It’s what’s on the outside that counts

Comments Off on It’s what’s on the outside that counts

Well, at the moment it is.

This past week we have plodded on with the cedar – I’m now most of the way across the front of the house…

IMG_20181009_162236

Although I still need to go back and finish off the back section of the North wall of the house. I left that because I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle the back corner joint – and cutting for it, but I think I’ll end up doing it the way I’ve done the front corner joints – where I make them overlong, then trim and give them a *very* light sand once I know where the line-up point is for the next side. This is my “cunning” plan to deal with the unsquareness of the building.

We have also decided on how we’re going to do the bit either side of the door. We’ve made the final decision to scrap the really cool thing we wanted to do, and switch to the achievable within a faintly realistic timeframe variant, which is much simpler.

IMG_20181009_162226

Today we continued to prime our way around the eaves (where the soffits would be if we had them). This side I remembered that we need to caulk along that strip at the top – to attempt to reduce the amount of bug ingress that can occur (because we have no way to access that void once the plasterboard is up). We’ll have to go back and caulk the top of the bird-blocks at the front, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. I can reach that on a ladder at a push.

IMG_20181014_175909

Despite being a dog of a job – slow, fiddly, uncomfortable (I have such a crick in my neck now) and fairly much unrewarding, and also feeling like it’s eating into time when we could be making the house habitable – it does at least look better once it’s done. The wood out here was still stained from the visit from the mould fairy that we got early on. It hadn’t seemed to change since we got the house properly roofed, and mostly it was fine, but there were a few boards that we were less than happy with, particularly on the North end of the house. They’ve all been treated with a proper fungicidal treatment – and now this is stain blocking primer with a mould inhibitor in it. We want to be damn sure that shite ain’t coming back.

We were going to try and match the colour of the roof, but have now decided that something a bit brighter might be nice – and help to reflect light into the building. That said, the light in there is actually really nice – and one of the things that makes us feel a lot more positive about the project.

IMG_20181014_175932

Most likely we’ll go with some sort of pale-grey-y-white. Something that shouldn’t become instantly dirty, but also doesn’t just look like we’ve not painted it for a long time.

This week I’m hoping to get more cedar up, and when Kathryn’s free we’re going to attempt to finish the priming, and I guess if the weather holds out we’ll be moving onto the final coat. We’re still hoping that our very-discount-wood supplier will get more of the cedar we need in, because if they don’t the the price is roughly four times the original price. Which would make us both quite unhappy.

One thing which has been pleasing is that with 2400 Watts being poured into the house to heat it, it’s warm. It’s straight up warm in there. Despite having no plasterboard, and loose insulation just stuffed in the ceiling, and the sky-light areas being enclosed with cardboard stapled to the joists, those two little heaters are keeping the entire place warm. Most of the time the thermostatic one seems to be on standby.

So that’s astonishing. I mean, we’ve never had a really well insulated house before, and this one at the moment the front door is badly installed and it’s got no proper air barrier on the inside, but it’s warm with very little heat being put in. So that’s pretty nifty :)

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.