Veluxes and wood cladding

I am now going top employ a tactic used by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction (which if you have never seen I would strongly suggest is one the best films ever made) 
By doing a QT I don’t mean I am going to get a couple of homeys around with pliers and blowtorches and get all medieval on your sorry asses.
Oh No!, 
What I mean is that I am going to take some liberties with time sequencing.
What we did in the autumn in 2009 was to start work on the inside upstairs doorways and the first bits of flooring for upstairs. However before I take you “upstairs” so to speak I will continue to show you how we have got on with finishing the outside so far. Then we can go inside and have a look at how it is progressing there.

The internal layout meant fitting some velux windows at the rear and also the front to utilise as much natural light as possible. (It's free as well) 
My roofer had explained that it was much quicker and easier to install Velux after the roof was on and come up from the inside, which is exactly what we did. 
They are fairly easy to install and come with instructions however I left this to my roofer and he had all 5 fitted within just under two days. 
Having seen them done I am comfortable that I could do them myself in the future although it would take longer. 
You can see the ones at the back in the following photos which are also of the cladding going on.
To do the cladding we just battened over the waterproof membrane and then secret-nailed and glued the Douglas Fir through the battens into the more substantial wooden frame beneath.
The Douglas Fir is tongue and grooved all round and is 18mm thick. 
Each piece was treated, first with two coats of wood preservative as well as two coats of Xylophene.
The finished article has had one coat of Danish oil so far although will be receiving another two or three later this summer 
The cladding was fitted in the late spring of 2010 and the Veluxs about the same time. 








As a finishing touch we added a small peddy roof to prevent wind driven rain sliding down the front of the cladding and pouring over the large window door combination below. 
The little roof will I hope add some protection to that arrangement.

You can see the Velux for the bathroom and office mezzanine sleeping deck (top small one) in this one on the right side of the roof. 
I am searching for a shot of the back where you can see the whole roof from the rear with both eyebrows and velux so you get an idea of the symmetry we were trying to achieve.

The back bedroom window is exactly half the size of the main opening . 
The side windows downstairs are a third the size of the bedroom one. 
The eyebrow windows to the side are a quarter the size of the bedroom window (or as near as makes no difference)







In the above photo you can also see Mrs B’s walls in their weathered glory. 
I may be biased but to me they look like they have always been there.

That’s pretty much where the back is to this day. 16-07-2011 and we are now mainly working inside while I save up for the windows. 

This summer I am hoping to fill in under the eaves on the side of the roof with more Douglass Fir and we will be sealing up with stone all the way to the base plate in between the corbles. 
That will just leave the windows to go in and the terrace to put down with the incorporated rain water harvesters (if possible die to ground rock) and drainage down to the garden.