A little catching up on the home-front

Last night Derek came in from the dark outdoors at 23:00 hours looking totally exhausted, every muscle hurting.

‘The roof is on’ he said.

‘Is it screwed down?’ I asked, thinking back on the disaster we had, the last time with the wind storm, when the roof blew off as it hadn’t been properly secured.

‘Temporally‘ he nodded

‘Oh good – so I won’t have to look for somewhere else to sleep if the wind comes up’, I laughed.

Now just in case you thought a roof being on means we are finished. We are not. But it does mean that the building is temporally waterproofed for the rains. We started the guest room foundations at the end of April but there was no dry spell long enough for erecting the prefab. So we waited until this last weekend.  

We actually had two projects on the go at the same time. So on Saturday we jumped into action.

1. Project: assess the damage of the fence and begin fixing it. A section of our fence between the neighbors had blown down and we decided that we could remove the broken panels and thin out the hedge during smizzle (a smidgen of drizzle) and smirr (fine drizzle) and go in doors for drookit (soaking rain) and stoatin (heavy bouncing rain). Yes the Scottish have a lot of words to describe the different types of rain and it makes sense in a place that has so many types of rain. This blog: Gilligans Island Innovations , 100 words for rain in Scottish has a good list of Scottish words for rain and other weather.
2. Project: Begin erecting the walls of the guest room. So during the aftak (easing or lull in the rain or storm) when it was blue skies and puffy little white clouds Derek and I worked on the building. I was just another pair of hands when needed.

On Sunday the fence went into limbo, waiting for new panels and some supplies, but the guest room became a priority as the day had turned out to be a glorious day. Daughter, Son-in-law and Bambi, the dog, came to help. The day seemed to go on forever but it is also due to the sun going down at 21:00 hours.  Monday was mostly an in-office day but when Tuesday came along we had to put an emergency strategy in place as the night promised to be drookit and stoatin and that would not be good for the walls and the electrical board so Son-in-law and family came straight after work to help. Derek and he worked till much later; and Derek continued till 23.00 when he looked a wee bit wabbit.

My father, being Scottish, would say ‘Och aye, ya look a wee bit wabbit’ (oh yes, you look a little bit exhausted)

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We still need to plaster and paint the walls and put the underfloor heating and flooring in. Let’s put it this way: we have guests coming late in June and I am pretty confident it will be finished enough for their comfort by then.

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And my utility room … is still a twinkle in my eye.

That’s it from me today. I hope you are looking after yourselves as well as you can.

~Morag Noffke~