Time to start putting her back together.......

Hi all, it has again come time to shed some light to what is going on beyond the metal fence at Raasay House.

The island has been a hive of activity over the last month. With the weather being fantastic it has enabled all of the projects on the Island to move forward quicker. The new Raasay Community Hall is nearing completion, works on the new ferry terminal are ramping up and Raasay House has almost finished being pulled apart and ready to be put back together.

With the end of the month David and I attended out monthly site meeting to be updated on the progress of the works on Raasay House and have a quick tour of the building. We started off by heading up onto the scaffolding where we were shown the nearly completed east roof section of the House. It looks amazing and so much work has gone into repairing the roof.

One of the main problems that ROK have encountered while renovating the House is the current state of the roof. They have had to repair alot of the original roof joist in the house. It is all a bit too complicated to try and explain, but I will say that I feel sorry for the person that had to nail in, by hand, 200 nails into each new joist.......there are probably over 200 joist repairs - you do the math.....

After inspecting the roof we headed into the building to see the extent of the work that has been carried out over the last month. The house is pretty much entirely cut back to its skeleton now. The majority of work that has been carried out so far on the house is rot removal works, stone works and rendering, roof works, gutters and down pipes repairs, window and door repairs, internal alterations. I know it doesn't sound like much, but believe me you wouldn't recognise the house at the moment.

So the next stage of the project is to finish of repairing the roof then start putting the house back together and start installing all of the new drainage, wiring and heating. Some internal repairs have already been started, these are mainly in the form of window repairs. A big job when you consider that there are around 140 windows in the house and they all have to be repaired and restored by hand. ROK can't just pop into the hardware store and pick up a new one....

That's enough words for now, here are some more pictures of the Raasay House refurbishment.


Roof Inspection.....


East wing of Raasay House - roof repairs completed.


The old cafe - completely stripped back to basics now....


Re framing of walls...


Believe it or not - this is the Blue Lounge....


Joist Repairs....


Lintel Repairs....


This was the old boys toilets and showers....


Old kitchen and scullery....