Who By Fire

It’s been a good few months since my last blog post. There’s been a lot happening! I’m not one to dwell on the bad things, but boy oh boy, we’ve had a few big hits in our personal life these last 12 months, which in turn has affected our progress on the build. It’s been one thing after the next and I haven’t felt much like writing about it, naturally.

Craig measuring up some of the purlins (Pu) for our house! Delivered to site by Somerscales Sawmill

In great news though, our foundations are down, the drainage is complete and we have an onsite warehouse in our marquee. We are over budget by around 10k. I think we can survive that, but it was a bit of a surprise, really down to bad communication and being provided with incorrect drawings of our services. Maybe we’ve lost the hot tub… or the underfloor heating… who knows at this stage. I’m learning that managing a house build doesn’t work quite like managing a film or animation project. Having no knowledge or experience of most of what we’re doing, I’m finding myself head-scratching after meetings and conversations. I’m learning a lot. And there is a lot of what I know that I can use; Negotiating, persuading and pushing. There’s been a lot of that so far.

Last week our beloved caravan, Crystal Tips, was burnt to the ground. One of our neighbours called me to break the news. We were and are just in shock. We are safe and living back at our place in the Southside, along with the cat. If you’ve been following our progress on Instagram or on here, you’ll know how much work we put in to that caravan. As there were no services supplied by GCC (services were part of our agreement when we bought the plot) we had to do a lot of work to ensure we could live onsite over the summer. The plan was to live in our 35” static caravan for site security, and to save us some money while we were building. We rented out our south side place which got us through the summer financially. We installed a solar power system with the kind contribution of a panel by Chris Card! Ben built us a water tower and we filled up our tank with my friend Leslie Craigie around the corner. We installed a brand new gas boiler and a roll top bath. We insulated the floors and laid pine boards on top. We built a hearth and installed a beautiful little log burner. We made it home! We had a plan to move the caravan to a site in the Highlands once we were finished building where our families could holiday.

Ben and Craig had been working onsite on the carpentry after the delivery of our beautiful giant hunks of Douglas fir arrived onsite around a month ago. The guys have 5 bents to build, and we were/are estimating that they’ll complete 1 every 7(ish) days. They completed one bent, then the fire happened, then the storm hit. And our marquee (our workshop!) blew away…! So we’ve been at a standstill for around a week working on insurance, budgeting, chatting to the police, local MPs and anyone who we think might be able to help.

So the caravan is gone now and it’s time for us to knuckle down and get this house finished.

The guys are back onsite tomorrow/Tuesday and we really, really can’t wait to get cracking again. Hopefully we’ll be able to update you some more from here on in. Cross your fingers for us! We need some good stuff to start happening again now thank you please.

Huge thank you to everyone who came to the rescue. Davy and Buster for being our full time site security, Mark for helping Ben with the marquee when it ripped and tried to fly away, Craig for being so patient and helpful with all things build and design, my maw for making us soup, The Fire Brigade for explaining things to me and being honest, our neighbours in Maryhill who have been passing and been so, so kind and supportive, whoever called to report the fire (!), Cet for heading out to site to help us figure out site security, and my pals Rona, Charli, Kate & Ivy for letting me implode a little bit in public yesterday.

xxx