Where’s the…?

The kids’ visit was a great excuse not to work. They were all keen to do some foraging and we were happy to show them what we could. No guarantees… but as it turned out none were needed.

Poppy and I did a local circuit and the chanterelles came up trumps. Several patches of wonderful sulphur against the green moss. On later walks Tom and Bex got it too and turned up more culinary treasure. Still short on boletes, but a few hedgehog mushrooms and the odd birch bolete meant we had fungi in the fridge for a week. Talking of boletes, Bex found this impressive specimen…

When they left on Sunday a week ago the house felt very empty and quiet. Tash and I drove our bikes to Ardrishaig , the Loch Fyne end of Crinan canal, and cycled the towpath to the other end where it opens into the Sound of Jura.

This simple Sunday cycleride along the Crinan canal from sea to sea and back again was intended to be nothing more, but after stopping to collect a few seeds – spicy hogweed (culinary) and some meadowsweet (for planting) – we were tempted by the blackberry-laden brambles and we were off. On the drive home we stopped for elderberries, also finding hazelnuts and then, closer to home, we stopped for a couple of fresh birch polypores (medicinal), couldn’t resist more hazels and then Tash spotted some very fine chanterelles.

With kids and weekend gone I had to face work, but where was everything? I hunted back and forth between the newly swapped house and workshop and tried to order everything just a little bit more.

Change of plan: Building the house has required constant changes, changing one priority for another, postponing a task to address another that unexpectedly has become more urgent. With our move into the house now a fait accomplis, concentrating on the building warrant would be a little perverse – we’re going to miss the deadline of twenty third September and have to extend it anyway – so the new immediate focus is on making the house as habitable as possible now. The temporary duct-tape handles on the kitchen drawers proved impractically slippery with wet fingers – holes were the easiest solution… an aesthetic we’re very happy with.

Before drilling holes I spent the best part of a day sorting out the dishwasher – somehow the opening I’d left for it was narrower at the bottom and the dishwasher door was catching on the adjacent carousel cabinet. If not resolved something was going to break. So I pulled the dishwasher out (and put it back, several times before everything was right and fixed) and made and fitted a new, slightly tapered infill.

Oddly the short hidden side of the carousel unit, beside the dishwasher, was out of plumb but the opposite side was perfect. Maybe that’s what the spare metal brace from Ikea was for. Ah, hindsight!

Upstairs I made another support for the proposed clothes rails in the cupboards to one side of the door, enjoyable woodwork, and I cut rails from steel tubing, surplus to its intended use as a brace for the chimney. I’ll fit the rails later.

Tash and I discussed the drawers we thought we needed in our bedroom so I could make a drawing and send it to Patryk. In the spare bedroom the whole of the eaves’s space will be cupboards with boxes, whereas in our bedroom it will be drawers. That’s a lot of drawers, so I’ve asked Patryk to come up with the most cost and time-efficient solution. I think he must be thinking about it…

Why hadn’t I planned more storage in the bathrooms? Because I’m a man? Because I don’t have much stuff that lives in bathrooms? We need more but thankfully it seems that several more shelves in the existing cupboards should be just about enough. I fitted two straight away to ease the situation.

With more wet and windy weather on the way and the bell tent almost dry, we decided to take it down for the winter. Last year we left it too long and while we were away it was damaged, not something we wish to repeat. It was the right decision but a rather sad and symbolic moment, our last night sleeping out, though it did precipitate our fuller move into the house, sleeping in our bedroom.

Although I’d removed the main shuttering on the new concrete steps/sills, the thin plywood end slips were still in place and I set about extracting them. In theory they should have slid out easily, each with a simple saw cut and the undoing of two screws, in practice removing each took about forty five minutes. Much lying on the wet gravel, cutting with the multi-tool, splitting and levering with a chisel and judicious whacking with a hammer.

Indoors there was tiling to be done – a block behind the hob then a single course all along the back of the worktop. Behind the highest course I chased a groove for the under-shelf lighting cable – joining a light on one side to three lights on the other.

I turned on the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery while the kids were here. The weather was still warm and at times the bedrooms got a bit warm and stuffy. Opening skylights was resisted to avoid midges and it wasn’t until the morning of their departure that I vaguely remembered something about a setting where the mechanical ventilation was on but by-passing the heat recovery – so hot stale air goes out without transferring its heat to the fresh incoming air…

That was the week. The weather has turned. We’ve been revelling in our new space and on Friday celebrated. We broke open a special bottle of wine (thank you generous friends!) and celebrated with a proper hot bath. Wonderful.

This weekend there were more hazel nuts to be collected and a visit to see whether the sea buckthorn had berries. The nuts are ripe, some falling from their husks when disturbed. This trip to the hazel grove is not just a food collecting trip. It feels like a pilgrimage; the place feels timeless and sacred and the cave feels like a home we’ve never had to inhabit but could. Badgers had been digging in the cave floor and in the black soil they’d excavated lay bone-white oyster shells – how old? Eaten by whom?

Coat hooks. We need coat hooks.