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?