Walking in the Wood

Some people believe that when we live at the Wood our brains will atrophy and we will have nothing to do except sit around vacuously staring at the view. In fact, there are plenty of things to do, both intellectual and physical.

The physical things are fairly easy to list: collecting wood; sawing logs; ditching; walking around diligently exercising heart and muscle, which is what I did yesterday (pictures below). Today, we opened our pores for an hour and a half, throwing and dragging logs and branches from just up the hill to the wood pile. This has the satisfying effect of tidying the landscape as well as supplying fuel.

Walking in the wood

Indoors, I knit (pictures below of some of the twenty pairs of socks I have knitted this year – not all at the Wood) and do tapestry. Well, all of that is fairly mindless, though it leaves time to think other thoughts, some of which involve planning physical things: the location of more ditches; the delineation of paths (not actually making them, but finding ways of indicating preferred routes, such as by cutting the bracken, or identifying the convenient places to sit, which form markers along the way); where to place trees and other plants.

Socks

My walk yesterday was what I now regard as my favourite short circuit round the upper and middle part of the wood. It takes a fairly direct route to the eastern burn, and then along a prominent ridge parallel to the burn and overlooking it. There is another oak tree on this ridge, and hazels below it beside the burn, where there is a space between the bottom of the ridge and the burn itself which I am sure the Victorians would have turned into a lovely path, with interesting planting. There are plenty of knolls with boulders to sit on, and plenty of places demanding interesting specimens of tree or rhododendron. The ridges of moraine which run down the slope at intervals (usually with boggy bits between them) make for a great variety of views and visual possibilities.

Which leads us on to fencing, when we can afford it.

Ditching also came to the fore this weekend, as Donald Cameron, the ghillie from Kinlochhourn, came to talk about putting his machines to our rather silted up ditch, and to making new drainage in our wasteland, where I disappeared to the tops of my boots a few weekends ago, and had to be rescued by Livy It is always interesting talking to him.

And then the intellectual things. Why should we do less than we do at present? We don’t go to the theatre or concerts much – I don’t know why. We read, we write, we listen to music. Roy reminds me that when the Ellice family had Quoich Lodge (this was in the early years of the last century) they made it a centre of intellectual and cultural life, visited there by artists, writers, statesmen and the lions of their time. There’s a project for us.

Things I Will Have To Put Up With

Not everything is perfect. There are bound to be compromises and oversights. So for the sake of completeness here are the things that are not quite right.

The stairs are rather steep. We have been spoiled by the luxurious ones at Park Street. Janet would say the ones at the Wood are very laid back.

The utility room is very small.

Perhaps more food storage space would have been a good idea: a proper larder.

The Nibe controls require a degree in heat engineering. So far, we find the heat difficult to control. This may be our fault but we think not. Still, Graham Moss the Nibe man is tremendously obliging.

There are skirting boards. Originally, I passionately wanted shadow line skirtings. (My devil master James has them in his house extension; why can't I have them?) Then Mary said skirtings are unnecessary; and I agreed. Now we have skirtings. I am not sure why. Oh well.

Three lights over the table is perhaps too many.

Roy would prefer a joy stick shower control. I am perfectly happy with the taps we have.

Roy wishes there was more light in the bathroom and the small bedroom and slightly less in the main bedroom. I rather like the cosy dim feel of the bathroom. I agree we could have done with one window rather than two in the main bedroom.

The replacement lavatory seats (see earlier top secret posting) are not quite the right shape. We are probably the only people who have noticed this.

We are not quite sure that we specified the right locations for the telephone sockets. There are three (or is it four?) and not one of them is in the main bedroom or the study.

There are some fascinating misplacements of light switches. But we are getting used to them.

The multitude of legs on the canopy is still a little disconcerting. It would have been nice to cantilever it; but that would have meant more steel in the main structure. It would have been nice to manage with fewer.

It is fiddly to open the casement windows fully. But perhaps this will deter all our burglars. It would have been nice if the full length windows would open wide, like doors.

Roy would have liked a wine cellar.

The grey of the doors is not quite the same grey as the blinds.

The deck is not big enough. And it doesn't drain properly. (We are well into crumples in rose leaves territory now.)

Things I like about the house

The observant will have noted, perhaps with faint regret, that I have not posted anything for some months. Now that the house is finished, this blog is beginning to show its redundancy, and banging on about how pretty the wood and the house are may seem boastful and rude. But there are a few concluding comments to make before deciding whether to keep this page alive for other purposes.

The house works very well. (Should I add “so far”? No.) It has few redundant spaces; pretty much all of it is useful, unlike, for example, the hall at Park Street, which as I have already bored some of you by pointing out, is a perfect example of the point Frank Lloyd Wright made about the immorality of certain sorts of house design: making a show for one’s public face whilst consigning the important parts of the house, such as the kitchen, to an actual or metaphorical basement. I am pleased to say that coming more or less straight into the kitchen is a very nice way to enter a house. The big landing is good, too, even though we have not furnished it yet, and so it is not really operating as it is intended to do. The only rooms we do not regularly use ourselves are the spare bedroom (for which guests may be grateful) and the study, the latter because it has no furniture yet. But when the weather gets warmer I mean to keep the study door and the spare bedroom door open, for the views.

The vistas are probably the best thing about the design. You can see all the way through each floor, into every room except the utility room, the study and the upstairs spare loo, when all the doors are open; and when the study door is open you get an immediate view through to the back (or front) of the house as you come in the front (or back) door.

You do hear quite a lot of what is going on in other parts; but when that is music from the sitting room that is rather a good thing (depending on the music). Also, as I type this at the table, I realise that it is convenient for someone quietly doing difficult sums to Mozart in the sitting room to be able to ask the person in the kitchen, without shouting, for a vital cup of coffee, please. Hang on whilst I deal with that.

One more thing about the layout: how like it is to some of the vicarages we have lived in - the study near the front door so that the parishioners can be ushered straight in to see the vicar, and the family's places further in.

Other things I like: the kitchen. Well, it is a stronger emotion than mere liking. The wood; the height of the bench tops; the storage drawers; the lighting; two sinks; the taps; an extractor fan (first time since Poffley End where we had an industrial strength one that blew both ways, because we thought the Aga would like it); the space. I would write an exclamation mark here, if I had not taken a vow against them. And having a separate utility room.

Continuing with the list of the things I like: the sitting room. This means its shelves, though there are not enough of them and the top shelf requires the reach of an ape and the legs of a giraffe; and its windows, though I am not sure if the ones for the piano are quite large enough. It is a good size, too, and our stuff looks nice in it.

More. (As Dornford Yates would say.) The bathroom, loos and shower: their oak shelves, the neat little taps, the monsoon force shower (a combination of water under pressure and a big shower head), the shower seat, cantilevered loos, elegant big tiles.

The oak floors upstairs and the tiled ones downstairs. Nice, plain, and (downstairs) WARM (unless Nibe is away for the time being).

No draughts. I really am tempted to write an exclamation mark here. Even without curtains, and when Nibe was sulking at New Year when the temperature never got above freezing and was mostly rather far below it, the house is not cold. Double glazing, Scandinavian windows and lots of insulation in the walls and roof do the trick.

I could go on, but I won’t. Do come and see for yourselves how it works.

What I did last weekend

1 Jan 2009

Arty pictures

Some panoramic photos

Panoramic Shots

EPW in snow

First: getting there

Travel to EPW in the snow

(travel reports of snow and disruption however the roads were fairly clear all the way to the top of the drive)

EPW in Snow

C&L spent the weekend (well Sat pm and Sun am) at the Wood in the snow.

The house is real...

The next house along the glen (Poulary) is available to let all year round. I've been googling it to see what it says - and noticed on this page that it is now described as being the SECOND house on the left after the cattle grid. Which means that EPW (the first on the left) is real, it exists and has had an impact on others!

More New Year photos

Taken by Ursula

EPW New Year 2009

Happy New Year

New Year at EPW

First house-party. R&C went first (Sunday before New Year), Andrew & I joined them on the 31st, and their friend Ursula turned up at lunch time on the 1st.

The weather was absolutely beautiful. Mostly. The house wasn't exactly warm all over, as the underfloor heating seems to be under the impression that it's 41degreesC outside (hmm - try -10degC instead). However the wood burning stove was most impressive and the thick insulation all over seems to be working. I didn't even have a hot water bottle on the third night. We were quite good at keeping the doors closed and recycling heat back into the Nibe though (e.g. leave bath water to cool down before emptying the bath). And not opening the bathroom window to clear condensation (just let the Nibe extractors suck it out of the air instead).

Trip with a Van

Van trip

Roy & I hired a van for 2 days to transport some bulky items to EPW. There may be 5 people there at New Year, so we needed to sort out a sofa, some mattresses and a table. We picked up a van at 11am on Monday, then went to Ikea to fill it up. There was a slight hiccup, in that the sofa we wanted wasn't in stock, so we had to delay that part of the purchase until 12pm on Tuesday. Anyway, we got everything eventually (including some bunk beds for a friend of mine in St Andrews) and set off at lunchtime to head to EPW. After a brief lunch stop at the Highland Harrods we made it to the Wood just as it got dark. There were about 20 deer lurking outside the house but they made off after staring at us rudely for a bit (I imagine that they were offended at our intruding on their land).

The van was unpacked and the contents dispersed thinly throughout the house. I sorted out the sofa and Roy tackled the table - both of which look very smart (although the table is only an interim one and will ultimately end up being a desk in the study / downstairs bedroom).

We then headed back to St Andrews for the night, to pick up Emily who is staying with R&C in Edinburgh for Christmas, and to drop off the bunk beds with Rebecca. Back in Edinburgh we used the van's capacity to carry a Christmas tree (only £10 when bought on Xmas eve!) and my bike, which had been being serviced, before returning it 30 mins before the rental ran out. Very efficient.

Snowy visit

November at the Wood

Cecilia entreats you to ignore the photos of the loo seat (if she hasn't already deleted them).

Weekend visit

They're off to EPW for the weekend. I DO hope that they've taken some photos / have something to report after this trip.

nudge nudge it's been quite a while since the last update...

More photos from the last trip

Some recent pictures

First night at EPW

First night at EPW

Downstairs

Photos from the Final Meeting

EPW The "Final" Meeting

C will put comments on this evening.

Upstairs

I'll put the downstairs one on this evening.

The Final Meeting (or so they say)

We went to the Wood today for The Final Meeting with Mary and Alasdair (whose name I can now spell). We had a list or two; Mary had an Agenda; and Alasdair had identified a Mystery Flaw which I had certainly not spotted, though maybe the others had.

We discovered that because the road was a provisional sum, we would have to spend another £2000 or so to tarmac the entrance. But we were given Certain Information that we are not at liberty to divulge, and which Janet would kill us for acceding to, so this problem may disappear.

We mystified everyone by our incredibly accurate, logical (Roy) and lawyerly (me) reading of the so-called Acceptance of Completion Certificate. There will be documents to chase, I fear, in order to make all the paperwork line up tidily with our title deeds and the planning permission, which stipulates that certain things never seen in writing before by either Mary or Alasdair will have to be obtained from the planning department once certain other things have been done. Aargh red tape.

We wandered around checking that the paintwork was as we wanted it to be; and Alasdair showed us a narrow strip of sliding door upstairs that had not been painted grey. We saw that the holes for hi-fi wires had been made; and Roy immediately said he would have preferred not to have them. He was throttled. The tiny tiny gap between the north windows of the kitchen is to be plugged with a fillet on the outside. The access track is to have a couple of loads of gravel at the steeper and curvier bits. The Velux blinds are to be obtained and fitted by Alasdair. Mary's assistant Robert is organising the replacement loo lids. Alasdair's chaps will fix some clothes airers in the utility room. We acquired some keys. We agreed that we could manage without the other shelves at the back of the kitchen. And so on and so forth. Essentially, the project is just about complete. But we discussed the next thing: a shed for wood and stuff: next year's project, is we are spared.

We moved various odds and ends in: a kettle, mugs and plates, a coffee pot, one chair. We made the first pot of coffee. It was horribly rainy, so we did not saw up the pile of tree that we had been intending to tame.

It is all a bit of an anti-climax, given the economic climate. Whether we ever live there is moot, it seems; and we are rather gloomy. But Livy took some nice pictures; and it is a lovely place.

Is a Lid a Seat?

This is the lavatory lid story to date.

The lavatories are very pretty: cantileverd, a nice smooth oval, very plain. (The flush mechanism is a little maximalist and curvy; but there is a reason for the large size: it means that plumbers can get at the pipes through the hole left by the flush mechanism when you take it out. The flush mechanism that Mary has in her house is smaller; but hey we have a lower specification. Grr.)

Unfortunately, the lid of the downstairs loo cracked right across when I sat on it to rest my limbs and take a photograph. And it was later discovered that one of the upstairs lids had also broken at an unknown time and by an unknown agency. Anguish. A lid breaking problem in our lovely new house.

I called Ideal Standard and received some of the best customer service I have ever experienced (as I told the woman). I had quite expected to be told that I should Go Away Because Lids Are Not Seats.The story is, apparently, that they have had problems with some but not all of these particular lids. It is a Tremendous Secret; and they have gone so far as to bring in a university to investigate the problem. (Line of exclamation marks.) This is, it seems, the absolute final last ditch solution to problems with lids.

When supplied with the address of the house, the names of the builder and the supplier of the loos, the invoices, our mothers' maiden names and so on, Ideal Standard will issue us with a magic number the effect of which is that we will have free replacement lids for ever and ever.

Mary's assistant Robert is dealing with it all. So far we are not aware of any glitch having intervened.

Nearly at Practical Completion, we think

Just a handful of pictures from last Tuesday. It seemed that nothing else had been done since our last visit; though there are still some matters to clear up - the holes for wires down the backs of the shelves, squeezing the washing machine and the fridge freezer into their tiny spaces, fitting the Velux blinds, replacing TWO broken loo lids, tarmacking the entrance to the drive. The whole place is rather dusty and full of sawdust, waiting for the cleaners; but it could pretty much be lived in now.

The Wood

On Thursday we met Graham Moss there, the heat pump man; and he programmed the Nibe timer for us and began to explain how it is all controlled. We have sheaves of instruction manuals and he is expecting us to call him for explanations when we are in residence.

We need a working party to help saw logs. Any offers?

Nearly finished, perhaps.

The Wood, 11 August 2008

We have been to the house twice in the past week: Monday and Friday, on the way to and from Runival. The photos which I think I will be embedding are of the first visit. A pity, now I come to think of it, as there had been some changes, as one might have expected, between the two visits.

On the first visit the electricians were in, along with Alistair's brother Donald, who is his site manager, I think. Donald is quite sure that the shelves under the back window in the kitchen were cancelled. Not by us, but we may just live without them. We rather improperly (such things are meant to come from the architect) confirmed that we would prefer white sockets in the shelves at the back of the island, rather than the metal ones which were originally planned to go into the wood at the ends, which we thought was too lovely to cut into. We mentioned the hole needed to take the wires down from the hi-fi shelves. (Still not done by Friday but it is a small thing.) We were a little surprised at how far the little round lights on the stairs stick out; but by Friday we were used to them. This is a psychological phenomenon.

I broke the lid of the downstairs lavatory by sitting on it. Bad lady.

By Friday, the wood tops to the shelves behind the loo and the bath in the bathroom had been fitted, and very handsome they look.

The grey doors, for which Max is taking ALL the credit, and let's humour him, are just the thing and I am prepared to bet that Mary will like them too and we may see them in other Dualchas houses.

Perhaps the most noticeable change is outside, where all the crisp packets, odd lumps, bits of plastic and crisp packets have been buried in gravel. It is not quite as I had envisaged it on the south side, but it does look smart. Some top peat, if I may call it that, has been moved from other parts of the site to around the house. It will need to be redistributed a bit; but it is an improvement. I was very pleased to see that many of the raw bits beside the track and where the original abortive track was tried, have greened up very well.

The well head has been buried, which I think is a pity, though it will save on the cost of building a lovely stone pyramid or other allegresse.

I have taken some videos, at Diana's suggestion; but as Livy is in Seth Efrica I can't upload them.

July Visit

We went to the Wood with Livy and Andrew on Saturday. Pictures below.

The Wood, C's photos

There were some queries: whether the kitchen unit doors look a little odd; whether I can bear the light switches; whether Roy can bear the bath; why there is a lot of condensation in unexpected places related to the Nibe; whether there has been sufficient thought given to where the wires go from the hifi shelves and from the things plugged in at the left hand end of the kitchen bench against the wall; why there are no shelves under the window at the back of the kitchen and where the bathroom towel rails and mirror lights are going.

But in general it was all looking rather super. The walls are a nice neutral and not brilliant white; the wall tiles in the bathrooms are a lovely pale grey; the oak floors upstairs and the elm worktops downstairs look gorgeous; the built in shelves are excellent and capacious; the shelves in the warm cupboard are spot on, and though there is space for them to be bigger, that space can also be used for other things; the shelves over the hanging spaces are generous.

The projected completion date of the beginning of September looks possible now. How we furnish it then becomes a question.

Photos

Livy's photos from Saturday:

July 26th Visit - Livy's photos

A Digression

Shall we have one of these?

http://www.ruuttub.eu/eng/ruuttub

Livy - can you embed something here, by way of a picture?

Visit the site; wander around it; marvel at the language; parody it in your comments; enjoy. We are off to the Wood tomorrow and unless we forget the equipment there will be pictures thereafter.

The Longest Day

We were there again today and found some good and some bads things. Good first: joinery galloping ahead with doors, upstairs skirtings and architraves. The shower floor has been much improved with smaller tiles, not quite as we originally envisaged it, but tolerable.

Visit on 22 June

The bad things: there seem to be two air intakes missing for the Nibe, which means, we think, that the warm air from the sitting room (where the wood stove will be) and the utility room will not be used. The kitchen lights and oily air extractor are still wrong or not there. The Legs really are a bit intrusive and we hope to become a hexapod rather than an octopus.

Outdoors, there are some cheerful signs of the devastation greening up.

Tiles, Upstairs Floor and More about Legs

Mary made a site visit last week. She says the shower tiles have been re-done in a smaller size; and if we don't like it we must say. If we say, I suppose she will become even fiercer. She says the floor upstairs is jolly nice. We had agreed with her that wax, including the white Scandinavian wax, is much nicer than the varnish that Alistair was proposing as being more durable, which it may well be. No tackety boots upstairs, then. Mary thinks that we may be able to manage without the end Legs, and she is asking an engineer about this.

This last bit seems horribly long - waiting for the electricity and plumbing, and for the kitchen to be finished. The cabinet maker, though very good, is slow. So maybe we won't commission a table from him. We have decided, too, not to have a sort of semi-freestanding set of shelves under the window on the back wall of the kitchen, of wood, by Stuart the cabinet maker, which Mary was wondering about, but to compromise with a slab of his elm on top of the white built in shelves.

Tiling and the Nibe

We understand, from friends who dropped in at the Wood recently, that the tiler is having a perfectly frightful time with the bathroom floor. We did not know that Max's strong opinions were shared with anyone other than ourselves. Perhaps Mary had remonstrated. Anyway, the shower floor is being redone and the tiler has vowed never to work with big tiles again.

The Nibe has been commissioned, which makes it sound like a nuclear power plant. We will be given a seminar in how to use it, sometime.

Late Spring Visit

We spent three days in brilliant weather at Runival and visited the Wood on the way home. Here are the pictures.

Visit on 26th May

Most of the ground floor is now tiled. Upstairs there is still no finished floor; and there is lots of wiring and plumbing still to do. Some of the wires are still in the wrong place (the kitchen lights); and the kitchen extractor also still needs to be re-sited. The walls have been painted a less pink shade, in parts, though, which is a welcome improvement. We admired the tiled floor of the shower.

As we have given our final instructions about the bathroom wall tiles (though we thought we had done that some time ago), we hope that the tiling will soon be finished and that the plumbing might follow.

As usual, we all gravitated to the south windows; and when we were upstairs we all stood waist deep in the bedroom windows admiring the mountains. We were quite impressed by how well the brise soleil, which we are learning to call the canopy, to avoid pretentiousness, was preventing the house from heating up in the baking sun, which had completely dried out all the places where I have spent such merry hours disappearing to the tops of my boots and being rescued.

I wish I had taken a proper picture of the blood curdling label on Klarg's lid. It reminds one not to walk on the lid in case one is tumbled into the rotating machinery below. The subterranean part of this place is as interesting as the bit above ground.

We Name This Wood

We have more or less decided, it seems, to eschew Gaelic and to call the house East Poulary Wood. It seems more or less to have named itself. Anyone disagree?

Staircase, tiling, brise soleil

We went to the Wood on Saturday. The staircase is in, looking lovely. But I am a bit worried that Ronnie the Stair God has not brought the top step up high enough to allow for the full thickness of the upstairs oak floor, which is meant to be a nominal one inch thick.

Visit on 3 May

The brise soleil was in. It was a little disconcerting, realising how much it cuts off one's upward view out; but I suppose that is what it is for. The house was really warm, on a fairly overcast day; and in high summer it could get very hot without this shading. It was jolly nice being able to see out of the window at last, as the plastic has been taken off.

The tiling has started in the sitting room. We were rather sad that it is being laid with what look like rather over-generous spaces. In Mary's house, the tiles are fitted right up against each other, and that is much more handsome.

We dropped in on Alistair en route, to give him the electricity bill we have been sent. He mentioned how good and plentiful the water supply is.

There Are Always Things To Decide

We put a few questions to Mary after our last visit - the kitchen lights, the shower seat; and she did one of her visits last week to sort some of these things out. The lights are to be put in their proper place over the island bench; there is to be an oily air extractor over the hob, not just somewhere random in the kitchen. (This is so that Nibe doesn't choke.)

The piece of mahogany that we offered for the shower seat has been reviled, spurned and threatened with immolation. I have stamped my tiny feet and waved my tiny fists and insisted on a proper bench, not a flimsy hinged thing, ready-made. People who work with wood are just going to have to run along and find the necessary wood, even to the extent of flattening a rain forest. I have now got to the stage where I Do Not Care.

Mary is apparently having to make her opinions known to Alistair about the colour of the walls and also about something that has been done not quite right with the wood cladding on the south side. She won't tell me what it is. I do not want to know; that is what architects are for.

The latest question relates to the wall tiles in the shower room - should they be the same dark greenish grey as the floor? Mary thinks yes; I think no. If anyone has any views, could they let me know soon? What we have in the specifications is off white matt tiles in a nice big size.

Mary says the staircase is done. She has started to wonder how the south side is to be landscaped - one of my longstanding preoccupations. How about a pond outside the sitting room?

We are off to Runival again tomorrow, so there will be more pictures at the beginning of next week.

Two recent visits

We spent a few days indulging in Extreme Housekeeping at Runival earlier this week, and visited the Wood on the way there and on the way back, which was on a weekday, so we saw chaps working. The harling and the wood cladding are now done; and the harling has been painted on the south side, where the brise soleil was being bolted together the second time we were there. The water was turned on - gushes and gushes of it. I find it hard not to think that this is simply emptying the pool down below, though I know this is not how aquifers work.

Ronnie the Stair God was there making stairs; chaps were painting the walls.

Out

The Wood, 5 April 2008

Back

The Wood, 10 April 2008

We are now waiting to see if the mahogany will be enough for the shower seat; and we also wonder if the kitchen lighting is quite right. But Mary is on holiday, so we will have to wait to discover both those things.

Compare and Contrast: Exterior

Nov07

Dec07

Feb08

Mar 08

Easter 08

Compare and Contrast: Interior

From Sitting room towards the front door. (West to East)
Nov07

Dec07

Feb08

March 08

Easter 08

Compare and Contrast: Interior 2

Interior: East to West
Nov 07

Dec 07

Feb 08

March 08

Easter 08

Elements

Sink (big) - Franke GAX 110 45

Sink (little) - Franke ARX 110 35













Oven Hotpoint SE661X














Hob - Bosch PCD615FEU

Kitchen plan

Mary has sent the plan of the kitchen that is to be made by her furniture maker on Skye. I hope you can make it out. The stuff is to be made of wood, mainly painted; but the bench tops will be elm, from a tree that he knew when it was growing, which is nice.

He makes real furniture too. Mary has a table and a bed by him, designed by herself. They are jolly nice but expensive. I have a sort of long term plan for a window seat; but that will have to wait in line after the deer fence and the boat or boats.

Off to Runival for a week tomorrow. There will be more pictures of the house when we return, I hope.

Easter Day visit

We went to the Wood with Ursula today. There is now a front door, which was locked; but we cunningly found the key. The door is very solid and Scandinavian; but it seems to be made of metal, and I thought it was going to be wood.

Easter Day visit

All the walls now seem to be in place, and the Ames taping has started. We are beginning to get a feel for the rooms. The sitting room is very high and its window is rather overpowering. There seems to be acres of space in there, enough for about three sofas and two pianos. The wood stove has been installed and the stainless steel chimney pipe is in. The electricity wires are still in mysterious places, such as behind where the sliding door to the utility room will be; but we are sure all will be well in due course. Ronnie the Stair God has not yet made the stairs. For the stiff, using the ladder is a bit scary. We can see where the storage places under the eaves have been put in. Sadly, the insides of those places have not been finished off, which rather bothers me. What is the point of little cupboards that just lead into nasty little places that are impossible to keep clean, surrounded by insulation? On the positive side, though, the clothes hanging places between the main bedroom and the bathroom are nice and big, and the linen cupboard is huge. The downstairs windowsills are there but they are odd banal little things and I can't believe they are what were intended. So there are several things to take up with Mary.

The access track is firm, but it needs some tidying up. Some of the devastation is settling down a bit, though the main embankments are still frightful.

A Useful Place

We didn't manage a trip to the wood with Esther, as the Flying Refrigerator had a pain in its little inside; but here is a plan of the utility room. I have asked for a single sink bowl, and drainage by way of grooves in the bench top. I still don't know what the kitchen itself will look like.

We hope to have some more interesting pictures than this next week, if the forecasted bad weather does not prevent our trip to Runival for the Easter weekend.

We Have Been Upstairs

We went to the Wood on 1st March, and the photographs show what we found: blockwork on the walls; the larch cladding started on the extension; electric wires all over the place; some downstairs walls; the fireplace wall; the first stage of ceiling throughout the ground floor; the first stage of flooring all over upstairs; the insulation in the walls downstairs and in some of the roof upstairs.

Some photos from Cecilia:

Visit on 1 March 2008

From Livy

The Wood March 08

There was a young joiner working on the inside of the roof, with his brother helping. I am embarrassed that I didn't ask their names (must find out from Alistair); but he was very engaging and charmingly ready to explain anything we asked about. He seemed very competent and he spoke with some awe of Ronnie who will soon be making the staircase - another Invergarry man whose expertise at stairs is legendary, and whose own new house is just opposite the Post office.

We opened the upstairs windows and looked out at the views, which are pretty nice. The upstairs spare loo has a window that will take up almost all of its ceiling, which will be interesting. I can imagine sitting there with the light off on a clear night, watching the stars.

The Nibe's ducting is sensibly running along the north side of the eaves, but there is still space in the south eaves for concealed storage, which still has to be sorted out.

One thing we need to sort out, as those who bother to read photograph captions will have noticed, is what to call the two main sides of the house. Naturally, I think, the side facing the road is the back - one would not want to have the main front facing the road. And so, of course, the front door is at the back. Well, that is an unimportant detail. But the logicians in the family want consistency.

We walked around in the wood a little, beginning the process of finding paths and sitting rocks. It was very wet and rather cold, and nothing much was growing yet.

The next trip may be when Esther is staying, if she can bear it.

A Roof that Apparently Does Keep the Rain Out

We went to the Wood again yesterday. It was a misty day and the views were not inspiring. There was still a lot of mud and mess; but things were looking good. There is now a real slate roof, with real steel gutters; and Alistair has worked out a nifty way of doing without extra downpipes on the rear wall where the little roof over the extension is shorter than the main roof. Alistair had left the house open so we could see that the floor has been screeded, with pipes set underneath it for the heating. We could even see where the mat well (that important feature of civilised living) will be. The first stage of part of the ceiling was also there; and so we were able to get a feel for how high the downstairs rooms will be.

The Wood February 2008

I took lots of pictures, but they are not here yet as I have forgotten to bring the relevant bit of wire to St Andrews. I'll put them on later (like now! - Livy). Roy took his camera, but it gave up after half a dozen pictures, as before. But the good news is that we were accompanied by a visiting American scholar, interested in fishing and the Highlands, who seemed very happy to sit in a car for eight hours as the price of seeing a bit of Scotland. He has put some lovely pictures on his blog: http://james-caldwell.blogspot.com/
I particularly like the panorama of the house in the site. There are also two nice video clips (not of the wood) - one with an unexpected narrative including bits about capercaillies. Do look.

We thought the house looked huge. Of course, there are no internal walls yet, so it would, wouldn't it? The utility room is a bit small; but it will do the job. The piano alcove is big enough for two uprights; and the overhead light for my music looks excellent. All the damp timbers seem to be drying out nicely. We were a little bit worried that there didn't seem to be enough space in the timber frame to squash in our 200mm of insulation; but Mary has reassured us about this today. Outside, we saw that the borehole has been tidily cemented. The nymphaeum, like everything else, needs landscaping, of course. Roy thinks he knows where he is going to put his cellar. I think I know where we will be beginning to make our straggle of outhouses, woodsheds and so on.

So the only thing to worry about now is planning permission. Please go on praying.

After we had poked around the house, we walked down to the river, as Jim wanted to decide whether to come back with a fishing licence. I think he might. There are a couple of recently fallen trees which will need tidying up. I have found a very good stone for sitting on and I am planning where to put benches and other sitting (as opposed to standing) stones.

We agreed that the new site is a great improvement on the old one: more connected with the pretty part of the wood, further away from the nearer neighbour, standing well up and commanding better views than from the meadow.

The other news is that we might be changing the name of the house. Roy discovered that tiodhlag has associations with funerals and burial. So? Anyway - we are in discussion about this, and will let you know what piece of interesting spelling we finally hit on.

Meeting with Alistair

On the way back from Runival we stopped at Alistair's place to give him a bottle of whisky. He lives just by the road to Invergarry from Spean Bridge and his place is full of JCBs, other pieces of building equipment, tremendous sheds and lots and lots and lots of gaily coloured toys for small children.

We had told him we might be dropping in at the Wood, if that would be all right; and he had terribly kindly undone the wood covering the front door (see last posting); but we hadn't stopped on the way back and so we felt he had gone to that trouble for nothing. In any case, I would have been afraid of doing something bad and breaking something if we had gone in without his being there.

We talked about getting the electricity in, which he had in hand. Apparently the Hydro don't like making more than two hookups in any period of six months, as they have to compensate people for the supply being turned off whilst the hookup is being done. He knows the chaps, though, and he was hopeful that it would be done sooner rather than later. It seems he may be right about that, as when we contacted the electricity board today to say which tariff we would be wanting they said that had already been noted. It must have been Alistair who told them, I think.

We were talking in general terms about how soon he would be needing to know any final details about electricity; and he said mid-January. So I have rather shame-facedly been going back to Mary about putting in more light and power. We really ought to have done this before the plans were finalised; but there were all sorts of deadlines and we just went with the flow in order not to slow things down. Oh well, I hope it won't come in as too much more, though of course there will have to be an AI with plans. It has been quite jolly looking at the online catalogue of light fittings and discussing what I prefer. Roy has very kindly stepped back from this discussion - he feels sufficiently stressed out by financing the project.

The main topic of interest was the well. He gave us the driller's log, which shows that the first three metres of hole went through sand and gravel, and that the drill then hit granite, which it proceeded to chew through for another two days to a depth of 140 metres. They put a metal pipe in the top part and then perforated tube below. At first, there was very little water; but Alistair encouraged them to dig a bit deeper and then they found 80 gallons an hour, from below sea level.

He said they had brought up three tons of fine grit, some of which we saw beside the hole, in the nymphaeum. Such grit is said to be very fertile, but I am not sure where it has all gone. Perhaps they have carted it away. If not, I will scatter it in chosen parts.

Alistair also told us that the slaters were to be coming the following day; and as I write I think they may actually have finished by now. Mary will be going to the house on Friday, to do another valuation; and we hope to have some pictures from her then.

Last Visit of 2007

Photos:

All Windows

We went to the wood on the way to spend Hogmanay Somewhere Even More Remote. As it was the last day of the year we were right in not expecting to find anyone at work there.

The house is now completely house-shaped. It has all its structural parts; and the windows are in, which shows that Nordan were spot on in their delivery schedule and Alistair in his ordering. (See earlier posting about windows.) We couldn't really see what they were like as they were carefully protected by thick plastic held on by battens of wood. We couldn't get in as the front door hole had been closed with a piece of wood.

The surroundings are still pretty similar to what I understand a First World War battlefield might have been like on a less frantic day than most: some trees uprooted; others bravely withstanding miscellaneous piles of earth heaped around them; wastes of bare earth and stones; pieces of wood and stuff; the odd piece of slightly heavy machinery; water both standing and flowing; places where things have obviously been buried; signs of fire (including one which has made one of the few remaining trees from the ex-knoll look even more maltreated).

The nymphaeum was exciting: a pipe standing out of the ground; a very deep puddle shaped like a bath; heaps of stuff looking like slightly set cement (see next posting for an explanation of this). The nymphs weren't exactly dancing there, as it was too cold; but there were definite signs of their being about to take up residence. In fact, I realise that we will need a little shrine there for them. So if anyone knows someone who designs houses for lares et penates and miscellaneous pagan deities, please advise. I will not be perfectly happy about the security of the water supply until we have sorted out this bit of the design. I think Mary, who is happy to do garages and outbuildings, might find such a commission a little outre. A tholos, perhaps. Or would they want something more enclosed in the Highlands? Something like a broch? We could keep watering cans in it. It would need spaces in the walls for candles like the wall at Winchester.

Which reminds me that we will be needing a woodshed sooner rather than later. Also friends with chain saws. So can I also send out a request for those? I have an idea about a woodshed against the downhill slope of the entrance causeway which seems to be taller every time I look at it with the eye of a landscaper. To the drawing board for that. We wonder about a long weekend with a chainsaw in March, to rid ourselves of the most reproachful piles of dead trees.

There were stacks of slates and blocks at the back of the house and at the side of the road. Exciting. (Amazing what one can find to get excited about.)

The track was looking good: only showing fairly minimal signs of run-off and only a few places looking churned up where something biggish had made a mess. Otherwise, though, there is a dire need of landscaping and planting, and therefore deer defence. Getting down from the house and the track into the rest of the site is a bit of a challenge at present, because even with the laudable intention of snuggling the house into the hillside, when digging away a knoll there is only so far you can go before you start to do quite serious damage. So there is a slope a bit like the one at Kimpton down from the house to the lawn, but higher, from the terrace at the south side of the house; and the track, as I have said, is on a causeway. The slopes are a mixture of gravel, bigger stones and peat and I will have to get a Ph testing kit to work out what will go on them.

Anyway - that was that visit. Pictures will follow when Roy has forced his camera to give up its hostages. It packed up long before I had captured all I wanted to. (I had left my camera in Edinburgh. Silly.)