Rafters and a View of Jura

Ecobuild was fantastic – bigger than ever and two days just wasn’t enough. We spoke to lots of window people who all had different ideas on how to give us great windows.  Now we have to find out the cost.

We also enjoyed the ‘cultcha’ at Les Mis and the Tate and the overnight train was brilliant, but, since our return, things have been a bit of a struggle.

We just couldn’t seem to find a good way to get the rafters and ridge beams up, because of the cathedral style ceilings in most of the area. Eventually we worked out that we would have to build the ceilings for the two smaller bedrooms and bathroom to work from.  But even that isn’t straighforward because the straight walls are only 1.8m high (so not high enough to take the I beam ceiling joists) and the gable walls go up at an angle.

We weren’t confident we could do that accurately enough, so we built the centre wall at 2.4 and put up scaffolding (again) at about the 2.4m mark on the outer walls, to take the ceiling joists. Then Andrew from next door suggested that we temporarily extend the outside 1.8m walls to 2.4m, rather than clamber about over the scaffolding. So that’s what we did. Then stopped to let a storm pass.

Two major storms hit England and although we only caught the tail ends of both of them, we anticipated the worst and stopped work for the duration to catch up with domestic matters. Locally there doesn’t seem to have been much damage but the ferries have been chaotic and the Gigha ferry is silted out and having to come up the West Loch.

West Coast Tool Hire Auction
The auction of the West Coast Tool Hire equipment was a big disappointment for us because everything we were interested in went for more than the cost of new stuff from the internet. People obviously hadn’t done their research or forgot that the bid price still had another 30% to be added to it to cover the auctioneer’s fee and VAT. The tool hire business has been taken over by a local contractor but it is presumably going to be a bit smaller scale if they have let so much of the stock go.

Back to the build. Having floored the attic we now had somewhere to stand to put the rafters up. The ends had to be cut to three different profiles depending on whether they are resting on ladder studs, 10 x 2s or lintels.

Then we had to manoeuvre them up and on to the ridge beam, with their ends sticking up like a wigwam. Martin, the engineer who helped us with the foundations, came up for a visit on Sunday and didn’t believe we were doing it without a crane, but that’s the beauty of lightweight JJIs.

This has proved quite a milestone for us. We can see the full height and shape of the house and are relieved to note that it isn’t a monster. The general feel is much more positive! Another bonus is discovering that there is a view of two of the Paps of Jura from the upstairs front bedroom and bathroom. John is really chuffed about that!

There is still a lot of fiddling to do, fixing the rafters and putting in the packing pieces, before moving over to the other side. We are looking forward to Emily and Richard visiting later in the month and have saved plenty of jobs for them.