Author Archives: nickjtj

I’m looking forward to actually fixing some larch boards on the walls for the protection and the visual transformation it will bring, but preparation continues. Since completing the reveals of three windows I’ve been pushing on with battening and fire-stop. The latter is now finished and the battening, stained a delightful blue that comes offContinue reading “Almost cladding”

It’s been just over a week since we arrived with our belongings.  The ensuing few days were taken up with organising our new home:  sorting boxes, putting up rails for pot lids, utensils and tea towels, digging a hole in the wall for the cat-flap.   Monday we took a car full of cardboard wasteContinue reading “And here we are, October!”

Saturday a week ago I grabbed my daysack and got out of Andy’s car at the traffic lights in Glasgow, the lights we’d already been at before going round again, trying to zero in on the station. The train journey south was fine, apart from the suddenly long and excruciatingly slow queue when I wasn’tContinue reading “From A to B and back again”

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 familiesContinue reading “Best laid plans”

Monday 14 September Last Saturday night Steve arrived on the Glasgow bus and the next morning we fixed the last two corrugated steel sheets on the west side of the house roof… PHOTO …and began preparing the east side, assembling the folded alloy flashing kits round each skylight and spent too long trying to decideContinue reading “Eagles stop play”

Today’s forecast is wall to wall wet so I have some time to write this and do some office work. On Monday last week I’d hoped to be putting on some corrugated steel roofing with Andrew showing me how.  Arun the electrician returned, sorting out my lights, tidying up the low voltage wire to theContinue reading “Visitors, volunteers and crinkly tin”

The weather has been kind but it’s getting colder. This morning in the workshop at six, making tea to take back to bed (in the house), I watched a bat in the dawn half light, swooping between the buildings and over the birches.  It looked bigger than a pipistrelle.  The two electrician’s lads worked allContinue reading “A bat at dawn”

Everyone keeps asking when I’m going to put the roof on.  When the workshop is ready to move into, I say.  Perhaps our priorities are wrong or have become wrong with changing circumstance and we should have reassessed our plan and changed it.  But we haven’t.  All the recently ordered lights have arrived, the plumbingContinue reading “Today electricians, tomorrow… more electricians”

The helicopter came in from the east, low over the loch, making a beeline for where I stood by the cabin.  I heard it first then could just see movement through the trees then it was close overhead, big and yellow, nosing forward and my mood switched instantly from irritation at the noisy and veryContinue reading “A few weeks back…”

A couple of days after the kids had left my nest and flown (metaphorically) south , Tash got back, I finished the tiling and together we grouted (literally).  I’d made another trip to Lochgilphead to get more tile adhesive, there being no delivery in my area for a week or more and delivery from onlineContinue reading “Acute roof anxiety”