What's Next?

Well I've come home and I'm just getting a few more details from my Dad as to what happened and what is happening.

It transpires that the building was occupied when four of the windows blew in. Apologies for that, I've altered the post (Nineteen Eighty Four style) to make it look like I knew that all along.

A few updates regarding the windows:

• We have had a joiner out to look at the remaining windows; his verdict that all but two (gable end in the classroom) are beyond repair.
• Historic Scotland generally request that original windows be restored, but clearly since we lost four of them in one go, many of the rest have no glass, and the vast majority of the wood across all of them is rotten.
• It turns out that the four windows which fell inwards fell because of the wind, but their stability was weakened by the removal of plaster around the windows. In other words, the plaster was in fact holding the windows in; making it even more astonishing that no one was injured.

Jim, our roofer is going out next Monday to try to make the roof watertight again. The tasks are:

• To fix the lead flashings in the joins on the roof, which are currently cracked.
• To completely replace all of the buildings gutters in cast iron, replacing the plastic ones fitted by Argyll and Bute Council.
• To replace the unconvincing roof tiles which the council fitted as a temporary repair with proper slate from Ballachulish. An interesting note on the roof slates is that the originals came from Kilchoman, now known for its new distillery.

Another interesting fact: the amount removed by the skips totalled to approximately 8 tonnes! And that is not including the five bonfires which were held daily to get rid of rotten timber, ply and MDF. So it can be fair to say that quite a lot has been achieved thus far.

I'm considering linking a Flickr account to the blog, so that I can upload all of the photos taken; not just the ones relevant to each of my posts.