Reclaimed wood used to create a wooden floor
Looking down onto the lounge floor
New front doors open within the recess
Gorgeous rainbow over Kyle
Repointing begun
Dad made front door. Very heavy oak.

It’s already over a week since I came back from Scotland, so an update is well overdue.

With the move down south all done it was easy for Robert to drive down, pick me and a few bits and pieces from my mum’s up and travel back north. It had felt like a long term and I was ready for the peace and quiet of our little cottage.

We were joined for the week by mum and dad as dad had been making a new front door and was bringing it up to fit.

My task for the week was re-pointing the large stone wall in the lounge. Over the past few visits I have been digging out the old mortar and had practiced my technique on smaller patches of wall around the house. I’ve got the mix off to a tee now, although the first batch was a bit wet due to a bit of damp in the sand. It was slow going and quite messy and, over the week, I got just over half of it done.

I was prevented from working on the Friday because Robert had started to lay the recycled wooden floor. Over the past few weeks he has been sorting through the wood taken up from the floors and off the walls. He has painstakingly cut and sanded any reusable pieces ready to lay as a floor in the lounge. He has used long planks around the edge to create a frame and made smaller tile-like sections to fill the space in between. It looks stunning. The slate heath has also been fixed in place and is ready for the stove to be fitted.

What else?

Well, dad hung the front door that he has made with the help of a chap from up his road (Thanks Stuart!), Robert started to build the side porch and he also began clearing a space to move the caravan.

Next time I visit will be Christmas (Robert is up there full time now) by which time I will have finished work and ready to start the next adventure!