who has been extremely helpful. The long and short is that we are trying to keep the floor level for the house as low as possible but the bedrock underneath limits this. It is very difficult to remove without the use of TNT. In fact, it is some of the hardest rock in the world. I think we have a good plan now though by modifying the design of the floor/substructure and working out which rocks we can easily cut down. We've had to use Huey to measure the exact relative heights of all the offending bedrock “peaks" to decide what to do with them. They all have names … a bit like the Himalayas… instead of K2 we’ve got N4…(one of 16 summits in the range)...
In the case of “N4", it will have to have the top 120mm lopped off so the floor beams can go in. Maybe another job for Sam and the bicycle wheel sized saw...
Things are gradually taking shape and I’m very pleased that our project will be made a little bit easier with the arrival of Tom a week on Monday and hopefully Sam and Patrick thereafter too. Brian is also open to renting us his new toy to help with both the concrete work and the house erection so all is looking quite rosey in spite of the recent curved balls.
In other news (as the Two Ronnies would say), we ran out of water this week for the first time so we took the opportunity to clean out the barrel (which collects rainwater from the caravan roof) and we filled it half full in the village and used our neighbours trailer to take a sloshing half full barrel of water back to the site. We arrived with about a third of a barrel left which should last us about a week (assuming no rainfall) so it is good to know we can do that if needs be! In spite of the lack of rain, the weather has been a bit mixed this week - a lot of sea har which seems to be able to make everything wet without actually raining … curious stuff!
We’ve also been thinking of names for the house too and have been looking into the ancient history of the immediate area. We like the idea of local Gaelic names. My sister Gill has helped us and we do have a few options. There is an old fort (Dun Mhorbhaidh) right next to us according to the archaeology map (see below) but it seems to have been the site of some ancient slaughtering so maybe not a great basis to name a house after (!) … any ideas welcome...
We also had a surprise visit from a sailor pal, Ronnie who joined us for a day on the beach and a meal in the pub. Ronnie is solo sailing around the west coast and decided to drop in for a visit. This is the second time he's visited us on his yacht. On his first visit, we never made it up to the building plot as we ended up in a drunken night with John and Lucy at Hyne. I saw Ronnie off on his wee dingy from the middle pier in the wee hours. It was pitch dark with a strong off shore wind and I was very concerned for his safety. This was not helped by the outboard engine failing half way across the bay. I was releived to get a text that he was safely onboard! This time his only proviso for the visit was that we'd see him off in daylight! We did and it was a blast. Thanks Ronnie for dropping in!
Next week we’ve got pals from France visiting in their brand new camper van so we are really looking forward to that and shortly afterwards, my big sis and bro in law are coming… and after that… well, we might make a trip to the mainland … first trip off the island since 15th March!! Blimey!!
Hope you are all well and enjoying a good spell of weather!
K & J x
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