Domestic adventuring

Our new home is in a 'village' (despite it having multiple shops and an assortment of places to eat out) and as we continue to settle in, life here is beginning to capture us. We are determined, however, not to put ourselves forward for involvement in any local committees in order to avoid getting to where we were before we moved - having too many demands on our time so that our lives cease to be our own. I did recently put myself forward for a few hours physical labour, shifting and spreading gravel at the community-owned castle, a historic monument, and welcomed this opportunity to meet up with a few locals, which is fine, but this is as far as I'll take it. Aching muscles is something I can handle, something we can both control.

We are also controlling the pace of the house projects fairly well. Here at home this is what our kitchen wall looked like as the electrician was putting in some new wires and the associated sockets so that we can use our new electric cooker, the gas one having been taken out and given away locally to someone who had a need for it. The square shaped holes in the picture are a necessary part of what an electrician does when he has to feed new wires up from beneath the house. Patching the holes up again is a necessary part of what we have to do to make the house as we want it but this will take time so we can expect to be living with these holes for some time as the kitchen renovation slowly takes shape. 

With the electrics done a cooker hood is screwed to the wall and trunking fed off the top into our attic space where it is connected to an existing roof vent to carry away all our cooking smells. This all sounds very simple but it required imagination, some large drills and the ability to survive in a dusty environment, the attic, my least favourite part of the house.

The solution, however, is innovative, practical, and is typical of the way we are bringing our own ideas into play. Of course it will mean that with the right wind the whole village may be able to smell what we are cooking, but we can live with that.

Next on our time line, we hope, will be the fuel that heats our house. We have a gas central heating boiler but being where we live, in a very rural location, there is no piped gas main buried under the road outside. Instead the stuff is delivered periodically by lorry which discharges liquid propane into a pressurised tank located in our front garden. This does not fit well with our views on green energy and neither is it the cheapest way to heat the house so this is something we want to change, just as we did in our previous house, where the fuel was oil.

Some months ago we contacted a company that specializes in installing air-source heating systems and since then we have been pursuing Scottish government funding to help us afford to make the change. The application process is complex and would be daunting to many - long periods of waiting on the phone to speak to an advisor, complex emails and lots of legal jargon have to be negotiated before eventually we have a successful outcome. Soon we shall have a start date for what will be a major transformation for the house, something we were determined to achieve from the day we moved in.

We have another ambition too. Beyond our back fence is a hill which on the map is called Cnoc a' Bhuic, although for some reason it is known locally as the Uridgh. On top of the hill is a concrete pillar, an Ordnance Survey trig point, again shown on the map, but this is a wild place and it is not easy of access due to the dense vegetation on the lower slopes. However there is a rather intriguing gate in our back fence. So might there be a path up the hill from there? 

This is the straight line route.

Our first exploratory forays reveal that to reach the more open ground higher up we must first hack our way through a dense jungle of gorse, bramble and rhododendron, beneath which is very squidgy mud. Oh, and there's a steep-sided burn to cross before even arriving at the steeper bit. 

So, by deploying a couple of washing line poles we create a bridge across the burn (no more muddy wading) and since this solution fails to scare one of our younger visitors it must be ok. Cutting through all the dense vegetation takes a massive effort (even with the assistance of a chain saw), but with each attempt we get higher and higher up the hill and after numerous spells of hacking and chopping we eventually have a route through to the bracken-covered upper slopes.

Having made it this far we find faint tracks with hoof prints in the soft ground which tells us there are animals, sheep or deer, roaming about here. We can expect that with the coming of Summer there will be new bracken growth covering everything and this will make route finding on the hill very much harder, so we are keen to make some sort of a path now and then use it regularly to keep it clear. We also need to lay down some route markers since, once having climbed out of the denser vegetation, we suddenly realise that it is extremely difficult to find the route down again. It may be hard to believe but it is definitely possible to get lost in the wilderness which lies just beyond our own back garden.

One of our higher forays was in the company of some of our friends' children and we discovered a small cave, clearly used as a shelter by the animals who live up there. 

The view from inside is spectacular but we doubt this is why the animals visit it.

At the time of writing those words we had yet to make it to the summit... but then another sunny day came along and we went for it, a summit push. 

The actual route, tracked on my phone as we ascended and returned, was definitely not a straight line and on our descent we chose a slightly easier route, one involving less scrambling. It is not an easy climb and navigating the route down again is equally hard, risky even, since once the ill defined path is lost, finding it again is a real challenge.

The evidence of our achievement is here, the owl pellet on the top of the trig point showing that the wind was not strong but it was extremely cold so we did not linger on the summit. There were views in all directions but nothing beat looking to the west, along West Loch Tarbert and out to the Atlantic beyond.

The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 4

Bathroom flooring day finally arrives, on schedule, and a layer of red stuff now covers the rather messy bare timber floor. It is waterproof, tough and non slip, contrasting with the walls and adding a splash of warmth to this room. A quick call is made to Malcolm, our plumber, for him to come and finish off, to install the toilet, a sink, and a new radiator and several days later he arrives, spanners in hand. 

The final result is worth the wait, lots of contrast between the pale colours on the walls and the black furniture. And yes, that's a blue whale providing some marine interest.

Or to put it another way, here's the before and after...

So this is the first of our planned room-sized projects done and dusted. Others will follow, some big, some more cosmetic but an end is nowhere in sight. What it does mean is that our focus can shift elsewhere, outdoors even, where unexpected things are happening.

With the lengthening days, surprises are appearing in our garden. 

From beneathour mossy grass things hidden underground are emerging in large numbers, green at first,  and then these begin to acquire yellow buds which soon open into flowers. Daffodils have always been predictors of spring and now we know that the bulbs are there we will always look forward to seeing them emerge from the sloping plain that is our garden. It is also nice to think that such beauty came free with the house, so we're not complaining.

Less attractive, however, is the continuing discovery of rubbish thrown away by previous inhabitants of our house and now also appearing from beneath our back garden as we dig about. This reflects an attitude that is beyond our understanding.

The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 3

The big day approaches, the day when our plumber comes back to connect the pipes, fit a shower mixer tap and turn the water on so we can wash our bodies again inside our own home. Whilst we prepare the bathroom walls for this epic moment we manage to find a few more jobs that are suited to this man's particular skills so this won't be his final visit here but it will move the bathroom adventure a little closer to an exciting conclusion.

The familiar white van draws up outside and boxes of tools and lengths of plastic pipe are carried into the house ready for use. The day is then enhanced by sawing and banging noises as a plywood floor is laid (a job for the apprentice) ready for the vinyl floor covering we have chosen, whilst beneath the floor, new pipes are connected, all of which will soon fill with water. Exciting stuff.

Then I get a call to assist with one rather heavy item, our new shower screen. This enormous piece of glass (10mm thick) has to be carried up the steep steps leading to our front door then manoeuvred inside and lifted into place. It is immensely heavy, far beyond what a doctor would prescribe for a human to carry, let alone walk up steps with. I shall not dwell on the anxiety associated with this whole process, the thoughts of what might happen should it slip through the fingers, of the crushing impact upon the toes followed by the shower of broken glass shards across the head and shoulders and possibly into my neck. This is the stuff of many YouTube 'fail' videos, in case you're interested.

When the day comes to an end we have a working shower in place. And we love it. The pale colours are ours. The tile pattern is our choice. It is neat and spacious, big enough to be comfortable in, given that the bathroom itself is a small room. It is just what we imagined. There are a couple of small modifications we'll make so the enormous glass screen is less frightening to walk near (pictures in due course) but we can use the shower. Phase three is complete.

There now comes a pause in the bathroom project schedule as we wait for the availability of a flooring fitter who has the right skills to give us a waterproof floor in the colour we want, which is red. We have decided it has to be red. This is the only colour that works for us with what we have chosen for the walls, so no compromise here. Perhaps we should have planned things a bit better timing-wise to avoid waiting for the floor to go in as this has to precede the final fitting of the toilet and sink but we're not unduly bothered. A bathroom is forever.

During this pause, however, another house project is starting not far away. It is the kitchen, another room we have form for making changes to in previous houses. There is much we find inconvenient about the present layout, the decor is dated beyond words but with a kitchen we must take it in stages since it is a working environment, needed each day, and there are no alternative places where we can cook our food.

[Well actually that isn't quite true. If push comes to shove we could cook in Martin, our campervan, or we could even use our single burner emergency stove, simple, but it would work.]

By now our ripping-out skills are of the highest order and we are keen to deploy these wherever they are needed. We have experience of the way the inside bits of the inner walls of our house are put together and this gives us the confidence to apply these skills to the built-in kitchen cupboard, another enclosed space that we feel we can do away with. It takes less than two days, a hammer, a small crowbar and some muscle to make the walls and the wooden door disappear completely from view. Only on the ceiling does the cupboard outline still remain but suddenly the kitchen has grown in size and we can plan the next phase, an electric cooker to replace the gas one which came with the house and is currently awkwardly positioned in one corner.

Of course, all good projects must start with a plan, so here it is, in 3D so we can better visualize where the different pieces will go. Just as our plumber departs we welcome first of all a gas fitter who is swiftly followed by an electrician whose banging and thumping noises assure us he is making holes in our walls through which his wires can safely run. In two successive days we go from gas to electric cooking and have the power sockets where we want them, ready for the kitchen we want to start to take shape. The gas cooker, far from old, is not wanted so we offer it up online, free to collect. There is no piped gas supply to anywhere local so there's no point in trying to get money for it. It's only useful if you have bottled gas.

All is going to plan inside the house so, given the absence of rain hammering on our windows I am motivated to attack the garden with a spade, removing large chunks of turf from a roughly circular patch of the sloping, mossy area some would refer to as a lawn. We're creating a garden pond and I soon discover that even though it is not actually raining, any hole dug in the garden fills with water very quickly and good waterproof footwear is required. We have a readymade climate-assisted natural shortcut to our pond creating efforts. Normally one would expect to have to line a garden pond with a water-retentive liner but given the amount of rain that regularly falls here and the sloping nature of the land beyond our garden, the pond might just retain water all year without needing anything else. Time will tell, of course, but one unexpected advantage is that we don't have to worry about getting the pond level. The water does this for us.

The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 2

There is absolutely no point in showing here a picture of the en-suite shower room which is now missing from our bedroom, obviously, because there is nothing to show any more! In fact all there is left is a pile of broken plasterboard pieces and a collection of nail studded timber pieces and I refuse to photograph these. The final part of this project was to relocate a power point, which is fed  from beneath the house, and this gave me the opportunity to correct a couple of other wiring issues too. Perhaps this is not the time to dwell on the confused state of our house's electrical wiring but if we move to the plumbing, this is interesting, to say the least. Our house has had at least one earlier central heating system and the pipes for this still lie beneath our floors, empty of water and gathering dust but causing confusion when it comes to trying to work out what is what. Rather more annoyingly, some of these redundant pipes still rise up through holes in the floorboards and have been chopped off just beneath our interior carpets. The pipe-less holes in the floor whistle when the wind blows hard outside, cold air rushing up into the house from below so plugging these holes when I come across them has become routine now. Gradually we are sealing up the house from the outside elements. We are also accumulating a considerable quantity of copper pipe as I remove more and more of the old redundant bits.

But I digress.

Returning to our (now missing) bathroom, we are accumulating materials, new wall cladding panels and tiles, ready to go full steam ahead as soon as our plumber returns. However there is a sequence that must be followed. The tiles that will surround our new, enlarged shower cannot by fitted until the shower tray is in. Wall panels must precede the toilet and sink fitting and we have temporarily removed the bathroom radiator ready for its replacement with a heated towel rail but deciding where this fits in the project timeline is less clear. 

Finally the big day arrives. A white van draws up outside and soon our plumber is carrying boxes into the house, assorted pieces of our new bathroom. The 'before' picture above is what confronted him although it hardly does justice to what is happening beyond the window where our first snow of the season is settling on the ground. The forecast is for cold weather, a good excuse to stay inside and move forward with the tiling which will surround our newly fitted shower tray.

But hold on. These are big tiles; more like great rectangular ceramic tea trays. Which begs the question... which way round do they go, horizontal or vertical? And how do we match up the joints - all in line or offset, like house bricks. Important decisions have to be made but eventually we make a start and soon discover that once the first few are done, larger tiles means quicker tiling. Who'd have thought it.

We have an intriguing mix of wall coverings to install in what is quite a small space but the end result will give us a bathroom which is uniquely ours, in contrast to the rest of the house which still reflects the previous owner's taste. As each wall disappears behind a new colour, one we have chosen to give us a smooth modern look, our vision becomes reality. When we have finished, the room will be ready for the return of our plumber, the man who will give us back a working bathroom.

The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 1

Not for the first time in our lives have we started life in a new home by renovating the bathroom. In fact it has happened too often to count, an indicator perhaps of a certain fetish-ness or there again possibly just a sign that we have a different view on bathrooms from most others. 

Here, by way of example, is what the estate agent captured some months ago when our present house was being marketed for sale. Note particularly the pink cushion, the net curtains, the wood panelling and also the patterned carpet covering the floor. Hmm... none of these is our thing. Out of shot is the tiny shower cubicle (something I have commented on before in this blog and one of three we have in this house) and this being left out of shot may be a hint that the estate agent's views were not dissimilar to ours - best excluded from a marketing perspective.

We are now in the depths of winter, one of the consequences of which is that working outdoors in the few short hours of daylight we have is somewhat limiting, so naturally our thoughts turn inwards. Which brings us back to the bathroom. 

Like many internal house alterations this one starts with something called 'ripping out'. It doesn't take long before the changes become significant, and then more so when we engage the services of a plumber, a professional 'ripper-outer', but also someone who knows what he is doing. 

My role here is to remove the covering up bits to make access easier and we are soon far beyond the point of no return as the shower and bath disappear and this is swiftly followed by the sink, all of which join the toilet in the street outside, ready for transport to the tip.

Soon the bathroom is an empty room and we can see what state the floor and the walls are in and make decisions on what best to cover them with after our plumber has returned to fit some new bathroom bits.

The floor is less than perfect, as it turns out, so we cut a big hole to remove the imperfections, later filling it with a piece of leftover kitchen worktop, just one more item conveniently left behind by the previous owner. There are numerous other imperfections in the floor and the walls but nothing a can of expanding foam and some Polyfilla cannot take care of.

One other item a little further down our ToDo list was to enlarge our bedroom by taking out the en-suite. The estate agent measured this little 'room within a room' internally at 2.6 by 0.8 metres (8ft 6ins by 2ft 7ins), a space big enough to hold a shower cubicle, toilet and a tiny sink only by leaving just enough room for a small human standing upright with arms by their sides. The presence of a plumber in the house bumped this task up the list so that removal of the internals seemed a sensible thing to do. We made the decision to do it, despite this leaving our house almost toilet-less. Fortunately we are not completely devoid of facilities as we began this adventure with no less than three toilets in the house. Not so with the showers, however. When we took occupation there were showers in each of the two bedrooms, another cubicle in the bathroom and the bath also had a shower fitting between the taps. A day's worth of ripping out should have left us with one working shower but as it turned out both en-suites ran off the same water supply so we lost both of them... leaving the house with none. Christmas and New Year just got more exciting.

This is the point where our confession starts. Our house stands on a hill overlooking the marina where our boat is berthed. It is winter so she is high and dry at present, perched on her trailer in the marina car park, but the recently renovated toilet and shower block remains open to berth holders and visitors all year. There are those who live on their boats who will use these facilities all year round, so why not us? The short walk downhill, a luxury shower, then a flog back up the hill gives us a spell of exercise and a breath of fresh air too.

Whilst our plumber takes his winter break abroad we amuse ourselves with ripping out the walls of the now emptied en-suite, the main tools being a large hammer and a crow bar, the main noises being... loud bangs and ripping sounds.

It takes two days of hard work before suddenly our bedroom has expanded. We are delighted by this transformation, despite all the dust we have created settling on every flat surface. This picture shows the before and after.

We are left with some large panels of plasterboard and lengths of timber with large nails sticking out at all angles (most of this is destined for the tip) plus a number of nail and screw holes which need filling. Out comes the Polyfilla again.

Back end of the year

After weeks of dodging rain showers as we tried to focus on jobs around the garden, enduring the frustration of starting one job then rushing inside to avoid getting soaked, suddenly it has dried out. Cloud covers the sky and the wind blows as before but nothing falls on us. Bravely we venture outside, where we stay until late in the day, wearing ourselves out with all the vegetation wrestling. I acquire a battery powered hedge trimmer which I find makes cutting back the shrubs a lot easier and given the mountainous nature of our front garden I decide to call this my cliff edge trimmer. As a result of all our hard work some parts of the garden are even starting to acquire a 'cared for' look they haven't had for many years.

Then suddenly winter arrives. (Nobody saw that coming!) Something we know as the Jetstream decides to do an unusual wriggle, the result of which is to pour cold northerly winds over Britain. Then, since said Jetstream apparently finds this rather pleasant, it maintains this for weeks on end. It makes us reach for our warm underwear, put on thick socks, wrap scarves around our necks, and that  before we even think about going outside. Our garden has turned white with frost and walking about on what was previously sodden grass is suddenly like walking on concrete. Gardening in the conventional sense has become impossible but since there is now an enormous heap of plant matter which was dry enough to be processed in some way, turned into something usable perhaps, this calls for a new strategy.

The next phase of our existence makes use of the limited hours between the sun rising high enough over the hills opposite for its rays to make their way through our windows, giving us the motivation for venturing out, and the early afternoon when the same star disappears in the west for the day and the thermometer creeps below zero again. For me this involves dressing up in multiple layers, over which goes my boiler suit and then a fleecy work jacket, a close fitting hat and my Wellington boots, the latter not so much to keep out water but to keep in the warmth. Thick leather gloves complete this outfit, protection from both the cold and the thorns I am destined to do battle with. Dressed like this I go to war with the plant heap, the aim being to convert it into something of value, maybe something to keep us warm. Hidden in this heap are the branches of long lost trees which once grew in our garden which had previously been thrown over our rear boundary and piled up, threatening the stability of the fence itself. But this is wood, and once the smaller twigs are removed we are left with logs that when cut up and left to dry out, we can burn as fuel to heat the house. The trimmings from our various overgrown garden shrubs meet a different end. These are turned into 'shreddies' by passing them through a garden mincing machine (one of two we now possess) and then spread over our newly cleared areas as a top dressing. And the best part of all this activity is that it keeps me warm in the biting cold outside, a warmth that lasts all day.

The bitter cold does bring something with it, of course - sunshine. Solstice is only days away but just before 10am each day the sun pops up over the hill opposite and blasts down from a cloudless sky all day. It has little effect on the temperature outside but in our south facing conservatory, surrounded on all sides by glass, the temperature rises steadily until it becomes warmer in there than in the house itself. This is an unexpected bonus for us. We can only imagine how hot this is going to become in the summer months. Perhaps a small sauna is appropriate.

The winter solstice arrives. From now onwards the days get longer, starting with sunset happening later each day. At 47 minutes past 9 pm Greenwich Mean Time on 21st December 2022, at this precise moment in the day, the tilt in the earth's axis reverses so that the length of each day grows. Thank goodness for this wobble, without which life as we know it would not exist.

One person who must know all about this is Santa Claus but despite this he comes early, with flashing lights from the fire engine which accompanies him as he rides past our house and several blasts from the siren as we wave at him. We are honoured to be blessed with his visit and very excited to see him.

House plans

There are a couple of expressions people might use after moving home and looking around the house properly for the first time. We might say we want to 'make it ours' or alternatively we might want to 'put our mark on it'. Either of these expressions could mean almost anything from putting your own pictures up on the wall, new lamp shades, or entire decor changes in every room but in essence what we mean is that what was to the taste of previous owners is not to ours. Just putting in our own furniture, replacing what has been taken away, doesn't quite give us what we want so something more fundamental has to change to meet our desires... and this requires making plans.

In the Grand Designs TV programme the format at this point is for the presenter to pour doubt upon the ideas some rather embarrassed family has for a barren plot of land they have acquired and to raise his eyebrows when told their proposed budget. 'How much! And how long do you expect this to take?' Of course on TV by the end of the show it is all smiles and happiness as we are shown around the colossus of a house with its custom built staircase and vast areas of glass looking out into a perfectly landscaped garden, evidence that the project has turned out well after all and is fully in keeping with the owners' original plans (although maybe somewhat over the original budget).

So now to reality. We are not building anything from scratch but there is, nevertheless, much that we would wish to change about the house we have just bought and moved into, probably going far beyond 'putting a mark on it' if the truth is to be told. Take the kitchen, for instance. It needs more worktop space and it would also be nice to have cupboards with shelves that are within arm's reach and not nudging the ceiling and needing steps to reach them. The gas cooker might look ok but it is far from perfect. The oven doesn't cook pizza properly, pies need defrosting first to have any chance of cooking and the grill is pretty hopeless. Then there's that tap over the sink that the kettle won't fit under - whatever were they thinking - and the kitchen power points all seem to be in the wrong place. The lack of an extractor fan also means that as soon as cooking starts the whole house knows what is coming by the smell.

Moving on to the bathroom, the tiny shower cubicle gave me claustrophobia as I bumped my elbows on the sides and it was squeezed into a small room which already has a bath with a shower attachment. The shower screen was the first thing to be ripped out (we have another en suite shower in the house that we can use). We have always found a spacious walk-in shower ticks most of our boxes and we have lived in a house without a bath for the last 10 years.

Fortunately since this is not the first time in our lives we have moved house and redesigned rooms to 'make them ours' I am equipped with the technology to produce scaled plans that I can view in 3D so we can visualise our ideas. Shown here is bathroom version 4, one that will involve a toilet relocation and a new shower tray and screen. The electric power-shower has gone, replaced by one fed with both hot and cold water, which seems to make more sense to us.

Whilst I can manage the destructive bits, stripping the walls and ceiling, for the plumbing side of this project and particularly in relation to the toilet, what we need now is a nice plumber to install and connect up all the difficult bits leaving me to redecorate afterwards. The polystyrene tiles have come off the ceiling (something that revealed a long crack in the plasterboard above) and we now have some nice shiny pvc panels up there. Our favourite plumber is lined up to do the rest.

These two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, are the priority for us although we are conscious of wanting to do so much more to the house to really make it ours, ultimately to change the decor in every room, a massive undertaking perhaps, but we're talking about longer term plans here, no rush. 

Meanwhile there are other things that will soon start going on outside the house, big changes that will keep us warm for years to come. Insulation all around, wrapping the house up in a blanket to keep us cosy.

Bramble extraction [✓]

The longest and most challenging of the tasks on our ToDo list is finally ticked. Job done! That is not to say that there is no single piece of bramble left on our land - far from it. But we have now clambered over every inch, gone into every corner, fought our way along each boundary fence and dived down beneath each clump of dense, overgrown plant life to find and cut off those stems as close to the ground as possible. Once having pulled those long strands out from their tangled home we have created a massive pile of vegetation in the rear garden which one day, perhaps, when it has dried out, we will set fire to. The brambles will regrow, we know this as the roots are still in the ground, but at least we'll be ready for them when they do. 

It has been hard work, very physical, and quite satisfying to get as far as we have. Sadly though such a thorough exploration of the garden has revealed something else, something we did not expect and which we find quite offensive. 

Whoever had responsibility for this garden in the past seemed to think it appropriate to throw things away, to dump stuff there, mostly amongst the denser growths of vegetation so that it would be hidden in the shrubbery or the long grass. The bramble invasion ensured that once lost from sight these items stayed that way and would still be hidden today had we not bought the house. The latest discovery, buried beneath the grass, is another Jewson's bag, a bulky sack used to deliver sand or gravel to your home. These things are made to last, a tough nylon mesh with four handles for lifting the immense weight as it is craned off the lorry. They are indestructible by any normal standard and will certainly not biodegrade by being buried in the soil. However this is the third bag we have pulled from the ground since we moved in a month ago, along with plastic bags, glass bottles, lumps of iron fencing, plasterboard, some sheets of corrugated asbestos, broken flower pots and a host of other things. One of the Jewson's bags was full of tiny pieces of broken glass, too heavy to move until some of it was shoveled out. This goes way beyond a lack of care for the garden. It is as if someone has deliberately thrown these items away, guiltily hiding them perhaps, instead of disposing of them properly.

On the positive side, during all our outdoor work, carried out in between the rain showers, we have had a small companion.

He will fly down almost as soon as we start work somewhere and stare at us from almost beneath our feet, hopping about looking for any insects or worms to feed on. He is a robin, but one with almost no fear of humans. We call him Rob and rather obligingly he has let me take his picture. He's a real charmer.