Here's How We're Doing

A flurry of snow, beautifully clear skies, sunshine and a hurricane all in 24 hours. Work on site with the two holiday cottages has progressed well and we're pleased to dust off the blog to show you some updated photos.
The view here of the cottages from the east shows the two bedroomed stone building on the left of the photo and the four bedroomed one on the right. The larger cottage is finished partly in white render and will also have larch clad areas on the unfinished section you can see. The brown material visible is Pavatherm which is a compressed wood fibre board used as an external insulation material. That area will be larch clad which will age fairly quickly to a mellow silvery grey. The materials used fit very well with the local vernacular and have also been used on our own house. The red sandstone is well over 150 years old and is typically 2feet thick. The official naming of the two bedroomed cottage...

We commissioned a name stone which is placed high on the west gable of the cottage. I'm really pleased with the way the whole building looks now, the cleaned up stone is looking all the more splendid in the winter sunshine. For a quick reminder of how it looked check here.
Both cottages have access ramps and at grade entrances for wheelchair users. They also have plenty of big windows to maximise those views of our beautiful surroundings, being strong on energy conservation the windows are Argon filled double glazed with sustainable timber frames.The interior of The Old Dairy. The living space is a full height room with high level windows as well as ground floor sliding doors to the patio. You can just see the pipe which will serve the wood burning stove on the left.
The living space of the larger cottage is impressively large and, again, has big windows for big views.

The view below is of the Campsies (to the south-east) from one of the bedrooms.

One kitchen....

Solar thermal panels on the south facing roof....

and photovoltaic nicely generating electricity to serve both cottages.