House Facelift Complete

Work in Progress

Job Done

As you can see the house has now had the scaffolding removed and for the first time in 6 weeks we have the house to ourselves again. I painted it over two dawn to dusk 12-hour days before the scaffolding disappeared. We decided to do it in the original highland green. Aileen wouldn't let me do it in totally nutmeg (a dusty yellow), or overtly olive (yes, look at the Dulux colour charts) as she doubted if I would get round to do the other elevations to match - such trust.

The roof repairs were much needed but the escalating problems with the timbers on the facade and the upper wall, which collapsed when I was passing through Gatwick on my way to Corsica, meant I had to abandon my Corsican GR20 attempt and return home. On reflection, this was no bad thing as there were 9 days of electrical storms in Corsica. I was a bit frazzled when I retired at the end of Q3 of my life, electroconvulsive therapy might have meant a premature ending of Q4.

When I arrived back from Gatwick, the bedroom was festooned with emergency scaffolding surrounding the bed and other effects, such as my bedside reading, running shoes and items that I had ditched at the last minute to lighten my rucksack. The bedroom had the random clutter of a Tracy Emin exhibit.

The bedroom wall had to be demolished and rebuilt with brick and new timbers, decisions on slates had to be taken - recycled or new. I chose the former and we now are sheltered by recycled slates from the Trossachs Church, where we had married 30 years ago. We had lots of different tradesmen, seven on one day, competing to find parking space in the drive. They were squatting in the garage with their tools, and randomly depositing nails, Irn Bru bottles, mortar, old slates, sawdust, uneaten lunches and worst of all the Sun newspaper throughout the garden.  I was a supportive foreman/dogsbody and I went through 4kg of sugar making teas and coffees for the breaks most of which involved surreal episodes of conversation.  It reminded me of an episode of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, but turbocharged with some Scottish invective.

You will see in the photo below that there was a silver lining. I managed to climb Ben Lomond virtually,  it is below my right hip, whilst playing on the scaffolding. This could save a drive to Rowardennan and a 2-hour slog up the boggy path during the fifth round.

Great place for a Roof Garden