It's been a miserable couple of days with torrential rain and sunny patches between.

The long side of the lounge block is now completed


The sunpipe in that section of roof is in place as well. This should provide extra light towards the rear of the upstairs bedroom which is located in that hipped section of roof.


The study roof is complete as well


The roof is now looking great when viewed from the North


The only work to be done now is the small amount of slating seen on the following picture and the ridge tiles on some sections of roof.


Kenny's mean machine arrived on site today. It is most impressive when you stand next to it, I hadn't realised quite how much bigger than our humble digger it actually was. Work will start in the morning digging out the enormous hole for the slinky piping which will collect the heat for the geothermal heating system.

Work is still progressing well again after a week of slow progress.
There is now another completed angle. So well over half the roof is complete now.


The velux on the hip has been finished and the slating is well over half done.


The final side has been started.

Rain stopped work yesterday after a couple of hours. But a lot of progress was made today.
There are now 2 completed sides on the roof on the North side of the building


The second side of the kitchen is complete


The second side of the bedroom block is almost finished as well

There was some progress on Saturday that I didn't post about because we had a BBQ to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary. We held it inside the part of the house that now has a roof as the weather was very wet and miserable, albeit much better than the weather on the day we actually got married. Hopefully this will be the last time we can hold a BBQ inside the house lol

The first of the ridge tiles have gone on


The third side has quite a lot of slate on now.


But work has had to stop on this side of the building because the huge excavation for the geothermal pipes will come very close to the other side of the building and so that side will have to be completed before digging starts, while scaffolding can still be erected there.
They have moved the scaffolding and made a start on the 4th side.

There were some more slates added today on the third roof side


And part of the second side reached the ridge


I must admit that after the initial surge the slating is going a lot slower than I had expected, but possibly the size of the roof is greater than it appears to be.

The third gable was finally finished today.
I am not at all happy because the builders have been proving some sort of point with me.
I specifically asked them some time ago, and repeated at the weekend, that I was saving the white quartz stones that are sometimes found, to build a wall around our well to make a feature of it.
If you look at the new edge on the third gable you will see that it comprises mainly of these white stones. They possibly think they are being very clever and funny. I am furious. The stones that have been used are not particularly large ones and so their loss is not a disaster. It is the principle that is so annoying. that they will blatently disregard my wishes is very upsetting. I can't put it down to language difficulties because they have on occasions presented me with one as a humorous gift. In the long run they will find that this was not the wisest thing that they ever did.


One of the lead valleys was put in today as well as the lead in the gutter between the two roof sections.


The slating on this third section was started as well as the final paper covering.

The flashing went round the second Velux window today.
The slates have made some progress but they had to stop before the ridge because the paper needs to lap from one side to the other.

The second gable has made some progress but does seem much slower than the first two. Maybe the builders are suffering from fatigue. We are having a Wedding Anniversary BBQ on Sunday and have invited them to come along so that might cheer them up and get the pace of work back to where it was a week or so ago.


The paper has been put onto most of the third roof side today so presumable the next step will be the lead gutters. There will be three altogether on this section because there are two valley gutters which meet at the end of a trough between two parallel roof sections.

Drizzly damp day but the first of 6 Velux windows got all its flashing kit fitted.


Quite a lot more slates on the second roof side now.


The third and final gable is stripped off and partially rebuilt

I have been away for the day today taking a sick grandchild to hospital (she is going to be fine)
I don't know what has happened but it looks like very slow progress. Maybe they have just spoiled me with the fast progress they have been making until now. There might have been unforseen snags that I know nothing about. I will find out tomorrow when I speak to the workforce.
The second side of the roof has made some progress

The valley between the two halves of roof is looking very neat

Slating the second roof side started today


The second gable was completed.

As a change from the house development.
I have started putting the slate paths between the raised veg beds. This is all the broken slates that came of the roof when it was first stripped. It should keep the weeds down and make it easier to get to the beds in muddy wet weather. It will take a lot of walking on before it is broken down and reasonably level but it should be good when it's finished.

The strange black plastic mound on the left of the picture is very weedy raised bed that I have not had time to deal with. Thick black plastic stapled onto the framework should help with clearing it. Especially if I leave it for a year or so - which is quite likely anyway looking at my list of jobs at the moment haha

friday 8th June

The first side was completely slated today - only 5 sides to go.

The Spanish slates do look nice, just as nice as more expensive Scottish ones. They have been put on with a 2/3 overlap so that in effect each part of the roof will have 3 layers of slate which hopefully will ensure that it is completely wind and watertight.


The Granite copings were removed from the second gable and stone was built up to raise the level so that the copings can be replaced tomorrow at their new height.

Thursday 7th June

The first lead valley went in this morning and a work of art it is too haha


The first of the slates were then put on. I am just so happy to see it finally happening.


As you can imagine, with Phil being a Health and Safety Manager he absolutely loves the cantilevered scaffolding with no edge protection, guard rails etc. But the new CDM and construction regulations do not apply to private householders. The duty rests with the employer not the client to ensure operations are carried out safely. When Phil sees this scaffolding, he therefore has his householder hat on and not his official one. I am just happy to be seeing progress.

The scaffolding has gone up around the second gable and so presumably work will start tomorrow on lifting the coping stones on that.

Wednesday 6th June

The Copings were replaced on the first gable today.


I spent a very frustrating day trying to source 6mm x 20mm bolts for fixing the plastic gutter brackets to the metal sarking brackets. Two towns and 8 stores later I finally got them. I think that it probably cost more in petrol than the cost of the bolts.

The membrane has gone onto the first sections of roof today.

Weather permitting the first of 9,000 slates should go on tomorrow

Day by Day Progress on Our Project

June 5th 2007

I have had complaints that I am not keeping the main website up to date with progress on our Steading conversion.
I have decided that the easiest way to do this is to have this blog reporting events as they happen and then I will update the main website at the end of each stage of work.















The Granite window sills are now in place and so are the superb reclaimed granite mullions in the kitchen window

The roof is progressing well.
81 Trusses were put up and tied together last week















Today they have complete the sarking board. An explanation for English readers here - a roof in Scotland has a completely boarded timber roof put on before the slates are nailed on top of it.


































As always there has been a complication - the trusses are not quite the right size. They are about 2" higher than the stone gables. We couldn't correct this by cutting off an amount from the bottom of the legs because then they would have been narrower than the wall tops. So the granite coping stones on the gables have all to be taken off and raised a couple of inches. More time, more money, but it has to be done.