Kitchen or bust – did we make it?

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The week started with David finishing off the kitchen floor.

and then moving through into the hall.  It was a slower job than I’d anticipated, mainly because of the amount of work it took to carefully cut all the edge pieces to fit around the door and the stairs and into the understair cupboard.

On Tuesday, Dougie turned up and he and David loaded the kitchen into the back of David’s van and brought it down the road.  Units started to go in.

and Dougie got the bathroom lights fitted as well.  They’re 18-watt LED lights and are VERY bright!

On Wednesday I added to the growing paint mountain when I realised that (a) I hadn’t bought the colour for the twin bedroom and (b) I’d only got slightly off-white paint for the ceilings, not the woodwork.

On Thursday David got the living room floor down

and got the wall units over the sink up.  We ended up having them about 70mm higher that we’d originally intended, because David thought to check the height of the tap versus the base of the cabinets and realised that you were going to skin your knuckles moving it if we had them as originally planned.

On Thursday night I cleared out and Henry’d the bathroom, all ready for David to lay the floor in there on Friday.

On Friday we hit a snag.  I was mucking out the horses’ field when I realised that David was standing in the garden.  He’d discovered that the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom, which was one of the few we hadn’t done from scratch with the studwork, didn’t have studwork in the right place to hang the wall cabinets from.  My options were (a) he broke open the plasterboard, put some wood in, replasterboarded and then I skimmed, sanded and painted again, or (b) he could go into town and get a hanging rail from Howdens, which is a metal strip that could be screwed into the existing studwork to hang the cabinet on.  We ended up with option (c) – I drove into town to pick everything up and he got on with flooring the bathroom!

I was also under instructions to pick up an upstand for the kitchen worktop.  Because the kitchen/bathroom wall isn’t quite straight, there was a gap of a few mm between the worktop and the wall towards the corner, and David felt that adding an upstand would be a better option than filling it with grout.  So I trundled into town in our ancient pick-up truck, which has a 3-metre lock box on the top of it.  The hanging rail came in 2.4m strips, the upstand was 3m lengths – and was about an inch too long to fit inside!  The Howdens manager had a brainwave and ran back inside for a roll of pallet wrap.  A bit of clingfilming later and I was good to go.

So where did we get to by the time David packed up his van on Friday afternoon?  Well, we had a complete downstairs floor, because he finished the bathroom.

And the kitchen?  Well, we didn’t quite get there, but it was pretty close.

Dougie needs to come and wire in the oven, hob and extractor fan (if you can make out the white-edged rectangle on the left-hand wall, between the cabinets, that’s where David did have to break open the plasterboard to install some studwork for Dougie to attach the extractor to!), Mick needs to plumb in the sink, dishwasher and washing machine, and then we need to make up the two big drawers which will go in next to the four-drawer unit, put the shelf in the corner unit, put the innards in the plate rack unit above the sink and fit the doors and kickboards.  Oh, and that upstand needs attaching to the worktop.

Also still left for David to do – downstairs skirting boards and door frames, fit doors (which we haven’t bought yet), make a cover to hide the pipework in the hall, do the window sills in the living room and kitchen and fit a thin piece of wood around the bottom of the landing bannister spindles to hide the underfloor heating.  He’s going to come to us any days he’s not needed on the new build, but work is going to slow down again now.

I haven’t exactly been sitting on my backside all week, I’ve been painting.  The double and single bedrooms both have their undercoats and the ceiling in the single room has had its first top coat.  I’ve found that I’ve been getting really sore forearms using the roller, so have switched back to a brush.

Sunday I skived off the painting and instead we wrestled the sheep through a footbath (twice) and then I went up to the hill to put my peats up.  Last time we were up there, we were laying them out flat to dry in the sun.  They’ve shrunk somewhat as a result (these were pretty much edge-to-edge).

The idea is to get as little of the peat in contact with the ground as possible.  Some people make mini-Stonehenges out of them, some stand them up on their ends perpendicular to each other for support and some put them up in a herringbone pattern by getting a small chunk of peat to prop up the first one and then laying peats at 90-degree angles to each other.  I went for the herringbone.

I got the long side of the bank done and then my back told me that if I wanted to be able to move today I’d better leave the short side for another day, so I’ll try and get back up there tomorrow and finish them off.

136 sheep, a car service and a funeral

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…were just a few of the things that got in the way of progress being made this week!  David sent me a text to say he wouldn’t be with us on Monday or Tuesday as he had a funeral to go to and then would be taking advantage of the dry weather to get his sheep clipped.  And you can see why; it was gorgeous.

So Mick and I cracked on and got the kitchen walls primed.  Because we’re painting straight onto plasterboard, which drinks paint like someone who’s been lost in the Sahara, we decided to put on two base coats of diluted matt white as an undercoat.

Pete turned up as well, hoping David would be there to build the frames for the concrete skews on the byre roof, and ended up lying on his back in the living room fireplace making a template for the register plate that will sit around the flue.  He and Mick went and fetched the stove from the annexe at home and lugged it into place.

The kitchen appliances were delivered on Tuesday and I lost even more space in my office!  (Apologies – sideways pictures again, but it took me six attempts just to get them to upload this evening and it’s nearly 11pm, so I’ll try and fix them in the morning!)

By Wednesday Mick was looking half dead, but had still been talking about cancelling his car service and carrying on working on the house instead.  I put my sternest voice on and packed him off to Inverness, on the grounds that we needed a 45-degree connector from the back of the stove to the flue which he could pick up from the wonderfully-named Bonk & Co while he was down there.

David arrived back after shearing 135 sheep and finished the landing cupboard and the upstairs windowsills.

And finally, on Wednesday afternoon, the first colour started to go on the walls in the kitchen!

(And yes, there was some fairly creative language when my roller slipped and this happened!)

Annoyingly, I ran out half a wall before finishing, so Mick zoomed into town first thing on Thursday morning and picked up another two cans, because it needed a second coat.  It looked pretty good when it was done.

I got going with painting the bathroom and was a bit surprised to open a tin of ‘Platinum’ and find this:

But fortunately it stirred up to the correct colour.  (‘Tin Bath’, the other bathroom colour, is sparkly blue before stirring).

David carried on with windowsills and Velux frames.

And then somehow it was Friday and time for the kitchen floor to take shape.  We took off the thin layer of chipboard that had been protecting the underfloor heating insulation from getting too squashed and had a good vacuum up.  Given we’ve been walking around on this for six months it’s in pretty good shape.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, David was able to get started on the floor, and it looks wonderful.

Also happening this week, Magnus came to give our house a new coat of masonry paint as well as doing all the woodwork for us, and it looks amazing.

We went into Riverside Replicas and ordered the sofas, but there’s been a slight hiccup with the rest of the furniture – the range I’ve chosen for the bedrooms is being discontinued shortly and the manufacturer doesn’t have enough stock to meet my order.  We’re waiting for details of the replacement range, but the bits they’ve seen look very similar.  As long as the headboards on the beds are 115cm or lower, it should be okay.

Today should have been another full-on blitz down the road, but we had a sheep to drop off at the auction mart for tomorrow’s sale (so all of my very observant readers who were wondering why the post title refers to 136 sheep but David only sheared 135 can now relax – here’s the extra one!).  This involved taking our little flock from the field, down the village road to the communal fanks, putting them through the shedder to separate out the one being sold (a shedder is a small gate in a narrow run – a race.  Only one sheep at a time can fit down the race and when the sheep you want to separate comes up, you open the shedder gate, it shoots off into a separate part of the fanks, and then you close it again and the rest of the sheep go through the race as normal.  Timing is everything!) and then taking the others back home and getting the single one into the trailer and driving her the 35 miles to the mart.

It was 2pm by the time we’d got back and had a quick sandwich, so Mick tackled our jungle of a lawn, which had been running riot for a fortnight, and I went back down to give the living room and hall ceilings their top coat of white and put the second coat of colour on the bathroom accent wall.

Note to self: do not leave masking tape on for more than 24 hours 🙁  I got away with it with the rest of the walls, but this one is going to need a lot of touching up tomorrow!

Sun, sea and sanding

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It’s been a gorgeous week up here (well, apart from a bit of rain yesterday) – and we’ve been mainly stuck inside with sanding blocks!

So what have we been up to?  David got started with the cupboard on the landing, but Rembrand didn’t have all the wood he needed to finish it, so he had to order some of it for delivery on Thursday, and then Rembrand’s lorry broke down, so we didn’t get delivery until Friday, when he wasn’t here.  In some ways that’s not a bad thing, as what we didn’t realise is that the heating manifold does generate a fair bit of warmth and the first set of doors he’s made have warped – so that’s his first issue to sort out when he’s back next week.  The size is perfect though, I was worried it was going to make the landing too cramped, but I don’t even notice it’s there when I’m walking through.

The skirting boards and dado rails are all on and I can’t believe what a huge difference it’s made to the bedrooms in terms of them looking closer to being finished.

Door surrounds are going on.

David’s attention to detail is wonderful.  Like these little blocks the door frames are sitting on (photo makes it look wonky, it isn’t!) and the way the return for the fireplace has been cut to follow the outline of the stone.

While David’s been doing wonderful things with wood, Mick and I have been turning ourselves into a pair of gargoyles sanding and skimming the plastering.

I’ve also attacked the stairs again.  I think I’m on my 6th sheet for the big orbital sander now, but the wood is slowly coming through.  I love the wear on the top of the newel post from all the years of hands on it.

I gritted my teeth today and plastered the landing.  I’d been putting it off because the coombed ceiling means that I have to lean forwards or backwards slightly to get my head under the sloped bit.  That means leaning over the stairs and my legs start shaking because I don’t do heights!  So Mick put the platform he’d used to get the plasterboard up back together and knowing that was there to stop me taking the express route to the bottom of the stairs if I lost my balance meant I could do the rest of it fine.

However, there was one join that needed doing over the stairs themselves.  I had it all set up ready to go and then Mick called up the stairs, ‘Remember, step off sideways, not forwards or back!’ and my nerve went and I wimped out!!  He’s going to do it tomorrow.

Why didn’t he do it straight away?  Because he was PAINTING!  Yes, we finally have some paint on the kitchen wall.  Only a diluted undercoat (the plasterboard soaks up a lot, so the first layer is 50:50 paint and water), but it feels like we’ve finally moved onto a new stage.  While Mick got busy with the roller, I took the leaflets I’d been given by Riverside Replicas when I was in there looking at furniture on Wednesday, plus a pile of newspapers and magazines, and started to lay out the furniture sizes on the floor.  It quickly became apparent that of the two ranges I liked, only one was going to work for the bedrooms, as the headboards for the beds on the other were too tall to go against the wall on the coombed sides!

Double bedroom – the ‘bed’ is a bit off-centre here, but I couldn’t be bothered to move it all again.  5’0 double bed and two bedside tables, small wardrobe on the fireplace wall, 2-over-3 chest of drawers by the door, mirror will probably go on the wall opposite the fireplace.

Single room – 3’0 single bed, bedside table, 2-over-3 chest of drawers, mirror on end wall by door.  I’ve checked and an average-sized adult should be able to get out of bed without banging their head.  I’ve messed up a bit here, I should have put the power socket and TV/ethernet connection on the other side so I could put the bed under the coomb.  However, it’s likely to be a child sleeping in here when it’s used.

Twin room – this is the one where I was really worried about it all fitting in, but I think I’ve managed it.  Two 3’0 beds, two bedside tables, small wardrobe, 3-drawer chest of drawers and a full-length cheval mirror will go where the black bag is.  (Must take that toilet to the tip – we’ve decided to start fresh).

Kitchen or bust!

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Great news – we didn’t just have David for today, we’ve got him for THREE WHOLE WEEKS (excluding this Friday when he has to go and do something else) and that hasn’t involved either shackling him to the old tying-up rings in the cow byre or bribery with baking!  The bad news is that come the 24th, he will be tied up on a new-build house for at least 6 weeks, so we’ve agreed that we’re all going hell for leather to get the floor down, the kitchen in, the window and door surrounds done, the dado rail installed round the top of the panelling upstairs, the window seats topped off, the fireplace surrounds done and the landing cupboards built.  He’s kindly said he’s happy to come over on a Saturday when he’s working on the new-build if we need him, but I’m hoping that three weeks will be enough to get us mostly sorted.

So July is definitely going to be a very, very spendy month.  David went into Thurso with a big shopping list of wood, so I have to go into Rembrand and pay for that on Wednesday, and this evening I’ve been researching kitchen appliances.  Looking at my rather neglected original budget, I had in £2,000 for all appliances, and I am very proud to say that I’ve come in at £2008.96 including free delivery to the Highlands.  That’s an oven, hob, extractor fan, dishwasher, washer-dryer and fridge freezer, all of them given favourable Which? reviews.  I used Currys PC World via Quidco* (2% cashback!) and they had some on-site discount codes as well, which took £160 off the total.  Very pleasantly surprised that they offered free delivery to my postcode, which generally gets lumped in with Orkney as it starts with KW (Kirkwall) even though it’s on the mainland.

Everything should be turning up on Tuesday 11th.  The plan is that this week David works on the upstairs rooms while Mick and I get downstairs prepped and painted.  Next week David will move downstairs, making sure the floor is laid in the kitchen by the end of the week.  The third week we’ll try and get Dougie in on the Monday for the joint visit and that will be kitchen installation week.  Wish us luck – we’re going to need it!!

New team member

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We’ve been away for the weekend, as Mick turned 50 on Friday.  About the only thing I miss about being 15 minutes on the train to Gatwick is the ability to hop over to Europe for the weekend – doing it from here involves a 3-hour drive to Inverness airport and then either going to Amsterdam or getting a flight to London or Manchester to connect.  So instead I decided to take him somewhere local enough that we didn’t have hours of travelling, but not so local that we couldn’t switch off properly and we ended up at Inver Lodge Hotel.

Do you think I can write it off as a business expense on the grounds that I learned what a 5* bedroom should look like??

Gorgeous hotel, amazing staff, wonderful food, thoroughly recommend it!  Anyway, we got home late morning and I wanted to have a good clean-up down the road, because David had sent me a text on Friday to say he’d be back with us on Monday.  I’d picked up our new team member when I saw him on offer in Homebase, so it was time to assemble him and put him to work.  Say hello to Henry:

Why am I not using my own vacuum cleaner?  Well, about 12 years ago, way before we moved here, I had the living room of my flat replastered after a badly leaking chimney had been repaired.  The plasterer asked to use my vacuum cleaner as his wasn’t working – and basically killed it.  It was a Dyson Animal, so not cheap, but it never worked quite the same afterwards and lasted about another 6 months before there was a horrible burning smell and it went to the household appliance graveyard at the recycling centre.  As I currently have a very powerful Miele Cat & Dog from before the change in the law about maximum wattage, I suspected that plaster dust would clog the filters in five minutes flat and didn’t want to risk it.  The Henry is supposed to be virtually indestructable even under commercial and/or builder use, so we’ll see how it does.  It certainly sucked up everything over both floors of the house without even half-filling a bag, so I’m very happy with it so far.

One of the benefits of today’s clean-up was discovering that even 16 months on the house hadn’t quite given up all its secrets.  While I was doing the little cupboard under the stairs where John Angie used to keep all his fishing stuff, I found this.  Very rusted, but I’d like to see if I can clean it up and get it working.