Snow, wind and steamed up glasses

So we woke up to this this morning:

From the kitchen window

Ditto

From the bedroom window

 

Up the track

From the road above - our house is pretty much in the middle of this photo

It's now mid afternoon and the snow has gone from the trees. Still plenty on the ground, but it's melting fast. Instead we're now on Red Alert for high winds coming this evening. Hope I get back from teaching flute in Scarriff before it hits.

We were supposed to be going up to the new house this morning to meet the carpenter, but we were delayed by the snow. As always it's the steep hills that are the problem. Anyway, back when we had the last Big Snow Joe bought chains for the car. Time to try them out. It took a good half hour and both of us to work out the instructions, but finally one front wheel had a chain on it. We decided that would be enough and set off. Out we went, slowly, onto the road where the snow had turned all slushy. No problem after that. Off with the chain and onto the house in Derrycon.

We were working in Derrycon on Monday and yesterday, putting rock wool insulation into the gaps between timbers on the internal walls and ceilings. This is the ceiling in the kitchen showing the gaps.

The rock wool isn't for heat retention but as a silencer between rooms, and the difference is tremendous. Walking around upstairs on the uninsulated floorboards was rackety and loud. Insulated bits were quiet. Simple as that.

Not a nice job though. Rock wool isn't as nasty to work with as fibreglass insulation, but it still makes you itch. The first day I wore overalls, lots of thermal underwear and woolly things, a face mask, a hat. I was too hot, but that was easy to deal with. Off with the woolly jumper etc. The main problem was the glasses steaming up because of the face mask - even though there's a nose clip, air escapes upwards and steams you up. In the end Joe and I both had to take off the glasses.

In order to place the correct size piece of insulation into the wall or ceiling they of course had to be cut. This involved measuring. But neither Joe nor I could see as we'd had to take off our glasses. We developed a method where the one up the ladder measured the gap and handed the tape down to the other, finger gripping the 40 cm mark or whatever. I was working in inches and Joe in centimetres - I could just about see the inch marks but not the centimetres.

When we got home after the first day we'd completed the study and some of the ceiling in the hall:

But we both had really itchy eyes. Boiled and cooled teabags on the eyes helped, but we were going to have to use goggles, especially as we'd be doing a big stretch of ceiling next.

The trouble is with goggles you steam up as with glasses, but years ago when I had a moped we used to put a bit of washing-up liquid on the visor of the helmet to stop this. Indeed it does stop you steaming up. Instead everything is smeary. However I did discover an interesting side effect. I have astigmatism, so writing and numbers are double or in triplicate. If I look at the figure 1 it's unclear whether it's a 1, 11 or 111. But with the smeary goggles the numbers magically revealed themselves.

Still steamed up in the end though. Amazing how much you can see even when half your vision is blocked.

Still a way to go. Let's hope the wind allows us out tomorrow.

Ta Daaah!

We have a new house. The outside, anyway. We love it. Here's the tour. A fairly traditional front:

Then round the corner to the gable end:

The somewhat ecclesiastical window has our bedroom behind it. A friend of ours visiting from Wales, who's training to be a Baptist minister, said it made him feel very at home.

The drainpipe is not an unusual feature but was a temporary measure.

The one below was taken a few weeks ago when the plaster was still wet and the edging to the flat roof had yet to be finished. Joe's doing a bit of guttering fixing up there. 

This is one of the views from the roof terrace - posh name for the flat roof, but it will have decking and a glass surround. Not sure if it's my eyes or if this is a bit out of focus.

And here's the south-facing side. All that glass for the solar gain. The upstairs glass has a sitting room behind it. The downstairs will be the kitchen. And there's a rainbow growing out of the roof! Only just noticed that.

And last week the insulation went in. It's cellulose, another name for shredded newspapers, and it gets everywhere. This is Adrian with the last bag of the stuff. You have to wear face masks when going inside as there are tiny bits of newspaper floating through the air. I like the idea of my walls being filled with all those newspaper stories.

Inside it's tricky to get a clear view of some of the rooms - there's piles of plasterboard obstructing everything. But here's an idea. Downstairs sitting room:

Upstairs sitting room:

All we have to do now is sell our present house. We've had two sales not go through as the buyers haven't been able to sell their own houses.

In the meantime I have two lovely gardens to work on. Lots of black polythene down now. I'm going to plant potatoes in there next spring. I've already put in overwintering onions and garlic.

Up she goes! Our own Grand Design.

This afternoon I was lying flat on my back (how else can you lie on your back?) on the roof terrace of our new house. The PVC membrane went on this morning, and it's all clean and smelling like you could get high on it. I was high in a different way, however, looking at the clouds in a blue sky. Having been chilly all day I was shedding layers as though I was in the Med. Then Joe came to join me. We were both lying there, imagining living here.

This is the roof terrace (OK, it's just a flat roof at the moment, but it will be a roof terrace once we've decking and plants out there).

And here it is looking into the house. That hole will be all glass with a door on the right.

Of course I'm going backwards here. Joe had been supplying me with photos all week. Here's the exciting bit arriving - the crane. And there's the scaffolding behind it, put up a couple of days before. I was incredibly disappointed to be missing the crane.

And missing the lorry arriving with the house on it.

Actually this was only half of the house. There was another lorry's worth. It was a giant numbered jigsaw puzzle. And guess what. One vital piece that should have been in the first load was in the second. Tricksiness before the build had even begun.

Behind the first lorry load was a carful of tourists. They'd spotted the house-bearing lorry, recognised what it was from too many viewings of Grand Designs, and come along to watch. Joe says they were practically having a picnic.

And here we go. Bits of the jigsaw up in the air.

There's the sitting room!

At this next stage I was beginning to think Joe was codding me. He'd just bought a child's house-making kit and was putting it together on the lawn outside the kitchen window. But look! There's a real man standing on the scaffolding. Those little boxes are the downstairs loo, a bedroom, the utility room and the pantry. They look too small to be real.

And then I came home from the parents last Thursday evening. I was supposed to be in Shannon by 6.30 but that's when the flight took off. It was delayed for an hour and a half, our intended plane having been struck by lightning on the tarmac in Bristol (not encouraging, not to be dwelt upon). Frustration. But never mind! It was still light enough to visit the site. All those photos hadn't prepared me for the shock of a three-dimensional house. So long looking at 2D plans, and here it was.

This is looking inside from the sitting room to the kitchen. The rooms no longer look improbably small.

This will be our bedroom. Nothing like fresh air for a good night's sleep.

But finally we have a roof, pitched as well as flat, and all that natty red stuff is a fireproof cavity barrier thingy.

Next is the outer block wall and slates on the roof. The views from upstairs are fabulous, and from downstairs nearly as fabulous. Hurray! It's all fabulous!

New build photo record

Back from the boat, which we've left up in Leitrim for a week. Not much time as I have to go over to my parents today (hospital stuff), so here's the photos of the latest developments on the site.

Jan the digger man put down the radon barrier.

Jano the block man put the blocks on top.

And yesterday the men from Tuam in Co Galway erected the scaffolding.

This will more or less be the view from upstairs. We're going to have to get a telescope so we can see who's going up and down the lake.

The build starts on Monday. Should be well under way by the time I get back on Thursday.

In the meantime Joe is doing a mighty job of project managing.

Yuppie shed

I don't know if there are any yuppies any more - very eighties - but this is how our new shed was described by a neighbour. Yuppie means young urban professional. I suppose the shed is young, so that fits. Urban - definitely not. Professional. Mmm. Depends on what goes on inside. Joe's workshop? My gardening stuff?

Anyway, we're very pleased with the shed, yuppie or not.

There's a drain that runs along the north of the property next to the road. Between the drain and the road is a stone wall. This lad seems to be living in the wall. I was delighted to see him/her.

 

It's a common Irish lizard, but the only place I've seen one before was in the Burren. This one was sizable - several inches long.

There are also ladybirds.

These are a rare sighting in our present garden. I love ladybirds. However, to have ladybirds, there must be aphids, and aphids are not good news for your garden plants. Even so, I think I'd go for the delight of the ladybirds.

I've started transplanting from here to there. I peeled back the polythene and dug over a patch. The soil is so very different. It was thick and black and like cutting through butter. Some big fat worms, which is a good sign. We'll have to see how things do. Here's the start:

The deer fence experiment is up too:

This is fishing line stretched between six-foot posts. Joe found all sorts of ideas online, particularly as used in Canada and the US where deer are a major problem. Apparently the deer don't see it, so when they touch it they get spooked and don't go near it again. This wouldn't work on their usual routes - they'd simply plough through - but in a new area it should do the trick.

The trees are just coming into leaf, so this will be the test time. No incursions as yet!

In the fenced area we planted spindle, crab apple, walnut, cob nut, guelder rose and hornbeam bought from the Celt tree nursery, and hazel saplings transplanted from the present garden. I've also put in two oak and a beech alongside the birch at the other end of the site. Two crab apple are not thriving, however. Not sure why. Enquiries are under way.

Wild flowers too. Primroses, cowslips, water avens, flag, meadow sweet, bluebells, wood anemone, purple loosestrife. Some of these are along the drain - I have an idea of making it a linear bog garden. Here's some primroses:

The only thing is the name. Drain. If this was another part of Ireland we could call it a ditch, which would be altogether less sewerage sounding, but in Clare the ditch is the bank around the field. Someone came up with 'cut' as in canal, and a canal is a type of drain too, so we'll see if that sticks. If any of my readers have other suggestions, do please say.

I put in 100 whitethorn (aka quickthorn, aka hawthorn) too along the bank (ditch) that borders the south of the site, dividing us from a drive to a house / the East Clare Way. It doesn't show up terribly well here, but you'll get the gist. They're all growing splendidly, but I'll have to keep the bracken under control until they're established.

 

It's tricky to know when to move plants to the new place. Our original sale on Gortavrulla fell through, the lovely people who were going to buy being unable to sell their house. We've had a couple of viewers since, and property here is definitely moving, but the more plants I shift, the more I'll have to keep two gardens on the go.

We have someone coming to look tomorrow, arriving from England on the night ferry. Uncertainty rules.

Blocks and dogs

There are forever rainbows over our new site. Actually, there are forever rainbows because there's forever rain.

This is the concrete arriving for the slab for the big shed. I was surprised to see the way the builders transported the concrete - via the bucket on the digger, a surprisingly delicate operation.

And here's Aoife with her new friends. They all turn up to say hello.

Driveway, digger and the slab which forms the foundation for the big shed. And beyond, the winter view, the no-leaves-on-the-trees view across the lake to Tipperary.

Finally the neat and smooth concrete slab, ready and waiting for the next stage. So quickly there is concrete where there was boggy ground.

Work begins - blocks and blocklayer on site.

Muck and Slig

So work begins. What was a field is now a mess. But a promising mess.

Here's where the new gateway is going to go. The wire has been taken down.

The digger has arrived and is about to turn the first sod. A very big sod.

The tractor and trailer were blocking the road - good thing there isn't much traffic, and extra helpful that the work is being done by the neighbours from up the road. Builder neighbours, not just any old neighbours.

Here's Joe directing operations.

The pile of earth is getting bigger.

In fact it's much much bigger than anyone expected. This is good from the point of the view of the gardener (me) as it turns out we have some splendid topsoil. From an initial position of thinking there may be none, this is terrific. The neighbour whose sons are doing the work tells us this part of the field was for many years a garden with crops of potatoes and cabbage, so had years-worth of manure piled into it. That topsoil is going to be put to work again.

The downside of this beautiful pile of growing medium is the hole it has left.

In order to create a driveway you have to remove all the soft stuff, replacing it with slig. Big hole = many loads of slig.

Here it comes:

Oops! The telephone wire! Joe's just noticed. Thankfully so has the lorry driver.

Load after load is delivered and spread.

Until finally:

We have a driveway. This is the first working layer. Eventually it will look prettier but this will take the heavy vehicles necessary to any building endeavour. How much cleaner it all looks when the sun is shining.

And this is Rambo and Aoife.

Aoife loves going up to the site. She has three friends, all the same size as her. Rambo is part sheepdog part terrier. The sheepdog is the top bit, the terrier is the legs. He looks a little odd when he stands up. He's one year old and terribly enthusiastic. They play together until Aoife's had enough when she tells him to feck off. Good for a puppy to have a crotchety old lady to put him in his place. Rambo belongs to the family who are doing the building work, so is around a lot. I'm enjoying him. He comes for walks with us too.

There will be more when I've downloaded the latest pics.