Live small, think big

Worth waiting floor

Is it a bit weird that I was overly eager to see a finished concrete floor just to be able to walk on it?

Now I might be easily pleased, but this, for me, is a project game-changer.

Proper posh

A real floor you can jump up and down on without risk of falling through. It doesn’t hide pools of water below the surface when it rains. A floor that doesn’t promote a dank, musty odour that permeates the entire building.

Yeah, that kind of floor. I feel dead posh, me. It completely changes the whole look and literal feel of the building. The air at last smells fresh and clean.

OK, that is obviously helped in part by my still having a big hole in the wall. Still, the space has been literally transformed! And everything smells all the better for it.

Not nothing

In one way, the building hasn’t changed at all; I’ve just changed the type of floor. The reality is that everything has now changed. This is the new datum; everything new gets built upon it. The base on which my design ideas will stand or fall.

This is the beginning of building back better. Adding insulation to the structure as I go. At last, I can begin to dream of warmth in the building.

Heating the Hebrides

Insulation now installed underfoot, what’s next your possibly wondering? The next big one is for doors and windows to follow.

The prospect of a weatherproof building is a tantalising glimmer of hope on the horizon. It will be great to try and get some semblance of normality in the building. Maybe even feel warm again, too!

Cold Choices

The building currently doesn’t have any form of heating. I made a conscious decision to forgo any form of temporary heating for the last couple of years.

Instead, I relied on layers of clothing and my little retro home from home, the Hobo hotel tent.

Believe it or not, there were reasons for my doing this. I’d briefly tried using electric radiators, and I even (unsuccessfully) tried a little wood-burning stove.

They were fine in themselves and will possibly re-emerge later when the building gets a bit more complete with wall and roof insulation, etc.

Expensive experience

Unfortunately, I was simply trying to heat the Hebrides. The building remained cold, just an expensive way of achieving very little without insulating the building.

This quickly got cut back to an hour or two a day to dry out (high humidity) damp PJ’s before bedtime, before deciding to give up on the idea, full stop.

Saving sacrifices

I needed to aggressively save money for the build project ahead. I’m desperately trying to renovate the building on a small, fixed budget, ie, all my savings.

Sometimes sacrifices need to be made when trying to accomplish that. Not easy, but you do learn to adjust.

Not the kind of stuff you hear about on Grand Designs and the like. But there again, this is no grand design now, is it!

Plans in progress…

Trying to achieve my dream might sound like your kind of nightmare. Hopefully, this will begin to make more sense soon. Note the use of the word hopefully…

Changes are happening. Finally, I can order key components for the project to take major steps forward. The two biggest elements are on the way. New double-glazed windows plus the structural steelwork to transform the building’s interior.

Mega mission

The structural steelwork is a vital part of my design for the building. It will add a whole new suspended mezzanine level.

This new floor space creates a separate sleeping area above a clear and uninterrupted ground-floor living/dining area below.

Sounds simple, really. However, the existing roof tie beams will need to be removed to give the required headroom for the mezzanine and a double-height space for the kitchen and dining areas. This complicates matters a tad!

Unfortunately, as skyhooks have not yet been invented, a means of suspending the mezzanine deck is required for things to work.

I’m a designer, spatial aesthetics matter. No one wants ugly, floor space consuming colums cluttering up the clean, uninterrupted, clear space below, now do they?

If I don’t want the roof to collapse, which is probably a good idea, this is going to require a fair amount of structural steelwork. The good news is that it’s also now in production. There is going to be some more major work happening here soon…

Possibly possible

Seems like it’s time to put typography into action…

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Rest assured, there’s absolutely no AI-generated churn here; it’s all just my own quirky outworking of ideas and dreams, as I look to renovate a derelict Small Mission Hall in the Outer Hebrides.