The sheep with the stuck bum
February 27, 2009 | 2 Comments |
This morning while starting the daily routine with walking Jingles, I noticed a couple of sheep on the land in front of our house. Nothing special, there are sheep there most of the time. And as usual Jingles walks up to have a sniff. All but one ran away. I then noticed that one of them had its furry bum entangled in low hanging branch of a tree. It was stuck and could not go anywhere.
The sheep was terrified and bounced around like a loony. I first tried to free it with a pair of scissors, however the wool was all turned and twisted into the branch. I got a saw out and cut the branch as close to the sheep as I could, making sure I wasn’t kicked in the face. When freed it ran away quickly with a bit of the branch sticking out like an antenna. So if you see a black faced sheep with a stick hanging from its bum, you know where it’s been….
Big day!
February 26, 2009 | 4 Comments |
Pffff… I remembered! Today is the day that the council will collect our blue bin. Not the green bin, but the blue one. That bin is for recycling material like carton, tins, paper and the like. Really good initiative, I think. There are only two things wrong. First and most important: the collection scheme. We had ours full within two weeks and then had to put recyclable material back into the green bin. The collection scheme for the blue bin is once every four weeks…
Second, that awful colour… it really does not blend very well with the Skye scenery.
Otherwise, a really good addition to Council services!
The photo’s…
February 19, 2009 | 2 Comments |
As promised some pictures of the progress in Glendale. The parking to the left of the house is taking shape. Raymond had moved all the rubble of the old extension and made preparations for digging the foundations. Most of the rubble was used as hard core for the parking. Apparently the old extension did NOT have any foundations… Tomorrow afternoon the digging work for the water pipe will start.
Unfortunately the problems with the dumper truck grew worse. The fan belt broke completely, so we had to give up on it. Luckily Raymond managed to get another dumper on site quickly so we did not have any major delays.
Icky was on the roof removing the old concrete tiles. After removing them we found that the sarking board was not as good as we had thought. Quite a bit of wood worm. We probably need to replace it…. Inside Icky had finished re pointing the north faced gable wall. I think it looks absolutely stunning!
The digger and the dumper
February 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment |
After the cold weather of the past days it almost feels like spring is in the air. Daytime temperature is about 10C, which is quite nice. We’re making good progress in Glendale. A digger arrived on site today and the aft extension was torn down (see picture). Raymond operated the digger. First the chimney was targeted. With a big bang it went straight through the already rotten roof. The remaining walls were a breeze. Within 30 minutes the extension was no more but a big pile of rubble…
Then Raymond went on with some landscaping: the bell mouth and the parking place. Question was whether there would be rotten rock to create a top layer. As a backup we had the remains of the extension. Luckily there was rotten rock as it looks better than old concrete.
We were a bit unfortunate with the dumper truck which we had arranged for moving the remaining rubble off site. The fan belt kept slipping which made the engine overheating during transport. Eventually we managed to get it on site.
Icky finished putting in the new lintels and started re pointing the inside of the north gable. The south gable is too damp at the moment so that has to wait a bit. The dark stone and the cream colored lime morter go very well together. It looked great.
Lacking any appropriate skills I was appointed laborer today! I removed the scaffolding from the inside and got rid of all the rocks that were left over from replacing the lintels.
Next post with pictures….
First step
February 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment |
Today was the turn of events for River cottage, our property in Glendale. In stead of going there to rip out and remove we were going to rebuild and improve. Quite good after months of demolishing, ripping out, burning and bashing…
We do the work with two local craftsmen, Icky and Raymond. Today Icky made a start by replacing the wooden lintels with concrete, pre-stressed lintels. Before we got to that though, we had to off-load Icky’s concrete mixer from his van. I will spare you the details but the thing is massive, weighted a ton and it took us well over an hour before we had the beast in place.
Icky removed the first set of wooden lintels above one of the windows (one of the lintels was in a pretty bad state) and replaced them with concrete ones. I must admit that I was a bit concerned about walls coming down but that was misplaced. The whole operation went extremely smooth and shortly after lunch the new lintels were in place.
While Icky was restoring the stone work above the lintels, I started out with brick cleaner on one of the gable walls. We plan to have those walls as feature walls, with the bare stone work re-pointed and fully exposed. After weeks of carefully removing the old lime mortar, now was the time to start cleaning the bricks. The stuff I used to clean them is very aggressive and probably based on sulfuric acid. You need to wear protective clothing (goggles, gloves, mask). The effect is amazing, almost like discovering gems. As soon as the fluid hits the stone it starts bubbling and buzzing and the grey veil just drips off exposing the beauty of the stone.
Check out the photo’s. It was, by the way, a lovely day today with blue skies and loads of sunshine! And a first step towards a renovated cottage….
The man from Summer Ville Reservations
February 7, 2009 | 1 Comment |
Today we received an enquiry for our cottage. Not that this is a noteworthy event, we get quite a few. But this one was different. A certain Jack Haggin was profiling himself and his business called Summer Ville Reservations. He acts as an agent for people looking for accommodations abroad:
“I am Mr Jack Haggin,a reservation agent who specialise in getting accommodation for people visiting certain countries.I have a client who would be coming your way very soon and he’ll be spending a minimum of 14 nights.”
Hmmm… notice the “quirky style” and the poor punctuation? Yeah… I was suspicious as well. He rambles on about his guests and even asks about the distance to the nearest church as his guests are church going folk:
“NB: I will like to know the distance of the nearest church to the lodge,because my clients are devoted Christians and they will want to go to the church services while they are spending their stay with you.”
Well, a bit of browsing on the internet (…Google is your friend!…) confirmed what I already suspected. It’s a scam… What they do is the following. They book with you and make a payment by credit card. Then they cancel the booking and ask for a refund. You refund, only to find out that their initial credit card payment was fraudulent. A nice little scheme
“My client will check in by last week of May.{May 27th- June 10th}so kindly get back in touch with me within the shortest time possible.I will look forward to hearing from you,and i hope we can do business together in the nearest future.Bye and God bless.”
Yeah, sure!!! For a second I was tempted to scam the scammer. Remember the email scams that were around a couple of years ago? The prince of Zumumbu dying and his son looking for a bank account to conveniently park $16.000.000 excessive cash? Check out 419eater.com, a website dedicated to scamming the scammers in this world. I decided I could not be bothered with this moron….
Nevertheless, be warned about these people!
Radio Ga Ga
February 5, 2009 | 2 Comments |
Claire has been asking for a radio in the kitchen. We have a really nice Bose Wave Sound system (came with the kitchen) but it needs an antenna for a decent reception. I wasn’t thrilled about installing one. Messy wires. Quirky thing in the kitchen. Probably a bad reception anyway, due to the landscape…
Then I had a brainwave… Given to me as a going-away-present when we moved to Skye, I had this Roku Soundbridge device. It’s basically a networked radio and MP3 player. I had chucked it in a box when me moved our belongings to Skye. I decided to give it shot… After fiddling about for ten minutes I got it hooked up to the wireless LAN and it was playing BBC Radio 2’s live stream. As I write this, I have it now configured to receive a wealth of great internet radio stations (including Skye based Cuillin FM!) and I can stream all my MP3 songs in my iTunes library. And the good thing… it’s hooked up to the AUX port of the Bose Wave Sound, so we have a decent quality of sound with minimal clutter!!
The stone chair
February 4, 2009 | 1 Comment |
The continuous storms over the past weeks stopped last Sunday and we had blue skies and sun! Amazing and refreshing. It almost felt like spring. Right now, while the larger part of Britain is struggling with centimeters of snow, we’re in a bit of a mixed bag here: northern winds, quite fresh outside and gloomy looking clouds but no rain or snow… yet!
In Glendale we had our meter changed, so we no can use tools to help finish the stripping. Today I had a go at the parts of the walls where thick layers of concrete / lime mortar mix were used to render the walls. Impossible to remove with a bolster but with a power drill in “breaker mode” a piece of cake. I also had a go at digging up the old plumbing but that wasn’t too successful. The ground was pretty hard due to a bit of frost over the past days.
The good weather allowed me to do something I had not done for quite a while… sit in the stone chair. The stone chair is naturally shaped piece of rock in the form of chair, close to the loch shore. Quite comfy. It gives a majestic view over Loch Dunvegan and sitting there makes you forget that there’s a human world out there. Just the loch, squeaking seagulls, a heron flying low over the water and a set of very curious seals…
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Latest music...
Hair (1968, Original Broadway recording). Some naughty lyrics for that time!!
An Rathad a Bhatarsaigh, by the Vatersay Boys