Days 87 to 94 in isolation at Tony and Nickys

Trial run of wheeling a full barrow!

A busy day yesterday, and an early one, for this house anyway. Even the fowl were confused by being fed and watered so early. The concrete mixer lorry was booked for 08.00 (well it was that or 14.00), then Tony announced that if he was booked for 08.00 he’d be ready to pour at 8.00 if not before, and so he was! By 08.45 he’d gone leaving behind 12 tons of concrete! He (Billy), Brian and Tony had wheelbarrowed it in under Nicky’s control, she had the button to mix and fill the barrows. While they dumped it vaguely about the place I raked it about getting it into all areas, and corners, as evenly as possible, apparently I was very red which doesn’t surprise me at all.

A quick break and hose off of the gangplanks, two of the £50 roof joists! These were good ones that are to be used, not the four which have been returned today as too warped to use. Completely counterintuitive, but we had to return them in the state we received and rejected them!

Tonys handiwork. All the underfloor heating pipes connected into its distribution manifold. This is one of two for the whole house. The pressure tester is fitted to make sure no leaks

All ready to pour concrete. Concrete blocks for stairs to rest on, insulation, polythene, rebar and underfloor heating pipes fitted. Planks in position ready to wheel full barrows of concrete over

After the madness, concrete in!

Screeding or levelling was the next step Tony and Brian on either end of planks of various lengths. Moving them back and forth, smoothing high spots while Nicky and I filled in low spots. Sounds hard enough, but made worse as there was no way to start at one end and just move down as the retaining walls are only one block wide and very close to the stonework. So, using a custom made plinth in the middle on which he balanced, Tony basically went round while Brian had to come in and out of doorways and edges. At times they were both balanced on long, bouncy planks of wood. Nobody fell in, but there were a couple of close calls. Nearly over, a break for bacon sandwiches for second breakfast.

Wash everything down, sweep and scrape droppings off the floor while Tony ‘polished’, and then phew, over. We all sat around looking a little pathetic before lunch which did make us feel better but we all went for a lie down after. Feeling a lot more refreshed B and I decided to go for a little walk, we were out for about 45 minutes, to the Land girls Memorial, from where we could see the sea. Made a very pleasant change. Got back to find T&N weeding so went to join them, with a glass of wine!

Meanwhile in the house....

The previous week had been all about prepping for this occasion, building of little retaining walls, and woodwork to mount the two manifolds for the underfloor heating. I found a hole, that seemed to go under the previous pour that just ate concrete. Insertion of blocks to make pads to support the planks to enable the screeding, and to support the stairs. This was harder than it sounds, the electrical supply was installed eight years ago when work started on the other property, so, although planned, when actually measured now the woodwork is in if the stairs had gone where they were on the drawing there is no way Tony would have been able to actually access the power board where the three phase mains and the solar power will come in, or for there to have been a cupboard with a door. Talking and thinking and planning took a phenomenal amount of time. Why did this matter? Concrete blocks needed to be in place for the newel posts. Why not just build a huge pad? Because then there would be no space for underfloor heating pipes....

At one point Gummy cat did venture into the madness, walked round the edge of one of the blocks between wall and very wet cement, saw Tony in the middle and put one paw in to try to get to him. Numerous shouts of 'Noooo' he thought better of it, retrieved his paw from the deep hole and retired to bed. Here's his concrety paw. You can even see his only tooth, hence his name Gummy. Tony and Nicky adopted him from the cats home following his previous mistreatment by original owners  

Broken cement mixer with drum on  the floor

In the middle of all this the cement mixer died, I was wood cutting for Brian’s box, so rather than it being me operating it fortunately it was Tony and Brian. They were standing and chatting when the drum tilted forward and fell off its spindle, grinding to a halt! Disaster, how does the drum come off? How much is it to get a new one? How long does it take? We were without it for a day and a half concrete and mortar were mixed by hand before a new drum was sourced, ordered but never collected from a shop in Elgin so Nicky could bring it home. It’s bright orange and very shiny and I’m doing my best to keep it this way. The old one had had a hard life with bits of solid concrete all over it which attracts more bits and so one. I have been wiping it out with a tissue after final rinse, but apparently this isn’t normal....!

At the Land Girls Memorial - our first time out!

The underfloor heating is very scary, the previous concrete pour has to have 100mm insulation all over it, then polythene to stop the concrete going down the tiniest of gaps left between insulation blocks. Then rebar, steel reinforcement which has to lie the right way up in relation to its neighbour to make it interlock. This is then cable tied together before the pipe itself is run back and forth and cable tied. It can bend fairly tightly, but don’t kink it, it can’t be joined, and pipes cannot cross. The not joining makes cutting them to fit the manifold very scary and meant that the four pipes from the porch had to go through a hole drilled for them in the retaining wall as the furthest pipe was just too short, the other three also had to go through the hole as they can’t cross! We’ll just have to be careful when we come to put the woodwork up where we attach the wood to the concrete block....!

Genghis cat likes to try out different observation places. Here he is in an old bath

It gets dark late here now. This was at 11:00pm

Today has been a little more gentle, Tony has again taken Nicky’s daughter and grandson to Aberdeen hospital so we have finished cleaning out the bird houses, and then watched two of the geese squeeze into the duck house. We’ve dealt with the delivery driver collecting the bad wood, and sorted through many piles of sandstone looking for coins the right size to go around the big French door, the kitchen door and the new kitchen window...

Here's little three legged Cookie cat who screams blue murder if any of the other cats come close and just look at her.  None of them touch her, but you wouldn't know it when you hear her high pitched scream. She's very sweet though and spends most nights on our bed when no-one else is around

The chickens, geese, ducks and guinea fowl just carry on. Here's a shot during the day when they are just ambling around, sleeping and pecking. Its a nice place to visit and chill out to hear them clucking away in a very unhurried fashion (except when they think you've got food, in which case they come running from every direction)

This is inside the polytunnel which has exploded into life. There's strawberries, potatoes, beans, peas, courgettes and tomatoes to name but a few. The two outside veg patches are also doing well along with the fruit trees, berry bushes and rhubarb patch (which is massive - good job we like it!)

Here's an updated video of the Steading build right up to the concrete pour

Days 81 to 86 in isolation at Tony and Nickys

Full of garden waste? Don't be ridiculous!

We did have a whole day off and very pleasant it was too, though sadly it kept looking like rain so we didn’t go and see the sea!

Thursday the gable end block work was finished, it actually took a lot less time than I expected as although lots of blocks needed cutting, the rows kept getting shorter.... Very pleased that that was done as we kept getting swifts (or are they swallows?) in. Then they fly up and down getting quite frantic and tired till either they manage to find another way out, or someone gives in and fetches the window opener... The really strange thing is that since we did this we still have swallows (or are the swifts?) three or maybe four, but these seem to know what they are doing. They come in the back door, that we use most

The last cut block for the gable end!

of the time, not concerned whether we are in the way, and then play, swooping up and down, and chasing each other, before darting out through tiny gaps above what will be the big windows before coming back in and repeating. What the difference between these three and previous birds is I don’t know, but they are loving it and are totally at ease coming and going and with us making lots of noise and mess.

Swooping birds in the Steading

Blockwork done round the big window and door on the right

Friday was going to be Hugh’s again, I was quite excited to leave the property for the first time in two and a half months, but sadly Tony’s half hour meeting at 09.30 was still going at 11.00! Then it was going to be tomorrow, but no, another meeting has reared it’s head... Instead preparation work was done for the back door and the big French windows, little retaining walls need to be built before the final concrete pour is done. The back doorstep also needed lowering, it was fine for me but apparently it wouldn’t be for anyone else! This involved Brian and I taking out the very big stone in the threshold and the little stones beneath it. It will also need making wider and possibly higher which will involve raising lintels Tony put in some while ago!

Look at that beautifully painted porch!

The next few days were spent working on these doorways, digging trenches to fill with concrete and building. Brian has opened up underneath another window to bring electrical cables through, and I’ve spent two days painting the porch. Bits of all three walls had been painted, but not all of any of them, that was rectified and a second coat done all over. It’s horrible paint, black, sticky, bitumen paint to waterproof the block, which is also horrible to paint as it’s not an even surface and paint has to be dobbed and stippled into all the little holes and crevices! I still feel I’ve got painters claw!

Old lintels out, new ones in, wall held up by anti gravity paste!

Today was lintels in another window, downstairs living room. Again the hairy business of removing old wooden beams leaving the stones above supported by anti-gravity paste until the new concrete lintels are inserted and cemented in with packing to fill the gaps. Once started we have to continue, so make sure we are fed and watered before! Only one more window to go, upstairs in the gable end!

The chicks can’t really be called chicks anymore, if they were being bred as birds for 'roast chicken' they would have reached the end of their lives, as they are not you wouldn’t really get a satisfactory meal from them but it does put things into perspective... They have been allowed out into the bigger space attached to their little pen and they love it. It really wound the geese up as they were getting too close to their nest, albeit with a fence inbetween which the geese couldn’t seem to fathom. It didn’t take the chicks long to work out that the geese couldn’t ‘get’ them though....

Little chicks in their new outside home

Actually, they're not so little - or chicks now

Tony has had a delivery from his mum, we were having a conversation the other week about childhood foods, Tony was going on about Blancmange, not as I remember it, cold and in a jelly mould, but hot as chocolate custard. Then, completely out of the blue, Tony had an email from his mum asking if he would like some chocolate Blancmange, she was going to be ordering some, and some custard packets.... freaky or what? 

A box arrived last week, 24 packets of custard, 12 packets of chocolate Blancmange and six chocolate cake mixes (each one making two layers, so one per Blancmange.....) so, how would it be? As he remembered it? Better than I remembered cold Blancmange? Good, yes and yes, hurrah! The rhubarb bushes are going mad, so that’s custard sorted and Tesco have condensed milk back in, so that’s Brian’s ice cream back on the menu, particularly yummy with any of the frozen fruit sauces from last years fruit. Luckily Brian is ‘pudding mum’ when it comes to serving up!

A quarter of a chocolate cake each, covered in hot chocolate custard. Whats not to like? And memory lane for Tony. It's only a pity that you can't see what time it is on the clock. However, you can see the bottom half and no hands are visible, so its at least 10 pm and probably later

Swallow/swifts up in the rafters in the Steading

Tony is in the somewhere sanding the floor. That's the dust being blown out!

Gummy and Tufty cats keeping out he way

Along with Genghis cat who decided the trailer was a great place to sit

Geese getting a little agitated with the chicks in their new home

Brian dug a hole through a wall for access for an electrical cable. Tony planted Roland Rat in it

Here's the next problem Tony has to sort out - underfloor heating. This is the finished house with 12 separate loops of underfloor heating coils all beautifully terminated and connected. This now needs to be repeated in the Steading

There will be two separate manifolds, one of 8 and one of 6. The one of 8 has to fit in this window recess (the one with Roland Rat in the left corner). Most of the loops of pipe have been concreted into the floor, more will go under the lounge area yet to be poured with concrete, and are coiled up just out of view. The scary part is cutting them and joining to the manifold. If they are cut wrong they won't fit and, under concrete they can't be replaced. It has to be right first time! Scary! I'm not going to cut them, Tony will do that! 

Footprints in the concrete from an earlier concrete pour. Whose prints are these?

Days 73 to 80 in isolation at Tony and Nickys

Slight problem with my glasses! 

A whole day off, maybe, but I bet we end up doing something later except that our clothes are all on the dryer...

We finished the internal woodwork as far as we can downstairs on Monday, the kitchen, downstairs bathroom and utility room, walls and ceiling joists. Having randomly ordered wood before lockdown, Tony called out that we needed four more ‘sticks’ of 4” timber, handy that as we’ve got four sticks left.... “right, you’ve got to measure right and I’ve got to cut right then”! 

We do feel this build is lucky to be as good as it is, I have to peer at the tape measure as I’m wearing my old reading glasses, not wanting to risk my only varifocals, Brian doesn’t hear half of what is said to him, and when Tony went indoors to find a pair of glasses he came out empty handed as he couldn’t remember what he went in for.... 

Tufty cat checking that I'm doing things correctly

Between the kitchen and living room will be a block work wall, but before we do that we need to lay the underfloor heating and have a lorryload of cement delivered, and before we do that the kitchen doorway has to be enlarged and the French door space made solid.....

Here's a really annoying mistake I made: See those 'boxes' with the plywood backing? They are made like that so the plywood holds the uprights and horizontals square to each other and are used at corners or major junctions of the wall build to make sure everything is square. I've made all the ones on this part and they shout out dimensions required and I work out wood cutting lengths and build them up. So far every one has been correct, but on these two, they gave me the finished height required and I forgot there were two floor plates on this run, not one (you can just see the two on top of each other on the floor). So I built the two one thickness of wood too high (45mm). I wasn't until they were fixed in position was it noticed. Jackie looked up and said 'they are higher than the one on the left' and on looking, it was obvious. Solution: take them partially apart, cut wood, rebuild. An annoying two or three hours of extra work, but here they are refixed and correct! The gap on the left is where the kitchen window will be, just the lintel and a few stones removed so far

Little three legged Cookie cat on our bed

Yesterday Brian and Tony went to ‘Hugh’s’ farm, about an hour away where Tony started installing electrics in the cowshed (Hugh is a farmer and vet who breeds Aberdeen Angus) for calving. He got light in for that, but now it needs finishing off and electric sockets adding. Brian can write more about that as I wasn’t there...

B: Aberdeen Angus bulls are huge! They stood looking at us from behind solid steel railings and I was very glad the railings were there. They were not agressive, nor did they make a sound or move, but their presence was enough! We saw no-one at the farm, so just got on with the work Tony had started. He was installing lighting, I got on with fitting plastic conduit for wiring sockets high up round a big barn. It

A heavy downpour created this lovely rainbow

was quite dark, very dirty, with three quite noisy and smelly dogs in cages in there and I had to move loads of junk to get access to the walls to rest my ladders against. In four hours I fixed about 30m of conduit into stone walls, up and down ladders, in and out to collect bits etc. Tony managed wiring for some of the lights, but we have at least another days work. The conduit needs extending through an upstairs room and into a cattle barn then all wires need pulling through, sockets fitted and properly terminated. Its hard work, but the views outside are nice, its high up giving splendid views all round but, they tell me, its exposed and can be very cold and windy. The scenic drive back was lovely and rekindled my desire to get back out into the hills. Oh how long will this lockdown continue? 

Little chicklets out in their new home, feeling very unsure of where they are

Here's very shy Dougal cat sorting a plant out!

Instead, I was here with Nicky, I tidied up, putting away, amongst other things, the half dozen different sized screws we’d been using, two sizes of nail gun nails, four different sizes of spirit level and swept up enough sawdust to fill at least two bran tubs! I sorted out wood that the slater has thrown down, put a fence round the second vegetable patch with Nicky and made another new perch for the babies. I’d already given them a second perch, on the same beam as the one that was in there, but realised it’s really quite high for the little birds, so I’ve put one in lower. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, there was a beam for the other two but not this one, so screw some blocks from the outside and rest the perch across it. One side easy enough, I could reach in through their entrance, the other, no way I could reach, and Nicky had gone to Tesco. Screw the points in a smidge, jam the block on, screw blind from the outside while keeping fingers crossed.... hurrah.

We even had time for an early evening G&T in the garden with Genghis cat

The babies have been outside for a couple of days now, it’s a little early, but the amount of poo they produce is unbelievable, and they were almost bursting out of their cage. They hated being put into the pet carrier either to be taken outside if the weather was good, or just to be cleaned out if the weather was bad, but strangely now it’s their safe place! What they are scared of now is the hen house, dark and full of straw. Getting them all in there for bed has been a challenge! They love the space of the little run though, watching them jumping and flapping was very cute.

Late one evening, just before dark we went out to put all the birds to bed to find the white guinea fowl on top of the duck house. Trying to get her down frightened her - and she flew off to the top of the Steading roof! 'What's your strategy for getting her down now then?' Tony asked. 'Errr' Fortunnately she flew down of her own accord before it went dark (about 11pm!)  

So why the day off? We don’t know what to start on next and Tony has meetings for the day trying to decide which college kids to pass, and which to fail. Very difficult as some of them only did 5 weeks of the 16 week CAD module and haven’t ‘engaged’ during lockdown....

Here's an updated time lapse video of the Steading woodwork build process. I think, more than anything else, its interesting to see how the piles of wood go down

Here's another view of the woodwork so far (and as far as we can go until the next concrete pour to raise the level of the lower bit in the foreground). This area is going to be their kitchen - big isn't it! Beyond, at the end will be a utility room on the left and a downstairs loo and shower

This is a view at the end. The stack of sheets of plywood is the top of the kitchen (you can just see it in the previous photo) and this is looking into the utility on left and loo and shower room in the right corner

And this is a view from inside the utility back the other way, where you can just about see the far wall, one hundred feet (30m) away

Days 67 to 72 in isolation at Tony and Nickys

Hens paddling to get cool on a hot day

Rain today for the first time in weeks. The garden really needs it. Fortunately Brian and Tony had finished their outdoor plumbing job at a friends by the time it started. Her main water supply to her house had been leaking for a good while from the stop cock in her garden, making a nice pond that threatened to undermine the foundations of her house, probably since she paid a plumber to do a job! 

The supply is from a tank higher up the hill, so cap the inlet in the tank, insert pump into pond and attempt to pump out as much water as possible, dig a soggy hole to reveal valve and pipe and attempt repair. First attempt by tightening the joint didn't work due to incompatible fittings originally used so complete replacement necessary. Leak stopped, cap on inlet removed and still no leak on pressurised pipe so all looks good. Hole left for a couple of days to make sure everything OK, so keep everything crossed its not leaking when they go back to fill it in.

This is the before haircut photo...

When they went at the weekend to have a look and assess what needed doing Nicky took the opportunity to cut my hair, it was definitely in need. Two hours later, some overworked clippers, and quite a lot of stress, I am shorn. A little shorter than perhaps expected, but much neater, cooler and easier and quite ‘cool’.

Work has continued on the woodwork for the internal walls, so the internal stonework has had to be filled and patched before its hidden away, never to be seen again. The remains of the wooden joists have to be dug out and filled with slate and bricks, though the decision was made to take out five of these little columns and insert a lintel to provide support for removing stones to put in a kitchen

And the after haircut photo. Its definitely short!

window! So strange today, having just got a nice, neat, complete wall we started chiselling mortar out until we got daylight. It’s thinking all these things through and deciding where the Aga is going in relation to the door, in relation to the units that gives the rough area the window is going in, with which blocks come out that will make the final precise decision. But it all takes time, and discussion. Some days we’ve been in and out, and to and fro the plans on the computer, brainstorming, measuring etc. Not stopping or relaxing, but with little to actually see at the end of the day! It’s all part of an ongoing process, but some days there seem to be so many things you have to do before you can actually do what you thought was the plan for the day... It really is all very rewarding and satisfying though.

Jackies outside chicken shelter. It'll definitely withstand a hurricane!

Hoisting up a lintel

In chick news I built them a shelter for when they go outside, it’s a bit high, in case Tony wanted it sunk into the ground, and slightly over engineered, but all my own work so, again, very satisfying! They have spent the last few days outside both on the lawn and in what will be their new run, well they are four and a half weeks old now! Getting them out of the travel box into the cage on the lawn is fabulous, they are like little paratroopers, all lining up to jump out of an aircraft. Getting them into the travel box, you’d think we were murdering them! 

They are still getting bigger, obviously, but do actually have seemed to have slowed down a little. They are nearly all feathers now, with only tiny bits of down and are half and half predominantly black with white highlights, or white with black highlights. No brown hens here. All very pretty.

Jackie didn't mention the chicken pot she made. See that ventilation cap on the roof of the porch?

She decided the chickens deserved one too on the roof of their house

So here it is all beautifully made from a wooden spike on top of a baked bean tin

I have to put this photo on. What does this say? Tony wrote it by a drawing of a plan we were making. He looked incredulous when I didn't understand. Is it 3-2003? What is that? In the end, turned through 90 degrees it reads, vertically, WINDOW

 

Here's a panorama inside the Steading showing the woodwork building so far

And here it is from the top of the stairs. We're pretty pleased with it

Work so far on the creation of a kitchen window. Just a hole so far, through the 600mm thick stone wall

The chicks are no longer little balls of fluff, they are quite large small chickens now!