Him indoors

I did these two doors - not the one in the middle - over the last few days. I haven't yet treated them so at present there's a delicate smell of oak which will shortly be replaced by a strong smell of linseed oil. It's nice to have a door for the shower room - this morning I'd left it open and found inside the shower there was one of the cats with most of a (small) rabbit and a certain amount of blood and fur. Fortunately it all cleaned up nicely. I'm not sure whether to encourage the cat to eat what it has killed in there - better than on the stairs from the point of washing away the bloodstains - or try to persuade it to eat outside.



This is the big door for the bedroom, in place. It's a good fit too, and I didn't need to do a lot of adjusting. Just the same, I had it on and off its hinges at least six times.



This is the view from inside the bedroom, and you'll notice I haven't yet made the catch for the door. Tonight, to keep the cats out, it'll be wedged shut...




This is a close-up of the catch in the shower room. The filled screw holes show up much more with the camera flash than they do in normal lighting - in daylight they hardly show at all.



I've extended the top of the guide by about a centimeter, with the idea of providing something to pull the door with. It would save putting a handle on the inside of the door. In fact the one centimeter extension isn't quite enough, and for the bedroom door I'll make it a little bigger. If we don't like it it will be very easy to cut it off.

Heavy doors

I've been working on the interior doors. I bought a half-cubic meter of seasoned oak planks, mostly just over 2 meters long and between 15 and 30 centimeters wide (but all about 3cm thick). These were from M Clot, who used to run a sawmill in Maurs until a few years ago, and who, having retired, is selling off the old stock. It's good stuff, though there are some woodworm holes.

I'm gradually getting better - or, if not actually better - more systematic at doing the doors. They are a fairly simple pattern, but just the same they are heavy. The biggest one, nearly a meter wide, is not quite too heavy for me to lift, but the combination of weight and size mean that I can't carry it any distance at all. So I've been moving it around on a sack barrow:



It goes without saying that the wooden door won't go through the outside glass door on the barrow: it's too wide, and you can't wheel it in sideways (not by yourself, anyway). So the last bit was dragged along the floor.

It's surprising how often it has to go back to the workshop. I'm not yet good enough to make it fit the aperture first time (though this one came very close), so I make it a little over size, put it in the doorway, and then pencil round it and cut it down to size. Then it has to go back to have the hinges put on in the right places. There's a fair amount of sanding annd planing to fit, too. In this case, as it is so heavy, I've bought bigger hinges, and I just hope the door itself is strong enough to support its own weight. We'll see tomorrow. I'll put some pictures up then showing a bit more detail.

Getting plastered

In fact, rendered, but almost as messy.

I've had a first ever go at putting a roughcast lime render onto a wall. I rather hope it is a wall no-one will ever look at (and maybe a second coat will even things out a bit). But the render is still there this evening.

Here's how it looks:



It's a purely sand/lime mix, approximately 2:1, and it's mixed reasonably wet. I applied it by flicking it off the trowel, which I know is the approved manner. I have a feeling I should have tried to level the surface at some point before it was completely dry, but I was so pleased seeing it stuck to the wall that I didn't. I couldn't face the prospect of seeing it all slide off. When you flick it on, it's surprising how often successive plops end up in exactly the same place, giving a very amateurish peaks and valleys effect. I hope that with more experience I'll be able to throw it where I want it. Trouble is, if you don't throw it hard enough it falls off (and too hard, it bounces off), and there's a trade-off between speed and accuracy.

I ran out of lime, so tomorrow I'll get some more and try to finish this wall and start the next. I am fairly sure you are supposed to do something clever at the edges, so I'll try to work out what that is before I start next time.

But what the hell, it looks a lot better than concrete blocks!

A hot week's tiling

The tiles on the terrace (over the silo) are finally finished. It was very warm work, but working with cement, with grout, and buckets of water is a very effective exfoliant, so now I have nice clean hands. With nice clean blisters.

It was a good thing that I left the hump untiled until after I'd worked out how to tile it. In the end it only needed four easy cuts to produce a tiled area that is a couple of centimeters higher than the surrounding area. Like this (these are all clickable thumbnails - click on them for high-res pictures):



I was surprised to find that the grouting was such vigorous work, even though I didn't do much at a time. It was quite difficult to leave the grout long enough to dry sufficiently in the gaps between the tiles, but not so long as to be impossible to clean off the surface.



In the background is the man from the supermarket come to fix our 9-week-old washing machine (bearings shot). The grouting took me four days, though of course since it was so hot I wasn't exactly working full-time (though I do remember one evening when I finished at 8pm). In between I was getting the red car imported and legal and insured in France. I had to replace its shock-absorbers which passed an English MOT but failed the French one - where they actually test them. In the UK they just check to see that they are present and not obviously leaking.

But the finished result (of the tiling) does look pretty good (the car still looks shabby but with French number plates):



Of course most things look nice with pots of flowers and sunshine, and what's more the peaches over the terrace are ripe and ready to pick (and not wormy either, unlike the apples). It's possible to see a small puddle in the middle: I flooded it to see where the water stayed. There was a similar puddle before I started tiling, but I tell myself that this one is smaller. In any event the surface is now pretty certainly waterproof. If there's rainwater getting into the silo now it will only be through the walls.

And in the background of all three pictures you can just see the youngest grandson's nappies on the line: he's on his way home today, but right now he's having a swim.

The blockhouse is now nearly done

After two days of very hard work in hot weather, the blockhouse is just about done. After putting up the rafters and nailing on the planking I discovered that a small roof like this is normally held on to the building just by its own weight. So I tied it down by using metal strips, fastened to the rafters at one end and to the concrete belt on top of the wall at the other. Hard work with the masonry drill. I then thought that it might be a good idea to seal up the bottom edge of the roof - to discourage plants from coming in - with a concrete infill. This is it:



The tops of the metal strips just show above the concrete. They aren't really heavy duty angles - I'm using up the hangers for the suspended ceiling, as I had to buy two large boxes of them, and I had most of the second box left over. However the concrete is going to help weight down the roof.

The concrete goes all the way along on top of the wall - I did have to fit wooden strips to stop it falling straight out on the ground, and these too will make the roof a bit more solid. They are fixed securely into the rafters. Here's a general view of the concrete infill:



After that I screwed the missing planks into place - all the rest are nailed but I didn't want to hammer right next to the wet concrete. I didn't think it would harm the mix per se, but that there was a risk that I might dislodge the shuttering which is only wedged in place. So here we are:



Apart from shifting the tools and general builders' mess, there is one more job to do, which is to put a bit of roofing felt over it. In a week or two there will be metal sheeting over it, the final layer below the solar panels (which have still not even been ordered .... )

work in progress

The blockhouse is still as it was - summer visitors, and it's now August, so not a lot gets done. But I have started tiling the silo outside the front door, so here is what progress I've made over three days:







The gap in the tiles is where there was a concrete trapdoor down into the old cistern: that part is now two or three centimeters higher than the surrounding area, so I will have to dissect the tiles to make them sit as flat as possible.

It is possible to lay tiles when it is raining, as it was on Sunday, but it's more difficult. The adhesive doesn't stick to the ground, so when you try to spread it, it slides around in a lump instead. It doesn't wash away though, so the tiles are well stuck down.

belt up

I've finally put the belt (ceinture) up round the top of the block house.

It was an exceptionally hot day when the shuttering went up, and when we poured the concrete. The shuttering contains reinforcing bars (at last, a way to get rid of the extra metals left over from building the barn), and there is also special square reinforcing down the corners to help hold them together. Personally I think cement works pretty well by itself.



Assembling the shuttering took at least as long as mixing the concrete and tipping it in, and although shuttering always looks very Heath Robinson, the finished result is usually surprisingly good:



In the top right hand corner it's just possible to see the reinforcing bars for the corner - they will have to be cut off flush with the surface when the concrete is a little harder. And in the top left hand corner is that useful standby, the scrunched-up cement bag, used to plug a hole where getting a bit of wood in just wasn't possible.

Next, the rafters and boarding it out.

the end is in sight

mine, possibly. But the wall is now almost finished. There's a little more pointing needed on the left, and some repairs to the plinths under the wooden pillars, and some work inside (when I succeed in removing the 200 concrete blocks stored there), but that's just about it.



The two door pillars are the same size, and the plinths they stand on are the same too, and are level with each other. It's odd that it doesn't look like it.

The new wall is definitely an improvement on this:



It's been back-breaking work, so I'm pleased it's about over. And I quite like the result, which - although far from professional - is good enough to pass.

going up

The wall has taken quite a while to get to where it is now, which I imagine has something to do with the extremely hot weather we've been having. The pool has reached 30 degrees, unheated, and that's definitely a sign that it's summer.

It's been a bit of a slog, and some of the stones have been a bit heavier than I can really manage, but it doesn't need much more now. Just that top left hand corner:



It's reassuring to think that now there is something more holding up this edge of the concrete slab - or at least, there will be when the mortar hardens up a bit. Before it was relying on the reinforcing rods in the concrete - inch-thick rods, it's true, but just the same supporting the slab at the edge must be a good idea.

I don't think I've got quite enough of the lime to both finish the top row and do all the repointing, so it'll be another visit to Chausson on Tuesday

A gap in the programme

I've had to hold up the work on the shed, so I thought I'd use some of the sand and rather old cement and lime to deal with a different problem, the hole in the wall:



The wall that was here was knocked down by the previous owner to turn the rainwater cistern into what must have been a rather unsatisfactory garage for cars. When we bought the barn, all it contained was some large timbers and a freezer containing old paint pots. And a lot of spiders. The original foundations of the wall were still there except at the left hand end, where they had been cut through to pass the water and electricity into the barn.



So I mixed some concrete for the new foundations, instructed and assisted by the two older grandchildren:



I cut up one of those old timbers to make a doorway, probably the biggest and heaviest mortice joints I've ever cut, and got started building. The wood has been given a single coat of linseed oil, and it is a very tight fit (sledgehammer) under the concrete slab. I hope it doesn't move, as it won't really be held in by the wall.



Once I started, the weather got hotter and hotter, and today I started early and gave it a break in the middle of the day when it was much too hot. By this afternoon I'd got up to this level, and it is beginning to look like a real wall:



After beginning thinking that 10cm thick concrete blocks would do for the inside wall, I eventually decided that the 20cm ones would require less mortar, and put less stress on my back (all the mortar has been mixed by hand). Occasionally if the stone facing is a particularly large piece, I have to knock a hole in the concrete block to accommodate it. At this stage I am not sure if I actually have enough stone to finish it, but I am hopeful, particularly if I can get a few more of the bigger stones into the wall. The main problem is lifting them, and not dropping them so hard on the wall underneath that it damages what's already been built.

I've been using a lime mortar for the wall, more to use it up as it is getting a little old, but also because it should match the existing mortar. I've left wide gaps for pointing later, and with a bit of luck - although you will be able to see the joins - it should match up reasonably well. The bit on the right is likely to be a better match than the left, where the new wall meets a nicely squared corner of the barn.

one more day ....

.... and it looks like this:



The next job is to cast a reinforced concrete beam all round the top edge, linked in to the corners (which at present are hollow and which take a square reinforcing framework). So on top of the lintel over the door there will just be concrete, not block-work. The lintels over the windows have been finished slightly unconventionally, with a 10cm block put in sideways. Normally these would have cast concrete on top too. We'll presumably need to make the concrete quite a dry mix to deal with the 45-degree edges. This beam will ensure that the walls hold together. I rather imagine that it will be pretty well blast-proof too: Paul did say that the French norms for any kind of building are over-engineered.

The hole in the bottom of the front wall will eventually be filled in, but below it there is a corresponding gap in the foundation slab (there's another one that doesn't show on the right). This is where the pipes from the pool will enter, coming in through a trench. The invisible gap on the right will give access for the well-insulated pipes going back to the barn to heat our hot water.

The rafters (chevrons) for the roof then sit on top of the hoizontal runs of the concrete beam, notched to stop them slipping, the rafters are then close-planked, with some kind of watertight roofing on the planks and under the solar panels.

I cut the blocks myself over the lintels, and where they needed to be shorter to fit in the sides.



Oddly enough this was just about the first cut I did: after this one I went and got my safety goggles, as the concrete really does spray out in all directions.

The work - of mixing cement and cutting and carting around the blocks - has messed up the grass quite a bit, but there's plenty of rain on the way to wash out the cement, and I expect the grass will be knee-high before we get around to the next phase, in a couple of weeks time.

solar heating on its way - in September

Today I was working with Paul to make the walls of the building that should - god willing, and much later this year - have the solar panels on its roof and the pool machinery inside.

My role is builders' labourer - fetching the blocks, sometimes mixing the mortar, bringing the sand and cement down from where they are stored, cutting the concrete blocks to size. Paul does the skilful stuff - getting the blocks level, upright, at right angles - in fact all the real building work.

But this is what it looks like now:



The long wall at the front is now at its finished height (80cm). The solar panels will be angled back at 45 degrees to slope up to the other long wall, which when finished will be about two and a half meters high.

The building site is being inspected by the youngest grandson Isaac (asleep as usual, but he is only nine weeks old) with his mum, Jane. The walls you can see were just one day's work, and - as we also had to go down to the builders merchants to get more sand, more cement, and the timbers for the roof - it was really quite a good day. On the other hand I'm going to have to get yet more sand tomorrow (though we do probably have enough cement now).

By the end of the day the sun had come out and it was pretty hot, so I rather hope we've finally got to the end of this rather rainy patch we've had for the last week or so.

Some work is progressing ... a bit

The windows all went back into the farmhouse in varying states of finish, and we painted and varnished them as time allowed for the first summer visitors. About the best I can say about these windows is that the more I have repaired, the better the standard of the repair. But "better" regrettably doesn't mean "good".


Here is a window whose bottom edge is now a good deal more solid that it was. In fact, before the repairs the bottom of that frame was loose and could be wobbled several millimetres back and forward - with a correspondingly loose pane of glass.



The picture below shows the inside of the same pair of windows. The glazing bar at the top of the picture of the right hand window was similar to (or perhaps actually is) the one shown previously (May 25th) with a large amount of rot at the joint. The joint is now filled with the resin-based filler, and strengthened with a metal T-piece. The left-hand window was one I repaired last year and needless to say the repairs are much more visible.



The glass is now all in one piece, instead of several, and the putty is a good deal more secure. In fact, as we have now painted over the putty - previously it had all been left unpainted, and had cracked away - there is a chance that the glass will stay where it is and rattle a good deal less in the winds.

We have finally got around to starting the building for the solar panels at the end of the garden. I know that putting them at a distance from the house is not ideal, but I have some hopes that the extra distance will be compensated by the larger area, 10 m2. Eventually I imagine we will find out.

Yesterday, in pouring rain, Paul and I dug out the foundations and shuttered the hole - mostly Paul I'd say. By the afternoon the rain had made the ground so slippery that Paul was only just able to get his van up the lane behind the barn, and the pouring of the concrete was deferred for a day or two in the hope of better weather. I spent the afternoon shifting the concrete blocks for the walls down to the site - they had been delivered up by the farmhouse.

This is the present state of the work:



There are four and a half tonnes (=250 blocks) of those blocks, shifted five at a time by wheelbarrow, and it has to be said my back is complaining about the hard labour yesterday. But the forecast is for a dry morning tomorrow and I have every hope that we'll get the concrete poured and the first row of blocks in place. The corner blocks - which are different from the wall blocks - accomodate steel reinforcing to tie them together. It is possible to see just one of the corner blocks edge-on in the picture, a little to the right of the top edge of the wheelbarrow, with the square hole at one end only, and you can compare these with the end-on views of the other 8 or 9 wall-blocks.

The intention will be to get these vertical reinforcing rods cast into the foundation slab, and then up a couple of levels of blocks, at each corner. The first layer of blocks will - I hope - be set into the concrete foundations before the concrete starts to harden.

but I digress

I wasn't actually doing any building work - I just decided that the 2CV van needed some attention. Most 2CVs are easy to work on, as you can go from this:



to this:



in ten minutes or less. And then all of the engine is accessible. Regrettably, it turned out that what needed to be done was something I couldn't do. There were engine/exhaust smells in the passenger compartment, and I had supposed that there was some leakage round the heads that could be cured by re-tightening them (and I could do the tappet gaps at the same time). But the heads were OK and the gaps didn't need changing. Instead there was an exhaust leak where an almost-new part had failed at a joint. It needs welding or - perish the thought - a new exhaust cross-box.

Oh well.

That can be added to the "jobs to be done on the 2CVs" list. This now includes quite a bit of painting, and a new speedometer cable for the red car.

In fact there has been some work going on around the farmhouse. I've been attacking - one might say bodging - the window frames which are really quite rotten at the bottom in almost every case. I've been using a resin-based woodfiller to make good, together with T or L shaped metal repair strips. I've tried to get these below the finished surface, using a router wherever possible, and then put the filler on the top so the metal doesn't show. Of course what does show is the filler itself, which has a rough surface. Still hopefully when the starting point is this



almost anything will be better, and in fact the end results are not too bad. Or, to be honest, too good. I hope that the window frames will stay together for a year or two - after which new windows might be possible - particularly since I have replaced ten or more cracked panes of glass in the ones I have repaired. I even discovered that the ones with a suspiciously regular crack - a straight line across the middle of a pane - had been deliberately cut that way in order to give a "crease" in the glass, as the frames had warped so much that a flat sheet wouldn't fit easily. But by building the rebates up a little with the filler I was just about able to manage.

While you were away

I've been off in England since the beginning of April, and during that time there has been exceptionally little rain.

As a result, the grass seed I put down where the moat used to be (the trench outside the front door) managed to sprout - I'd been watering it - and then either wither in the drought, or perhaps get eaten by our neighbour's chickens. The end result was a lot of bare earth where I'd hoped for a pasture.

More worryingly, you leave your house unoccupied for three weeks and what do you find when you get back? Squatters!



This is the probably the same black redstart that raised a brood inside the barn last year, and is still annoyed that we have now shut the windows and plasterboarded over her previous nest site. You can still see the souvenirs she and they left behind on all our new woodwork.

As this mixing tray is hanging from the beam of my outside workshop, not quite above head height and close to the bench, I am going to have to be careful not to knock the nest out. And we'll have to hope I don't need the saw or the lead-light.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible ....

.... as I am off to England at the crack of dawn tomorrow (provided it's prepared to crack just a bit later than it usually does) to see my new grandson.

As the forecast was rain all day today, I limited my objectives, and just did one more pair of shutters.

This picture was taken first thing this morning - before the rain:



and this one in the afternoon, when in fact the rain had turned out to be a very light drizzle, hardly enough to wet the ground:



I'd welcome suggestions about the rusty door on the electricity cabinet. Do I leave it is it is - after all the rust blends in quite well with the colour of the stone? Or would it be better painted - and if so what colour?

The two other shutters in the picture are in very poor condition. I may well decide to replace them, so it's a good thing they will be staying open most of the summer. They are the shutters for the kitchen and breakfast room, and there's usually no call to shut them. In the summer the sun is off this side of the farmhouse by about 10 in the morning, before it gets too hot. If the shutters are left are open, visitors won't really notice what they look like, as they won't be able to see them without craning their neck.

Spring is late this year. The willow tree is only just in leaf:



and usually it is a good week or two earlier than this. On the other hand, the wild violets in the grass underneath it have been putting on a good show, for at least three weeks now. This picture was taken on March 24th:



Coincidentally, I have been reading Fernand Braudel's wonderful "Memory & the Mediterranean", and he notes (shortly before disagreeing with J L Borges on the merits of Athenian democracy as a foretaste of paradise) that Aristophanes described Athens in its then vanished past as "crowned with violets".

still painting the shutters

Nice spring day today, so I've been treating the shutters to a couple of coats of "lasure bois".

I've been trying to do more than one pair at a time, but in fact the production line isn't that easy to organise:



Wire-brushing and sanding can't be done with them like this (you need to be able to put a bit of weight on the brush and the sander), so I've only been able to prepare two at a time. They have needed a certain amount of repair work - several of them had missing bolts securing the hinges to the shutters, and since I was doing that, I've also used the angle grinder to cut off the ends of the existing bolts, which have always looked a bit unfinished.

So it has been a matter of painting one side of the shutters on the trestles, then standing them up to paint the other side, and then leave them to let them dry. But they look better with a coat of finish, and should be a bit more durable now:



So far I've done five windows (ten shutters) and there are another four windows to be done. But soon I will have finished the least accessible ones. Climbing the ladder and hooking the shutters on and off is a bit nerve-wracking:



These ones will have to wait until tomorrow to go back up the ladder and onto the windows, as they are still rather sticky.

Three of the four pairs of shutters yet to be done are the original ones: the plus side is that they are nicely made, proper joinery, but against that the oak is getting rather crumbly for lack of maintenance. The other pair are more modern - like those in the picture above, with a zed-shaped bracing frame - and should be good for another ten years at least.

And - as a matter of record - my third grandson was born today......

readers' requests

Here is the glass-headed man:



And just stirring the paint made it thicker. I don't know why. Possibly as it's an emulsion, some of the water separates out and floats to the top. It's surprising the paint doesn't say that you should stir it. Next time I'll bear in mind the glue suggestion, Mo. For painting ceilings, it's an obvious short-cut.

The paint bucket in the picture got a second outing today, as I used it to empty the two tons of gravel from the trailer....

Keynes would be pleased

because I've spent the day digging a hole in the ground, then filling it in. Productive work. At least there isn't a hole in the ground any longer!

It was the trench outside the front door - this one



It has been waiting until we'd finished waterproofing the top of the silo (the old cistern, now full of chipped firewood). I should also say that it's been waiting for some dry weather, which finally arrived today.

The other side is a bigger hole (well, not one full of wood and concrete blocks, anyway). The reason it isn't any deeper is that when I cut down I reached the bedrock, and found that the wall of the cistern came to within three or four inches of it. Someone a hundred years ago had worked very hard with a pickaxe to excavate enough rock to provide for the storage of about 30 cubic meters of water. As now the object is to make the silo waterproof, I wanted to lay a drain against the side wall.

So this is where I started:



After a couple of hours I'd dug out a bit more earth, and reached bedrock again, at which point I decided that enough was enough. The picture doesn't give a very good idea of the trench, but it's the best there is, as I only took one picture.....



..... and of course now it's been filled in. Before doing that I remembered to put in the drain tubing, and wrap it in "geotextile" (to keep the earth from clogging the pipe). The geotextile has gravel in it as well as the pipe, to improve drainage.



I put a bit more gravel on top, then another layer of geotextile - you have to buy a full roll, 25 meters I think, and this trench and drain is about 6 meters long. And then I filled it back in with the earth - mostly rock - I'd started by digging out. There were three trailer-loads of gravel in the hole, just over two metric tons according to Chausson's weighbridge, and my back pretty well confirms the figure this evening.



Even all that lot wasn't enough to fill the hole, so I swept up some of the dusty floor from the hangar - where the chickens come for their daily dust-bath - and added a couple of large wheel-barrow loads of this. I will probably go and get some "proper" compost tomorrow, just to bring the levels up to where they were before. Not too much, as the thin soil encourages interesting wild flowers. The hangar floor is all very well as a compost source, but it is full of foreign bodies, mostly chips of wood and bark, but other unidentifiable or unmentionable stuff too (which I removed).

I've also started treating the shutters on the farmhouse. This is a simultaneous "before" and "after" picture. I don't think these shutters have had any attention since they were installed. This is a new pair (25 years old?), made of oak, but not very well made: the original ones don't have a zig-zag framework on the back holding them together, instead they are made with good wide mortised joints at the corners, held together with wooden pegs. The old ones will get a coat of wood treatment too, but they are nearing their sell-by date I'm afraid. Mind you, they seem to have managed more than 80 years, so I'm not complaining.



After the shutters, just some emergency repairs to the actual windows - fixing the rotted frames, new glass, that kind of thing - and the farmhouse will be about ready for the summer.

Painting the ceiling

I'm working on getting the farmhouse tidy for May, when the first visitors arrive. Today, I was finishing off a ceiling. It seems to have been a special ceiling paint. Ordinary ceiling paint is designed not to drip, while this special one has dripped and run all over the place. Possible it was because I didn't stir it. Notrmal paints tell you, usually quite fiercely, that you either have to stir them (and stir them well), or alternatively that you should under no circumstances stir them at all. This B&Q product kept entirely schtum, though it did suggest that some older paints might constain lead, that a pamphlet was available describing the associated hazards of old lead paint, and that I should take great care if using sandpaper on an old surface.

The hazards I normally try to avoid include falling off the stepladder, so I prefer to use a (OK, yes, rickety) scaffolding arrangement:



That said (the "rickety" bit) the platform between the stepladders is very heavy, and difficult to move, so I tell myself it's unlikely to wobble over easily.

And here is a man at work:



A first attempt at this picture produced a man with a large glass head with flowers on.