Sunday 29 November 2009

still putting up ceilings

This week I was finishing off the main downstairs room, and working with a friend putting up the ceilings in the two bathrooms and the workroom. This is a substantial improvement as I didn't clean any of the beams in all the rooms, because I knew they would eventually be covered up. They were very dirty - a mixture of the original limewash, dozens of coats of it, and spiders, straw, old nails, general muck. In fact, like this (readers of a nervous disposition should look away now):

beam

That's the one remaining room that's not yet done, the boiler room. So it's a good thing that the rest of them are now covered up. This is one of the bathrooms, take careful note of the elegant light fitting (work still in progress....)

cover up

We were lucky in finding that it was possible to run the plasterboard right into the window alcove. The top of the alcove, two or three heavy oak planks, was another insect habitat of considerable age and extent. Of course, the gaps in the board need to be filler-ed and smoothed, and the board painted, but this is the worst part of the job.

As I shall shortly be telling the mairie that the work is "finished" - and I think it must be as we are now living there - I took some exterior shots all round yesterday while the sun was shining to show what the present state of the building is. The guardrail on the balcony is still awaited.

North:
north



West:
west
This view is always a little odd as it is quite steeply uphill, and just a bit closer than I'd like. But if I take a step back for a better view I'd fall off the plinth that I've built at the end of the garden to take the solar panels (one day).


South:
south
The spoil heap shows a bit more than I'd like, but the ground there will (one day) be built out a bit further and grassed over to produce a more or less level terrace.



And the front door:
east


It's curious looking at the pictures just one day later - it feels as if it has been grey and raining for weeks, but it clearly wasn't yesterday morning. Those colours haven't been adjusted either - or not adjusted by me, at least: I have no idea what the camera and the computer does without me knowing.

Saturday 21 November 2009

Friday 20 November 2009

the last of the bedroom? I don't think so

For the last few weeks I have been working almost exclusively on getting the bedroom ready. I cannot quite believe how much time it has taken - put up the plasterboard, add filler between the gaps, add more filler when it's dry, sand the filler down so it's level (a job that would be better done wearing full scuba gear, as the dust gets everywhere) then paint the walls and the ceiling, masking tape all round. After two or three coats (more than 30 litres of undiluted paint, and the first couple of coats went on with a substantial addition of water), pull off the masking tape and then sand the beams to remove the excess filler and clean the new white paint off them. At this stage I discovered how dirty the inaccessible side of one of the beams was (a very narrow gap between it and the wall, so it hadn't been done with all the rest) and I then covered myself with old flaky limewash - straight down on my face of course, as it always is when you're working over your head.

Still, now it is done it looks pretty good. It's hardly worth posting a picture, as almost everything is white - a bit like a child's picture of a polar bear and a white kitten in a snowstorm - but nevertheless, here's the most difficult bit, restricted access, incurving beams, extra dirt, the lot. The surfaces here aren't quite as smooth as elsewhere, but it's a lot better than it was.

tricky corner

And this is a general view - the dark speck on the wall is a (taped over) plug point.

Finished?


The bottom of the wall looks slightly odd as there isn't any skirting board yet, and I didn't want to paint right down to the flagstones. A skirting board is indisputably needed as the floor is heated, and has an expansion gap at each edge. That's a job for later though. I have yet to find a source of skirting ("plinthe" as the locals say).

I managed to find a bit of free time while the last bits of paint were drying, so I'm now just starting on the final volume of the Recherche du Temps Perdu. Luckily the AbeBooks supplier came up with the improved version just at the right time (today). The other books are the original late 1920s Alfred Knopf versions, all translated by Scott Moncrieff, but he had died before rendering the last volume (I'm not sure he even saw it in French), and his successor, Stephen Hudson, is regarded as having done a poor job. So what I have is the Mayor version, as successively revised by Kilmartin in the 1980s and finally by Enright in the 1990s, and I'll be able to make my own comparisons and see. I have, contrary to my expectations, come to be gripped by the narrative, and the last volume - largely written much earlier than the preceding ones, and possibly left in a better form by Proust - promises a lot. I was mildly surprised to find that the last eight or nine pages of "The sweet cheat gone" appear as the first few pages of "Time Regained", and I wonder what happened here (and indeed whose translation it was, as it is visibly the same as the Scott Moncrieff version, who gets no credit for it in the modern version).

I'm (almost) simultaneously getting into Updike's Bech books, which I had not read before, and they are well worth the read too. I have always enjoyed the four "Rabbit" books, but I'd seen dismissive criticism of the Bech ones, so I had never opened one.

It's a curiously mild (and dry) autumn here - the temperature in Aurillac today was 19 degrees at 4pm, and the grass is growing still, though the leaves have fallen from many of the trees - the beech and the oaks are still showing a lot of colour though.

Monday 9 November 2009

down from the ceiling

I put up the last bits of plasterboard this morning - the last bits in the two larger rooms, that is, there are still the two bathrooms, the boiler room and the workroom to do - and it looks a bit of a mess. But the next stage is to finish off the filler (which Caro has been working on) and then paint, and then sand the paint and the filler off the beams, and then - that's it.

So I spent an afternoon creating what I hope will not come to be called "Komputer Korner". It's temporary, really, it IS temporary. I've got much better plans for something permanent. But it's a useful space and now it's done. Solid too.

new desk

Shows what you can do with an old pallet and some lino offcuts.

Some of the tiling is getting near to done. Compare this one with the 14th September picture of work in progress. We ran out of tiles so it's still not quite done, but it's much more like the way it should be.

downstairs

And upstairs the lino is down in the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms is very nearly finished - still a small amount of tiling and some grouting to do. Here's the bathroom, where the tiles and structures are all my own work:

upstairs

I've managed to get some solidly cemented carreaux de platre supporting the bath, so it doesn't flex when filled with water (and hopefully the grout round it will stay watertight as a result).

And this shows the lino:

Photobucket

The pictures were taken at night with a flash, but when the sun is shining the whole effect is warm and (er) colourful. Pity about the invasion of wasps. If I can find where they are getting in I might be able to stop them. I did find and (temporarily) fix the appalling draft by the computer desk.

Monday 2 November 2009

hitting the ceiling

For the last few days it's been the downstairs ceilings: plasterboard up between the beams. As the beams aren't straight, each bit of plasterboard has to be shaped to fit. And I've been adding metal rails as cross-pieces to strengthen the boards at the ends and where they join. This might not strictly be needed.
Here's one in progress:

going up

It will also need a round hole for the spotlight (that's the conjectural spotlight which will eventually replace the bare bulb)

And this below is a bit that's been done and is ready for painting (well, almost - it's no doubt best to sand it a bit smoother first). I am hoping that a good thick coat of white paint over everything will make it all look a bit better. At present you really can see the joints between the boards (Caro has being doing all of these, loads of filler in all the many gaps I left) and the wall where the electrician cut a channel to take the conduits for the plug point below. We will find out shortly, one way or the other, as very soon this corner is going to have the wardrobes installed, and it has to be painted first.

Not much else to do - it's been raining hard today. And still is.

done earlier

You can see how the beams slope, but the plasterboard (which is level with the floor above) sits nicely horizontal. But it looks crooked (and always will I imagine).

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