Building the Ground Floor Walls

It’s so late in the year, we almost didn’t start. Still as sometimes happens, we had a couple of dry weeks in the middle of October and gradually we have worked our way around the various outside and inside structural walls completing the last beam in early November.

We started with the living room windows. With there just being the two of us, progress is slow but despite a few set backs resulting mainly from our inabilty to interpret the engineer’s fantastically detailed and helpful drawings, everything remains square and level.

Our initial problem was sorting out the various methods of construction. There are different heights for the ladder studs (depending on whether they are built off the floor or off the wall plates and whether they have an inner edge binder for the first floor joists or a top runner) and we had to remember to allow the right number of 50mms for the runners at the top and bottom of the studs.

Then there were the walls that take the render and are made from 10 x 2s. They were much easier but they are not made from our larch so we don’t feel the same affinity with them.

We bought some scaffolding in Oban and borrowed some from Len Sloan. Having scaffolding made fixing the top runners much safer than before, when we wobbled on the tops of step ladders, but it is a pain to erect especially by oneself. Andrew was a great help here. The nail gun recommended by engineer John is proving a great investment, despite the noise and smouldering smell.

Emily and Richard came up to help on the weekend of the Rugby World Cup Final. We made great progress with extra willing hands and reimbursed Richard with slab wood for edging his garden paths. We got some local prawns from someone we met at Tom’s birthday party and had a barbecue, then migrated to the warmth (and larger telly) of Andrew and Rosie’s living room to watch the match.

For some reason, we decided to put one of the 90 glulams in the livingroom at right angles to where it should be and to build the first crosswall 300mm higher than required. Luckily, both problems were easy to fix and didn’t involve any wasted materials.

Fitting the “squint” lintel above the kitchen window was also a fiddle but it went in ok eventually and the improved view to the loch, as envisaged by Chris, definitely makes the effort worthwhile.

We have used most of the 150mm  tmber but still have plenty of 100mm. There is very little 45 glulam left and fingers crossed that the 90 glulam offcuts can be used upstairs. Getting them cut to 6m was a mistake. 7m would have been better but you live and learn. It was great to see the walls going up and we felt a real sense of achievement when they were finished.