Saturday 16 May 2009

End of a week's tiling

Saturday at last, and the last of the tiling to do: just the two bathrooms to finish. The mayor arrived at 8 am as before, and by lunchtime we'd finished it all. I felt very pleased with what we'd achieved together, and even more so when the mayor said he'd be back on Monday to do the grouting. Once that is done the stairs can go in, and maybe the joiner will actually start putting them up on Wednesday as he has said he intends. We'll see.

Better still, we had a good seven square meters of the flagstones left over, which will go onto the patio outside. Making it fit properly is a little tricky though, and I've been scratching my head over it most of the evening.

It was an absolutely beautiful spring day too, a few thin high clouds and hot sunshine. After clearing up it was time to mow the grass that had been shooting up in all the rain last week. So I'm looking forward to a day off tomorrow - it has been hard work this week and I feel I need a break.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Apprentices are getting older

For the last three days I've been helping the mayor to tile the ground floor of the barn. As tiler's labourer I'm allowed to mix the glue - really a special cement - cart the flagstones around, advise on where to put them, and occasionally use the big water cooled saw to cut the flagstones up - and at the time of writing I still have all my fingers.

I've learnt how to lay out a floor like this, and how to make sure that the flagstones go in the right places. I've also learnt that not all these nice limestone flags are quite the same thickness - so we have to use more glue than normal to accomodate this - and that not all of them have been cut to quite the right size.

But the main thing is that I've learnt how hard it is to do all this for seven or eight hours a day, without a break (and remember, this is just my first three days). The glue mixing is what really gets tiring. I'm mixing about 15 kg of glue at a time, in a bucket using a trowel. It has to be mixed so it is only just fluid: a very dry mix indeed, a bit like bread dough in texture, and, like bread mixing, there musn't be any lumps or dry bits in it.

The good news is that we've been getting on very well, with one room completely paved and the other two-thirds done. It's not grouted yet, but even so it's real progress. I've been able to keep the mayor on his knees most of the day, passing him the stones and mixing the glue so he can keep hard at the difficult job of getting them put down straight and level. With our "opus romain" layout this isn't as easy as it would be with tiles all of the same size.the same size and shape (as he said with some feeling).

We've got a surprising quantity of stones left so I am beginning to wonder whether we've over-ordered. It'll be a good thing if we have, as we can use the surplus outside.

I'll post pictures in the next day or two when we've something more finished to show. But with luck we'll be able to tell the joiner to get started on putting the staircase in next week. It's nearly a year since it was delivered and it would be quite something to be able to get rid of the ladder to the upstairs and have a stairwell we can't fall down.

Thursday 7 May 2009

A small step

Went down to the mairie to lodge a request for permission to build a shed in the garden, but discovered from the very helpful secretary there that I didn't have quite as many attachments as Aurillac would like, so it's - literally! - back to the drawing board. They need artistic front and side views.

The mayor was there, and he promised he'd be with us on Monday to start the tiling. So I spent an hour or so this afternoon mixing a bit of concrete to get the step down into the hall the right height. I hope it is now exactly halfway between the doorstep and the floor level. It won't be possible to tile it for a couple of weeks, as the concrete has to cure fully first. But by then, the mayor will have finished the rest and I should know enough about putting the tiles in to do that bit all by myself.

Also today I went up to the tax office in Aurillac to get this years (2008 income) tax return forms. It seems odd that the forms aren't available until the beginning of May (the 5th) and have to be completed and returned no later than the 29th May. Why not have them available from 1 January?

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Putting in the windows

In the absence of any paid builders - Francois the plumber apparently still off with his bad knee, and Raymond the tiler running three weeks behind schedule - I decided to get on with work myself. We'd ordered small fixed windows for the few original window openings in the barn - small high-up square holes, which will now be in our bathroom, shower room, etc - just the double-glazed units with no frame.

I cleaned up the openings yesterday and glued the panes in place with mastic, and today I mortared them in, on the inside and the outside. To me most of them look slightly crooked, but I am not sure whether this might be an optical illusion: they seem to be square in the stone opening. I'll check with a spirit level one day, but in the meantime I'll try to think that they add character that way.

The openings did appear to have been cut with a view to putting glass in them, with a flat inner surface that otherwise would have been unnecessary. Though clearly in the 100 years since the barn was built (OK, 99 years) no one had got around to doing it before.

Starting work on this was a little delayed, as a result of a cow incident: Jean-Pierre's cows all escaped and had to be fetched back. This was about a dozen Saler cows, a similar number of calves, and, of course, the bull. Unusually, they had got through the fence into the woods below the field, and had them wandered up past our barn and down the lane. We didn't realise how they had got out until we thought we'd rounded them all up, only to see a lone straggler walking past our pool. Luckily it decided the water was too cold for swimming. The bull was a little frisky, and decided to demolish a large part of one of Leontine's new apple trees. He may just have been scratching his head, but the result was a late and rather heavy pruning. I was astonished to see how little attention Leontine paid to the cows and the bull, walking through them on the lane to get to the bakers van: the cows all have wicked pointed horns, and with their calves around there's always a chance of a misunderstanding.

By the afternoon the weather had actually become hot, and Caro braved the 20 degree water in the pool (twice). I'm waiting for it to be a bit warmer, though I couldn't find enough shade to sit and read later, as the walnut tree is not yet out in full leaf.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Spring sunshine at last

I've had enough of April showers so the fine weather of the last couple of days has been very welcome indeed. I decided to take my first bike ride of the year: a circuit down to the Lot and back. Parts of it were sensible. Other parts included the unmade road down to the Moulin du Clout - a "short cut" to Fournoules, and a brief detour onto the GR (long distance footpath) 6 and 65 where they ran parallel to a busy road. The footpath turned out to be a farm track heavily used by tractors and cows, with ankle-deep mud and ruts full of smelly stuff. When it finally became too steep for the cows/tractors, it was down a 45 degree slope rutted into the hillside with running water and loose rocks.

GR6 and 65 Near Livinhac

The route was via Fournoules to St Julien de Pignaniol - I got there just as the church service was starting (10 o'clock), and surprising numbers of people going in to. It took a little while to find the very small road behind the church that goes to St Santin - like the road from Cassaniouze to St Julien, it is the boundary between the Aveyron and the Cantal. At St Santin I stopped to check out the two adjoining churches (both apparently built on the site of the original fortifications). Curiously, neither is dedicated to St Santin: the one on the left in the Cantal is Notre Dame and the one on the right is St Peter. The Cantalian church has a romanesque west door and appears to be older than the Aveyronese church (mostly 19th century?). There's no real explanation for the boundary going where it does, though one suggestion is that it marks a watershed. It's now marked in coloured lights set in the ground between the two churches, and the war memorial sits exactly on the line. One face is engraved "St Santin du Cantal", with a list of names, and on the opposite side the other "St Santin d'Aveyron" with a second list.

From there I went on to La Garenne, and climbed the mound (leaving the bike at the bottom). Disappointingly sparse views from the top as a result of all the trees, and I couldn't make out Lessal with my binoculars either. So on from there to Montredon, and the road down to Ladinhac (which is where I took the GR 6 / 65). Curiously I only met walkers on it (seven or eight) on the one section that was a good metalled road. I should have looked at their boots. Once finally down to the Lot it was a pretty easy ride along to Port D'Agres and then St Parthem, where I stopped for lunch by the river. It looked as if the floods had taken away a lot of the surface of the unmade road down there. I sat right at the edge of the river and ate the apple I'd brought. I'd previously cursed slightly that I was too late for lunch in the restaurant there.

On from there to the bridge over the Lot, and winding road up to Cassaniouze.

Back in the Cantal

At this point I realized I wasn't going to enjoy the six miles uphill, but by the time I reached the top I was grateful I hadn't eaten much. I'd decided when I set out in the morning that I'd photograph the orchids I passed, and the very first ones I saw were on the uphill section. After pausing at the first ones for a picture I then ignored all the rest, as getting started again was ... an uphill struggle. At Cassaniouze I took the road via the Chateau de la Mothe, and discovered that - in the other direction - it really is much more downhill than up. Or was I just totally exhausted by then? I started getting off to walk at the shorter uphill sections, and finally teetered up the road to Lessal at a quarter to four. I found that I was having to walk bandy-legged owing to the amount of chafing - definitely saddle-sore.

Resolution - try to pick a ride that ends with a good downhill section - Marcoles might be a better bet next time (and it's closer). But there's certainly a drawback to living half way up a hill.

The bits I can remember - I'm trying to forget the last hour - were a perfect spring day outing. The cowslips and wild violets are still out, buttercups everywhere, grass knee high, and the trees are all coming into leaf, with a lot of blossom still on the fruit trees, though the oaks and walnuts aren't making much of a show yet. I even passed a small patch of wild bluebells looking quite exotic - we don't see much of them round here.

But it will be an early night I think. Eight o'clock?

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