Best laid plans

My last post ended in a hurry a week ago, in the dark, on an unlit keyboard. The wind had picked up and Andy returned from the Three Andys’ trip a day early – little kayaking but plenty of lively west coast weather creating campsite carnage – tent poles folded, fabric shredded and forlorn families standing helplessly in wet clothes in the horizontal rain while more experienced campers tried to sort things out. It was good to have him back and for two days the three of us battened the workshop roof.

I have a draft blog on my laptop and notes in my site diary but will have to recall events as best I can – laptop and diary lie in the locked workshop and I’m in London.

On Monday morning Steve went back to Glasgow for a spell and we shopped for food. The wind eased we finished the ridge capping on the house.

Early Tuesday morning I called Jewson, ordered twenty more 4.8m lengths of 45 x 70mm structural timber for the battening yet to be done, including the entrance hall/porch roof – ten I’d collect, ten to be delivered mid-week – generously Andy drove too and we collected them all. By Wednesday we heard they had none. Builder Andrew brought the long overdue touch-up paint, which Jewson’s had twice received and lost, and told us he’d just tried to order timber – but there wasn’t any to be had in Lochgilphead, Oban, Cambletown or Glasgow. A delayed symptom of C19. We were lucky.

We finished the house ridge capping and prepared for sheeting the workshop roof. The next three days were sunny, sometimes glorious shorts-no-shirts weather, almost too hot and the south side was relatively easy, shorter sheets, no distance to carry them and no windows to work round. A borrowed scaffold tower was indispensable.

We did it in a day and put the first sheet on the north pitch. The north pitch sheets were the longest and heaviest of all and getting them on the roof took some thought and effort. One sheet had to be cut lengthways, a rather slow and very noisy procedure with the jigsaw. Beside the first window we used the technique we’d used on the house, where a slim strip had to be taken off – instead of cutting it all off we made the short cuts at each end then folded the 20mm strip back under with pliers, then flattening it with a lump hammer on a piece of wood – neater with less cut edge to be protected from rust.

Andy suggested using one of the window delivery palettes, initially to rest one end of the sheets on and then as a support as we slid them up as far as possible before I’d go on the roof, lifting and pulling the top end.

We made a couple of jigs too, secured with wedges (taken off the same palettes), to position and support each sheet once it was up on the battens.

We’d taken great pains to fix the bottom batten as straight as possible and the jig had the added advantage of holding the sheet at exactly the right place. On all the other pitches our method was to haul a sheet onto the scaffold then one of us would take one end and scamper (sort of) up the roof with it while the person at the bottom checked the position in relation to the bottom line. We’d both check the corrugations were sitting well at the overlap and then the person at the top would use a pair of mole grips to clamp the new sheet to the previous one. If all remained correctly aligned a screw would be put in the central valley at the top, and we’d relax before starting to mark where the fixings would go (using ‘Bob’ the measuring stick, or Bob Junior under the windows) then punching and screwing through into the battens. With the jigs we didn’t need the grips and getting the first top screw in was less urgent.

My deadline was the weekend – I needed to get back to London and the rented van. Leaving the tin unfinished seemed a very bad idea. On Wednesday Tash told me the hire company had cancelled without explanation. They then paid the money into their account. I carried on roofing and Tash had a couple of manic days’ phoning and emailing. Maybe an extended transit type van would do, only a couple of cubic metres less then the Luton. It seemed in reality there was no company that would deliver a van to London and collect it from Nether Auchans. We’d have to return the van to Glasgow. At the time I felt this was too much and we agreed I’d forget my booked train ticket, instead driving south in the Berlingo to collect Tash, the cat and whatever essentials we could fit in – do the van in a month or so. Both of us woke in the night with the same thought – we should get all we needed now, not later. I realised it was my current weariness that made the journey then the return to Glasgow seem too much, all I needed was a couple of days rest. So here I am, in London.

Andy and I finished the workshop roof, ridge cap and all on Friday night in time for a shower and supper with Jasper and Fiona. Before we left at nine on Saturday morning I was on the roof again, putting in some screws I’d missed.

Andy and Steve’s great efforts have relieved me of a considerable burden.

I ache, I sleep, I eat. We cycle and London’s open spaces are teeming with people. The proximity of so many people is a bit of a shock. I feel we’re in a cage and the door is about to snap closed.

Priorities on our planned return – assuming return is possible – will be fitting a door lining and door to the workshop shower room, roofing the house entrance hallway and fixing a pole for the internet satellite dish to attach to. Then we’ll be battening house and workshop and fixing the larch cladding, gable ends first so we can get the scaffold off hire as soon as possible and save money!