Cpd

As a stonemason I can fully appreciate this part of the works. I once built a stone road up to a lighthouse and each stone came in at about 700kg we were aiming for <3mm gaps and it all takes a long time. Looking great man.

Waiting for a guy from council to turn up to a pre arranged meeting. No show. Guess he forgot it was bank holiday but could not find the time to drop me an email.......

Not as yet as I am trying to get all my ducks lined up, pull together the various fragmented ideas and present it in a legible format. The paper stuff does not do justice to the wild picture in my head !

It totally does. One of the reasons the houses are taking so long is that I spend so much time in the gardens trying to transform them from fairly mono cultured environments (sheep paddock, bogland and craggy hillsides) into something that will one day be able to at least compliment there surroundings. But the surroundings are soooo stunning that even with ones best efforts its hard to bring the two together, but I do like the challenge.....

As its so close to the sea we rarely get snow and when it does snow it does not last for long. However as soon as it snows all the kids shoot down any available shitty sheep hill they can find on plastic feed bags...... looking north towards the Nevis range where there is plenty of skiing.

When I got my property it was very neglected and in a terrible state, its going to take many years to pull it all together. I spent my life savings on it and the main reason was location location location. My dreams are endless And living in such a stunning location is very inspiring. Looking south through the shed door down the property. Looking west from top of property. Looking north 2 minutes walk from northern end of property.

Intrested to know what the fabric is as on a standed Scottish roof the breather membrane goes on top of the sarking, that way if you get a leak then the roofing membrane is there as the emergency layer. My roof is slates membrane 22mm x 150mm sarking boards ‘main roof timbers i dont have battens as the slate is reclaimed and vary in size (a traditional style) from the biggest / longest slates at the bottom of the roof and the smallest slates at the top. There is then a 50mm ventilated gap below the sarking before the insulation. But as usual there is a dozen ways to skin a cat and I am just interested in your build up and the solution to the velux installation.

The diagram shows the roof as being batton but your roof is sarking ? I would double check with velux that your starting with the right kit. Its really straight forward as everything should be self explanatory...... I have done 3 into sarking a few months ago, will see if I can find the info.

Or you just buy a set of benders and learn, I did that in Australia and soon had many contracts as I really loved bending the pipe to match the track alignment. I was bending multiple sweeping bends and after a while it’s just fun, simple bends like in the house photo would be easily mastered if your that way inclined.

I needed to get a phone line in from 800 meters away, I went and had a chat with the local office and then loaded in my cable and took it home..... dug it in and only left the two ends and one junction exposed for them to do there thing. They came out and connected me up and that was that. Connection fee and signed up for two years. That was over 5 years ago so probably time I negotiated a new price.

I like this...... got me thinking now !

Great stuff, thanks for the heads up. Will follow the same route.

I have taken a slightly diffrent approach as I knew all my building work and retrofitting would take upto 8 years (in year 5 now) so started planting trees from the get go. I also use the weekends as my personal time and I am at my happiest in the garden so the garden seems to progress at about the same rate as my building work. My aim is for the two to come together at the finish line and transition to garden maintenance and “fun” building projects from that point on..... we will see.

I hear you and don’t propose that one “diet” fits all, however I believe that We will look back in the comming years and recognise that high carb / suger and dairy diets have been pretty unhelpful in regards to good health. Yes we all have individual requirments and any diet should take this into account but I would not be to quick to dismis the importance of a good diet and A healthy gut. I think people’s hackles go up when people talk about diet for a bunch of reasons..... there really is growing body of evidence that our old established food triangle is more upside down than right way up. Each to there own and all that but personally having benefited so greatly by changing the foods I eat (before becoming ill I scoffed at diets) I am now a total believer in how important It is to eat a diet targeted at individual needs.

This does make sense and I will take it on board, I could close of the stair sides that face the kitchen and this would go a long way to prevent the air from the stairwell supply short pathing to the kitchen extract. There would then be a supply at the very far end of the room above the fireplace and a double extract in the kitchen. The whole downstairs is only 40.85m2 with a total volume of 97.07m3. I like the idea previously talked about of putting an extract in the bin cupboard.

I have now been on a strict KetoDiet for 9 months, i was severely ill with undiagnosed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had been bad and only got worse over a two year period. When your that ill nothing is going to be a silver bullet but within 4 weeks of being on the diet I started to improve and have been improving ever since. As well as being on a keto diet I am also on a Paleo diet and this removes all dairy and a bunch of other stuff, long story short..... dairy causes inflammation in a lot of people and inflammation causes an untold amount of diverse problems, I have suffered muscle pain all my life, not something that’s always there but as a hard working hard playing guy I always suffered after hard activity. Spent a fortune on massage and chiropractors. After giving up dairy 9 months ago the pain stopped, just like that. Now that I am getting better (so far 60% better) and am working hard again it’s amazing to be able to finish at the end of the day and not be in pain. If anyone needs more info on paleo keto diets I am happy to pm you details of further research and resources. As i said I have a pretty serious diet and take a lot of mostly natural supplements but also eat fermented foods daily. I will stop now but..... it’s a bloody miracle how changing my diet and taking some supplements has brought me back from what was being very very close to the end game.

@MikeGrahamT21 nice info mate thanks for sharing.

I am putting an extract at the top of my stairwell as it’s all open plan downstairs and even with a kitchen extractor / carbon recycler the stairwell is a dead spot and I would like to capture any cooking smells before they make it upstairs to the bedrooms. Am getting closer to the point where my vague plans need to be put into action.....

I love working on my various projects and have always been an outdoors person. Lack of money causes me mental strain that lurks below the surface and distorts my normally positive outlook far to frequently. Yes there are health hazards on and around the building site but propper precautions should prevent serious injuries. Money seems to be the biggest reason for stress and stress causes all sorts of problems.

@Temp i am just wanting to re do some exterior oak and am going to go down the line of “sadolin light oak classic” then the sadolin extra clear my question is, is the extra clear a varnish or a wood preservative? Not sure varnish would work as its a very exposed oak seat, i was “persuaded” by my farther to use danish oil but its completely gone after a year. The oak is now turning silver, not what I wanted. So looking to stain and then protect. Any advise would be great as I am struggling to track down the” extra” in clear wood preservative, natural is the closest I could find. Exposed coastal location. Thanks.

Looks great and well done on the saving, I also got an ex display 5kw model stove for my shed (not room sealed) Will be intrested to hear your report when it’s installed as I will need to instal one in my cottage when the time comes.....

Well the mortising machine made light work of what could have been a very tedious job, everything is well within tolerance <2mm but mostly bang on the mark. Was worth spending a lot of time setting up the jigs. Everything fitted together realy well with no upsetting surprises. I will add in some additional bracing in the lower section of the doors on Monday. Seal recesses will need to be cut before gluing and clamping. Then it will be time to fit the marine ply, door furniture and then mounting in the frames. So far so good.

Stainless steel scouring pads / stainless steel wire wool could be stuffed in and around the pipes at both ends, i then squirted some expanding foam into the stuffed in wire wool to secure it and prevent drafts, it also will prolongs the life of the wire wool as its not top rated A2 stainless and will degrade over time i expect. Worked for me against mice, could see where they had a go at the expanding foam, hit the wool and gave up.

Thanks @Temp always good to learn from others. I have been reading and researching this little project for a while and could not find the perfect solution, the shed faces south west, is less than 300 meters away from the sea and this is the west coast of Scotland where it rains a lot ! To overcome this i have decided to face the doors in 12mm marine ply, i will then router some sudo tongue and groove lines in to get it looking correct and fit in with other doors on adjacent buildings. When they are painted i expect a blind man on a galloping horse would not know the difference..... but seriously i am confident that it will work and will give me the weather protection and easy maintenance that i am after. The doors will be inward opening and will close up against the weather seals There will be some additional seals inside the frame as well... its all over the top but i am aiming to learn on these doors and then build the new ones for the cottage that need to be bomb proof for the mvhr to work to maximum efficiency. Spent the better part of 5 hours today setting up the second hand mortiser i got, its a solid piece of kit that came out of a school and had never been maintained properly, i re shimmed it and made a bunch of micro adjustments and now its running about 95% perfect. Will try and upload a clip.

I am not an expert on bricks, but it does look like some of the old bricks are starting to spoil / break up in the old section, you dont want to get into a situation where you are having to repair the old section on a regular basis..... as people have said i think you need a professional report to strengthen your case if you want them to replace the old wall.