Slate puzzle

The slater has been having a lot of trouble with springy, bouncy sarking boards but has completed the North side.

In ignorance and (not trying to hide anything) to save money, we used 18mm sarking boards, where we should have used more rigid 22mm boards; this is a good lesson and tip for any other self builders in Scotland! The result is that the 18mm's are hard to fix (or "chap" as they say) nails in to, they spring back, and mean the slates have less chance of surviving the nailing. The slate being installed with such hammering force also causes others to "bounce out"... So it's taken a lot longer to install them and has cost us more in breakages.

In order to minimise the chances of the same outcome on the south side, Jaimin spent Saturday installing some cross beam 2x4 struts between each set of trusses, to try and support the sarking a bit more and provide some rigidity. In the afternoon, Oli was on hand for a bit of help with the mitre saw.

On Sunday, James made an appearance and together, he and Jaimin managed to dig out a few more meters of clay pipe, and expose the end where we hope to connect on to with plastic. The fall is just about enough but there is a lot of tidying up to be done before the drain pipes can be fitted. It does mean that the majority of the digging is complete for the soil pipe, which is fantastic.

Jaimin goes to Denny, Finn goes to school!

Today is Finn's first day at big boy school, which is more than worth a mention. Here he his - ready to go, then with Eila and Jack on his way to school and finally parking his bike!

At the plot, the slater continues to chuck on the slates. Underestimation of the "loss" of slates that came off the roof as well as the lack of availability of 11 x 7's means that we can't use them on both sides, so we are going to end up with no less than 3 sizes of slate on the roof:

• half of the bathroom (up to the top of the roof window) has 16 x 8's
• the rest of the bathroom and the north facing roof will have the 11 x 7's
• the south facing side will have 12 x 8's which Jaimin had to collect yesterday

So, last night after work Jaimin headed down to Denny, near Stirling, with Neil's trailer to collect another 2000 slates. A long 8.5 hour round trip but worth it to keep the slater busy and the scaffold in use!

These were unloaded ready for grading at 7.00 this morning. Beautiful clear views made up for heavy work.

Mr Slater

Updated with more photos:
...

The slater has well and truly started. The Roofshield breathable membrane has gone on, we have scaffold on site, the slating has begun and the bathroom roof light is now installed. For anyone buying roof lights, Keylite are a very good option and we wish we'd used them for the larger south facing roof lights as well, but were seduced by Velux. Keylite have a simple flashing and a great in-built insulation (foam) collar to fill the gap, unlike Velux who force you to buy a BDX collar. Keylite are also cheaper despite the same warranty and U-value!

It turns out we probably don't have enough 7 x 11 slates, so today Jaimin is off to Denny to collect another 2000 12 x 8's to do the south side of the roof.

Back to sheep...

After a long summer break in July, involving among other notable stuff:
catching up with the Cambridge crew (after a very long time),

a beautiful country wedding,

Some chainsaw-assisted log stairs for the Pirate Tree House

Abersoch beach

a house with a hot tub

a birthday party at a dairy farm,

another epic win for that Kenyan dude,

and some "first ever big teeth"

we are back in the Shire and have even made a bit more progress.

First the update: because we are moving to Tarland (this is a good thing as the children won't have to move schools again and we will be nearer the plot) and because the cottage is not quite done (what have we been doing all this time?), our 6 month lease means we'll be in Tarland from Saturday for 6 months at least.

On arrival at the plot, we had been invaded by sheep, pigeons and swallows.
They had got in to the "store" of the barn and knocked over the tables, poo'd and pee'd everywhere and trashed it. The pigeons had nested and done similar in the cottage, and the swallows had taken it one step further by creating some new members of their family.

Job 1 was therefore to tidy up, then build a gate and fence (the barely visible bit below). There has been an old rotting wooden gate in the grass nearby for a long time so Jaimin collected it and upcycled it then installed it using 2 reclaimed iron hinges that were found lying around the plot, presumably from old stable or cottage garden doors.

On to the cottage...!
Before we left, the gutter brackets were almost complete and while away we decided we wanted another roof window above the bathroom. So on Saturday Jaimin went up and finished up all the gutter brackets (this time with screws, not square twist nails) and installed all the fascia brackets.

Next he installed the new noggins for the bathroom roof window, cut the parking and unleashed the recently renovated-with-love-and-dedication Paslode nail gun to firm it all up. No misfires, but some bad language from the cameraman...!

The roofer is officially starting on Monday... some progress should be reported in the coming weeks.

The view still looks great, especially in midsummer....