Granite work started

Another productive weekend and a half has seen the outside of the house really starting to take on what will be its final appearance. I had the oppertunity to spend some more time on site earlier this week as I was in Aberdeen for a training course so could spend a couple hours on site in the evenings before it became too dark to work. This allowed me to get a bit more varnishing of the larch cladding done but there is still a good amount to go!

At the end of last week the remedial brackets were installed onto the corner windows steel lintels. These brackets transfer the load of the walls into the steel work at these locations and allow us to avoid having a pillar in the corner of the window apart from where the window meet. This allowed me to remove the temporary supports, which was a rather nerve racking affair to start with. However the saw blade never jammed once indicating that in fact there wasn't much load being taken by the temporary supports.

Temporary supports gone

With this done the corner windows could be installed along with the utility room door and the boys bedroom windows.

Master bathroom corner window installed

Windows installed in Ewan's bedroom

The only outstanding windows to be delivered when I left yesterday was the family bathroom window and that was due today. So hopefully we now have a wind tight structure.

Probably the biggest visual change in the last week though has been the start of the granite work on the walls. The brickies so far have managed to take our wishes into account and the stone work is really starting to look good. Its quite a jigsaw puzzle for then trying to get all the pieces to fit.

Detail of the granite work

West face with granite almost complete

With all the ground floor windows in now it shouldn't take them long to complete the masonary work and I expect that by the time we go back in mid October for a few days (school holiday time) externally the house will be complete. It will be exciting to remove the scaffolding and have clear view of the house.

Dad unfortunately developed a bad hernia last week so won't be on site again until he is fully recovered. This will make it a bit more challenging to keep updated with progress so updates maybe less frequent for a while.