Junk & dust
October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
The work on the Glendale cottage has really started. All plasterboards are ripped out and tomorrow the partition studs will be removed. Upstairs and downstairs will be just one big space and we can start planning for a new layout.
I made a start with chiseling off the mortar from the walls. It’s been on there for years and you can tell. The whole downstairs is now covered in sand and pieces of mortar. The estimate is that the stripping down will take probably two more weeks. There are also some outside jobs that need to be done as well and although the roof looks good, we’re thinking of removing the old concrete tiles and replace them with Spanish slates.
Tomorrow it’s off again to Glendale. I will take some pictures to publish here later on. Believe me: it’s all junk and dust right now.
Bookmarks!!
October 3, 2008 | 1 Comment |
Every now and then you stumble upon a really great site. I found delicious.com, a site where you can store, tag and share your internet bookmarks. Great stuff. Not only are your bookmarks safe from possible disk crashes, but you can organize them and you can download them in case you’re working on a other computer than your own (maybe in a internet cafe somewhere). Delicious offer a handy plug-in for all popular browsers to easily manage your bookmarks and even import your existing collection….
Rating: 4.9 out of 5
Tiled
October 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
The roof of the shed is tiled. And just in time, I might say. Today the slaters defied some 60 mpu gales and finished almost all of the slating. The heavy winds were already trying to rip off the carefully fitted roof felt. Tomorrow the ridge tiles will go on and the finally the gaps between the outer slates and the barge boards need to be filled with silicone. Remaining jobs in order of priority: fit a door, finish the floorboards, connect electricity.
We also started work on our property in Glendale, which is going to be a holiday let. All old junk has been removed and most has been burned: mattresses, old sofas, old cupboards, old sheets of v-lining, curtains etc. In the close by shed we have deposited old carpets, old sheets of vinyl, and more. We even found some lead covered wires, letters from previous owners dating back to 1945 and an old catalog, almost like the first incarnation of the Argos catalog. Once the stripping is completed we’ll have a good think about the future partitioning of the property.
Crunch time
October 1, 2008 | 2 Comments |
“Gordon Brown promised last night that the Government would ‘roll up its sleeves’ and sort out the banking system.”
“Gordon Brown was personally fighting to save the proposed £12 billion rescue of Britain’s biggest savings bank last night amid growing doubts over the deal.”
A fair collection of hollow cries. The scary thing is that it’s happening world wide. In Holland “Fortis Bank” - a conglomerate of Belgium and Dutch origin - nearly went to the dogs, only saved by a massive 12 billion Euro’s nationalization effort by the governments of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
In the US a 700 billion dollar (!) rescue plan was voted down, forcing good ol’ George to make four pleas on television to the American people within one week for their support.
I wonder where all this money is coming from? Does Gordon Brown just call Alistair Darling?
“Erm… ah…. by the way Alistair, be a good lad and turn on the presses tonight and cram out another 20 billion pounds… we’ve got another one falling over…”
“Ah… oh…. you’re still busy with that 50 billion from last week. Hmmm… well… erm… yes… maybe we should buy some Irish banks…. hmmm… yes…. they seem to guarantee customer accounts up to 100%…. hmmm… yes…. ah….”
Should we be worried? Will the system completely collapse?
New stove
September 30, 2008 | 2 Comments |
We’ve had the first colder days: northerly winds and a rapid drop of temperature. Over the past days we’ve been using our lounge stove as a primary heating source and it works pretty well. So well that we decided to buy a seconds stove for the kitchen which will be installed before the end of October. The only time we need to use oil now is for hot water, but given the efficiency of the boiler that’s not too bad. Probably a tank of oil per year. So for the time being we’ve put aside wild plans for heat pumps. Maybe over time we might reconsider installing solar panels, however they’re still too expensive to warrant a reasonable earn back…
Highs and lows
September 26, 2008 | 2 Comments |
We definitely had some days of highs and lows. To start off with a high: An old schoolfriend - whom I had not seen for 28(!) years - and his wife visited us and stayed across the road in our cottage. We had a great time sharing memories of days long gone and added some really good new ones! They enjoyed their stay on Skye and we hope they’ll be back next year.
Second high was tonight with a special on BBC Four on David Gilmour’s concert in Gdansk, Poland. A great performance which was partly covered by BBC TV.
Connected to that is a definite low, the passing of Richard Wright, the keyboard player and founding member of Pink Floyd. He was the man of “The Great Gig In The Sky” (music in the video below), “Us And Them” and the album “Wish You Were Here” carries the signature of his brilliant keyboard work. A sad loss.
The second low was a rather complicated fault in our telephone line which was eventually solved by BT this morning. But only after long, long, long phone calls to a whole range of different BT 0800 numbers. They have a really nice attitude: “Yeah sure, if you insist we will send out an engineer but if it appears to be on your end, you pay us £116.43!”. They almost made me feel like I was a customer… “Customer’…. a rare breed nowadays. Eventually the engineer had to replace a cable between two poles some 300 meters from our house and also a cable between two poles right in front of our house.
To end on a high… The weather. We had some nice and dry days during the past week which gave me the opportunity to finish the roof of the shed as much as I could. All the roof felt is now on and the whole structure is basically water tight but the big wait is now for the slater to his job.
Rough casting revisited
September 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
I removed the protective plastic yesterday and today I took down the scaffolding. Check out the photo with the front gable rough casted, ready for painting. The other walls only have their scratch coat, but already the whole thing had a complete transformation.
I setup the scaffolding along the wall with the two windows (two bays to cover the length of the shed) as during the following weeks the slating of the roof will be done.
Although only the front gable is finished, Ben and Joel’s work have transformed it to the real thing. Coming Friday to Portree to visit Howdens and order a nice door for it.
Rough casting
September 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
In the ongoing battle to keep the cost for heating down, we decided to fit the kitchen with a wood burning stove. The kitchen is quite big, with a vaulted ceiling and we spend quite some time in it as it also has a family/dining area. Anyway, next week a specialist from MacDonald brothers (a local builder) will come by to discuss the possibilities and the cost.
On the shed: the first steps of the finishings have been taken as Ben and Joel came by yesterday and today to do the rough casting. This is a two staged process: first a scratch coat and then the finishing layer with the stone chips. For the seconds stage the first coat needs to be really dry otherwise it will just glide off, so only the front gable was finished today. Ben will return after his holiday to finish the job. I will put some pictures up tomorrow as now the front gable is covered with a protective sheet of plastic to prevent the rain from washing it down.
The King of Stings
September 6, 2008 | 2 Comments |
Most unfortunate! I got stung by a wasp this week. In my middle finger of my right hand to be precise. It burned for a night and now it’s itching. But it’s a deep itch, if you know what I mean. An itch you can’t really scratch. Very annoying… 
Not a clue…
September 6, 2008 | 1 Comment |
… how the British election system works. In Holland we have general elections every 4 years. I read loads of complaining about Gordon Brown and how everybody is waiting for general elections. IF they ever come… If he’s that bad a leader, the general elections should send Mr. Brown home… Or can they? Anybody out there who can shed some light on this…????
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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