Google Street View

Google street view had a very interesting view of how the place looked just before we bought it. If ever we feel we are behind schedule it's always good to take a look at this and remind ourselves how far we have come since we bought the place.I am working on stitching these into a nice panorama (without big jumps) but in the meantime are a couple of the best views of the house and steading.

House and bothy 

Steading and bothy. This pic lies to the left hand side of the one above. The dutch barn and its standing have gone. 

Week 28

Site meeting with builders and architect. All going very well. They poured the floors today so we could not get inside. They have started slating the roof and all the windows are boarded up, so the place is effectively wind and water tight.  The lead work is amazing. It’s been noted that there is no way that you would leave that much lead laying around without security anywhere south of here. You have to love NE Scotland and its low crime rate!

Have now decided on the kitchen and bathrooms, internal and external doors, fires, lighting and electric plans, entertainment system. Just floor tiles to go and we are done. Feels good to be able to sit back and watch it going up 

Wind and water tight. The red cedar on the utility and upper part of the extension is also up 

Some very fancy lead work 

View from the SE showing the house and the bothy in the background. The two visible gable ends will be glass

Harvest time, the view to the north

UFO?

The time-lapse camera is up and takes a photo every minute through the day and night. I typically then scan through the 500 or so that are taken after dark and then delete them to save on disk space. Whilst skimming through last weeks I came across a couple of very odd ones

There are three consecutive ones that contain some very spooky images. The four shots below show what the view looks like in the daytime, what it normally looks like at night and then the three shots with weird lights in. These were taken at 8.25, 8.26 and 8.27 pm on the 10^th Sept at 1/15^th of a second exposure. The first is just a blurred light in front of the camera and could easily be a bird or insect. The second is more weird, 5 bulbous lights in the sky. The third is equally weird with a vertical ray of light going up (or down) from the centre of the house.

Inspection of the ground reveals no burn marks or excoplasm, and the house is intact. I am suspicious though because the farmer just cut his corn so any evidence of crop circles would be been destroyed.

I am a scientist and a sceptic, after doing some reading around this and chatting to folk, Rich, my brother in law, suggested that 1 and 2 are “rods” which are quite common in UFO circles. Rods are formed from longish exposures of insects beating their wings. I have no explanation for the vertical ray of light beyond something on the sensor of the camera but it is strange that they all occur consecutively. 

Maybe Cowieswells is an alien landing site or maybe there was a moth in front of the lens that then got vaporised - you can decide what you believe

View from camera during day time 

Normal view at night

8:25pm on 10th Sept. A large white object in front of the camera. An insect?

8.26pm, 6 white lights above the house?

8.27pm a shaft of light upwards from the centre of the house.

Week 25

A late post from last week because I have been travelling again.
Things are still progressing. They got the trusses on the main house and Sid and Al, the stone masons are back to finish the tabling. Andy (the block bloke) is starting the block work on the extensions.

We have been forced to finally come to lots decisions on things we have spent too much time procrastinating upon. So now we have chosen fires, internal doors, door handles, external doors, internally lighting, tv points and got a pretty good idea on the stair case. Its incredible how many images a google search on "modern stairs" or "contemporary stairs" throws back, even more surprising how hideous 90% of them are, although I guess it's largely a matter of taste.

Anyway here are a few pics to keep everyone updated.

Main extension coming on nicely, note also the roof on the main house to the right

Al and Ian ponder a pile of stones, while it looks like someone has driven a tractor across our future lawn. Wait I think someone has driven a tractor across....

Main house from the south. Note trusses are up 

This pic may not look very exciting but it is significant because it's the front door and it 's the first time  it's been open

Week 24 - Onward progress

I was away for 10 days in Norway and Ireland and was pretty eager to see what had happened in my absence. We had a site meeting with the builders and the architects on Friday afternoon. Things are progressing although I was hoping to see the trusses for the rest of the roof up. they are piled up and ready to be erected on Monday. 

Still the main extension is coming on well and you can really get a feel for the layout of the rooms. We now had lots of decisions to make in the next few days about fireplaces, staircases, door handles etc etc. 

I have some good timelapse footage which will be posted as soon as I get a spare hour to edit it all. In the meantime here are the obligatory photos.

Main extension dressed in shiny tin foil 

Its that curved piece of steel again. View of the main living area 

Upstairs and a view of the main extension and the east extension. All that is left is the trusses to go up on what was the old part of the house. They are piled up ready for the crane

Stonework has cleaned up nicely. This will be exposed to capture some of the feel for the old place 

View from our bedroom window, will be even better once the scaffolding has gone 

Week 22 - And we have a roof ...

...or at least we have some trusses up on the two extensions, which is a definitely moving in the right direction. (Click on the photos for bigger versions)

We always knew that when the joiners arrived things would start happening quickly and it has. On Wednesday the crane arrived to lift the trusses on and since then the guys have been busy building the upstairs and the roof. This is a really nice stage because you can start to see exactly how the house is going to look.

 I was down there most of last week building workshop and storage space in the bothy and the whole family was there on Sunday receiving visitors and Katharine turned the VW into a cafe wagon and distributed tea and bacon sandwiches to all comers. Later Sophie was the first member of the family to actually sleep in the house.

The main extension with a roof 

Lots of stud work in the downstairs 

Main living area, kitchen and dining room.

Upstairs view of the trusses for both the main extension (left) and the lounge extension (right)

Steel and Wood 

And some nice sandstone

Forget Roddy Doyle's van, this is Katharine's Kitchen  

Happy customers (especially Max)

Sophie gets to be the first person to sleep in the new house 

Week 21 - The joiners have arrived

As the title suggests, the wood working boys are in and most of the inside walls are now framed. Gives an excellent idea of how the room layout will work. Picked up a couple of minor glitches but nothing serious. And its finally stopped raining!

Some delicate adjustments to the steel work 

Kitchen and living room area. Note that curved bit of steel again 

Main extension framed up. Room are an office, bedroom, shower and boot room , clockwise from top

Some nice neat welds on the steel work 

Upstairs in the main house

Upstairs view of extension with the bothy and the steading in the background

Farmer has also been making good use of the fine weather 

But the fungus gives an idea of how wet it has been