House-on-the-Hill Blog

19th August 2009.

The "roof" waiting is over. No less than three large truck loads trundled up to Midcrosswood yesterday, laden with grey roof sheeting material, all curved to order. The contractors hope to be on site next week and we should see some real action again. I'll need to dig out the camera again and, before the walls go up, capture the stark majesty of the frame and curved overlapping roofs against the backdrop of the hills and skyline before the walls go up. Hang on in there, photos will appear sometime. Unless I make a colossal blunder and lose the lot!

Meantime the steel supports for the utility area went up last week, so the whole footprint of the building can now be clearly seen. It's far too soon really to start looking into flooring and tiling in detail but then I don't always do things in logical sequence. So the quest is on. Not just for any old tiles. I want natural stone. Not just any old wooden flooring. Engineered oak this time that can cope with the underfloor heating and not so thin that it can't be sanded in years to come. And what do we want to do about lighting, sound systems? We've had some preliminary discussions about that too. If this is to be a 5 STAR property with the wow effect it's got to "exceed expectations". That's a catch-phrase bandied about a lot in the tourism industry but it's one that could make the crucial difference between a property lying empty and maintaining a thriving business.

Talks continue about ground source heat pumps, boreholes and collection systems and we will need to make some decisions soon. That's where I bless having Hew around, who understands these things so much better.

19th July 2009

The crane has been and gone. The steel supports are now up and the building is taking shape. Two storey, it's impressively long. The other day one of our guests took pity on me when I explained my cluelessness with a digital camera and she accompanied me up there. I think she welcomed the short reprieve from her 1 year old twins and she got the bonus of an unexpected ascent in the cherry picker when she asked for a bit of height from which to capture the steel structure. The crane would have been a rather more hair-raising experience. Photos will follow once I have got to grips with downloading them. Please be patient! Very patient, I suspect..

Also new in the field is the addition of a third-hand portaloo we sourced, repaired and transported up to the field. Can't let it be said we are not looking after the welfare of our workers on site. It transpires that in my eagerness to look after the construction crew, I was not flavour of the day with our shepherd. The gate into the field was inadvertently left open after ushering out the loo-lorry. And all the sheep escaping from being fleeced by John and his clipping team in the nearby shed then got mixed up.

Mixing sheep is one thing but I hope there are no mix-ups with our window order which went in at the beginning of this past week. About 40 emails flew backwards and forwards to get all the detail sorted prior to placing the order. 36 windows of different shapes and sizes, some double and some triple glazed. Some huge, some small, a couple opaque for privacy in the downstairs bathrooms. All Scandinavian, aluminium and customised. Scheduled to arrive in mid September I anticipate them being fabulous. I am getting so excited about the contemporary design of this new build.

15th June 2009

The foundations are now in but nothing much else has happened, unless you count the arrival of a couple of storage containers, ex P & O cruises, parked up just inside the field to provide secure storage. The steelwork should arrive on site any day soon. I shall need to get to grips with learning how to use a digital camera if I am to liven up this blog with pictures. Claire, our son's partner, has lent me her camera but the manual is long since lost and I am clueless.

27th May 2009

Our rendez-vous was a field. I walked past the parked car. “Grumpy Old Git” proclaimed the sticker on the rear passenger window. This chap’s going to be OK, I thought to myself, and right enough, he was. (It turned out his grandchildren were responsible for the sticker.) But we weren’t here in a virgin field to talk about personal matters. This was the Scottish Power guy, on site in response to my introductory letter. So we talked single phase, discarded the idea of three phase electricity to the new house, discussed underground cables, costs, timings, all that sort of thing as the three of us (by now my more clued-up hubby Hew had arrived) got to grips with what was possible. A short productive meeting. Scottish Power took a leap up in my estimation.

Next up to the same field a few days later was Mich, our architect, Blair his fresh-faced assistant, my better half Hew , and a chap, Neil, keen to wow us with his expertise on geo-thermal heat pumps and underfloor heating. Also at work in the field was Donald in the tractor and muck-spreader. Blue skies and sunshine when we got there, but quite a chilly wind! A quick check to confirm the tractor was far enough away for us not to be in the firing line of the muck being hurtled out at every angle. All very green and environmentally friendly but a different story if you get spattered! In fact 5 minutes into the meeting we were hit, not by muck, but by something much more unusual for the month of May. Hailstones! Lashing against our faces and bare arms, the five of us beat a hasty retreat into a close-by barn to continue our discussions on boreholes and the like. A lot of this technical stuff washes over me, but luckily Hew has a good grasp of the essentials. And, strangely enough, or not so strangely, given the wind tunnel we had just escaped from, a turbine and harnessing wind power seemed suddenly not such a bad idea after all.

20th May 2009

Our first, and lengthy, hurdle was convincing the Planners that a house up on the hill was not going to mar this part of the Pentlands designated an Area of Great Landscape Value. Six years on, we've agreed an exciting contemporary design, the funding is in place and the contract for the steel framework has been awarded to a local company, eight miles up the road. The design is based on earlier agricultural barns with curved roofs, vernacular with a contemporary twist. Should we have gone for a timber-frame construction instead of steel? Opinions were divided, but I guess a farmer is always going to be a bit biased in favour of a steel structure. Tried and tested. Longevity.

And now, at last, here we are pressing ahead. The ground has had a chance to dry out a bit. A new access gate into the field is keeping the sheep out whilst we level the ground and create a firm base for the foundations. We've stepped out and measured the footprint for the house. It's impressively long. Lorry loads of hard core base material have trundled their way up the track and Donald, our farm worker, takes a break from his daily routine to level the site. It has of course been raining. Typical!

So jobs for tomorrow? Meet the Scottish Power rep. on site to discuss a new electricity supply. And chase up the steel erection firm to find out when they are going to be trundling up the track and fording the burn en route. The new house will be sited just beyond the cluster of trees you see at the end of the track.

And later this week? A meeting with the architect to progress window decisions. Do we go for triple glazing? Decisions, decisions....

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