The Scots pine cladding is unveiled

The cladding guys continue to make steady progress, and are half way along the west side of the house. The cladding on the north wall, now without its scaffolding shroud, looks striking. It has been really nicely put together.

I hadn’t appreciated what a big job it would be; the poor guys doing it don’t look to me like they will finish for another couple of months. And of course, the weather has been terrible, which is not want when you’re working in on the side of a hill, 10 feet up on a scaffolding tower.

As it has turned really cold (again) I’ve got my digger man booked to come back to landscape the field. I hope it will be dry enough for him to work on it. We’ve cleared a lot of builder’s detritus away in readiness for his arrival, and I’ve marked out the swales and the new pond.

I can’t wait to see the mountain of subsoil vanish and embryonic ponds and meadows appear. In a burst of absurd optimism I’m working out what quantities of seed I’ll need.

We’ve only had one potentially tricky issue recently – water in the supposedly weatherproof basement. We think it’s because of the rain cascading down a wall where there has been no downpipe, so we’ve popped a temporary one in. The roofers have been back to finish off another area where we were still seeing some damp coming through. The extra work seems to have done the trick, touch wood.

Next on the agenda is the big front window in the basement should be going in now that the scaffolding has gone, which will make the house at least feel warmer and more weatherproof.

We’re making the footings for the outside staircase at the moment, and hopefully can push on with the plastering soon after the installation of the heat recovery system. We’ve also started to think about what to call the new house… but more on that later!