It’s all in the name
It’s been a busy week, lots of ‘real-grown-up-work’ (i.e University work for Andrew), I’ve been doing more packing/sorting and now we are back up in Scotland, with our three shipping containers on the plot!
We have spent the first few days sorting one container for a workshop, one for the kitchen & storage room and the other is completely empty and ready for its conversion - the first order for materials has been sent and we can‘t wait to get started.
But the exciting news (well for me anyway) was that the Highland Council have approved and registered our address. This means we can put up our house name and more importantly I can order things! Registering our address automatically informs the post office, emergency services etc and we should appear, eventually on sat navs.
Over the last few months we have had many debates over what to call our new home. I’ve always lived at a number, so the novelty of a name and getting to choose it was almost too much - I was scared I’d get it wrong! So what should we do? should we go safe i.e choose a tree variety from our plot - The Birches? or Rowens? We could go Gaelic but I doubt I could pronounce it - which would be a bit of a handicap. Or there’s always an amalgamation of our names - but I can even bring myself to try that. So after loads of scribbles on paper we decided to put barns in the name because, well our house plans are based on a Scottish barn and we are building by the Sea so instead of Seabarns we have decided to go with Saltbarns - and I love the way it looks on paper! I also have in mind to start a small natural sea salt business one day so the name would fit that too.
Being us instead of just ordering a name plate we decided to do it ourselves. From finding the right font which took more time than you would expect (we went with vortex from adobe) A friend with a plasma cutter then cut it out in metal sheeting for the price of a home cooked meal (Thanks Ed)
We then spending the next couple of days forcing it to take on a rusted appearance - first burning with a blow torch (dead dodgy its so dry, we could start a moor fire) then washing with water and steelwool, followed by a salt rub - which seemed appropriate and we did use sea salt!
Now our lovely rusty name plate has been fitted to a wooden board and set on posts by our plot entrance and it looks pretty damn good even if I do say so myself!
Yesterday our Postie, Ross, delivered our first parcel - proving the system has worked and he even compliment us on the sign - so that’s good enough for me!
Today we are heading off to Fort William - or The Fort as the locals call it - to buy plumbing ‘stuff’, carpentry ‘stuff’ and maybe even some lunch.
bye for now
Lizx
