TODAY’S PROGRESS

Today we received confirmation of our official new address; Westbank View, Roseisle, Elgin IV30 5YD.

On the building front the sarking is complete. Tomorrow we should get roofing felt and tile battens up.

Today has been sarking day – Monday will also be sarking day. Nailing planks to the outside of the trusses. To those of you south of the border it is a particularly Scottish building tradition that you could learn from.

On a separate note the windows and doors arrived today. The windows and french windows look fabulous. Unfortunately the doors aren’t the ones we ordered so we have to sort that out.

The guys (Brian, Grant and Nigel) worked really hard this morning to get all the trusses and the gable ends up. Then Grant and Nigel left to be replaced by Pam and they put the strengthening timbers in and the barge boards. Duncan spent much of the day nailing in the metal plates to hold the trusses down. Not a bad result for a day on site.

Others call it the silver house. It’s roofless at the moment but the trusses go up tomorrow and the doors and windows are scheduled to arrive.

start with a concreted floor prepared on Friday receive delivery of kit at 7.55am (5 minutes early)  unload  using versatile forklift with 8 foot forks. At this stage it is Brian, May and Duncan.  then fit the sole plate. This involves laboriously drilling and bolting a series of planks to the floor precisely. And Brian is precise! Especially when joined by his wife Pam (Son Grant at college for a couple of weeks). Richard arrived to drive the truck at 1.30 and we started.  That is Pam holding up her end. By 4.30 the kit was up. just needed to tidy everything up. More pictures later.

 and all we have to do now is pour concrete, which arrives tomorrow morning. Then it’s the kit at 8am on Monday. Brian and Grant spent a backbreaking day laying the underfloor heating pipes and we spent 2 hours adding cable ties, so we know just how backbreaking their day was.

Brian the builder and Grant have been working really hard to get everything ready for concreting on Friday, ready for the kit to be delivered on Monday, but once again Scotframe have reneged on a confirmed delivery date. They were due to deliver on Monday morning (two working days away), but called this afternoon to say that they wouldn’t make it on Monday – and didn’t know what day it would be, but probably Thursday or Friday. They would let us know next week!!!!!! This is the second confirmed delivery date they have reneged on. Everybody else on this build has been great, but Scotframe have been absolutely rubbish at every stage. Suffice it to say we weren’t surprised by this afternoon’s phone call, so low is our faith in their ability to do anything they say they are going to do. Same catalogue of lame excuses. It seems every time we start to feel good about the build Scotframe put a spanner in the works. Needless to say we would not recommend Scotframe to anyone at this stage.

It’s amazing what a JCB and a telescopic handler can do in a day.