getting tidy

We asked all the neighbours and the tradesmen who had worked on the building to come to a tea party. As a result two things happened: we spent an exhausting week running around finishing small jobs and cleaning up, and to my surprise a couple of the tradesmen came to finish off jobs they had been working on. The most noticieable of these was getting the balcony railing done. Regrettably we've had some grey wet weather since, so the pictures don't make it look too inviting. Some sympathy is due for the menuisier, who found himself assembling it in a downpour (I lent him a waterproof and a hat). So, from inside:



The glass is 10mm thick, and laminated, with nicely rounded edges. The glass looks insubstantial but has a very reassuringly solid feel, as does the stainless steel framework. Here it is from outside, with puddles:



The plumbers also came along, and painted the central heating pipes red (flow) and blue (return), a curious but apparently traditional aspect of the craft. They were a couple of young men, and weren't able to explain what the green stripe meant (if anything), just that it was what they had to do.

I then put up some of our pictures, and a couple of mirrors, to make the barn look a bit less barn-like, and for some reason (as in our previous house) the family photos have arrived on the stairs:



The entire village then came around yesterday afternoon - possibly 60 people - and a good time was had by all, with conducted tours at intervals. The boiler drew quite an enthusiastic crowd, even though the plumber was one of the few people who couldn't come - he was having his own open day. It's hard to be sure exactly how many people came, and for data protection reasons, we had to forbid photography. But many of them came with pot-plants and flowers, which was very touching, and the plants are now occupying the sunnier corners - allowing for the fact that there are thick grey clouds everywhere, and absolutely no sun at all:



And the odd new purchase also arrived during the week, smelling strongly of antique dealer's wax and looking better than I had hoped:



This chest is surprisingly heavy, and I can only hope that the woodworm have been asphyxiated by the wax, as there seem to have been a lot of them at work quite recently. We'll see.

Postscript to those tiles

All it took to get them looking better was a further coat of linseed oil, and then a wipe down with turps to remove the stickier bits - where the tile is already fully saturated, extra oil just sits on the surface.

So not a bad result at all:



I have yet to remove the waterproof tape from the top of the floor drain, but I wanted to be sure the grout was fully dry first.

And as our plumber is coming tomorrow to put in branches on the hot and cold pipes, top right in the picture, we'll be able to install a washing machine quite soon. Plumbers usually mean water all over the place - the cold pipe is, after all, the mains supply for the whole house - so we'll probably get to try out the drain too.

The last floor is tiled

And about time too.

The six coats of linseed oil took a while - and it probably should have been more, to judge by the way the grout has stuck to some of the tiles. I tell myself it gives the tiles a pleasantly rustic look.

The one in the middle is (probably) the same tile as before:



And here's a general view of the room.

And yes

(a) the walls need to be painted
(b) the tiles could do with a bit more cleaning off - possibly something fun like an acid, and
(c) the oak strip for the raised section isn't there yet. I couldn't find a bit of oak 2.5 meters long.



In my spare time, I've also helped out a real professional builder in putting down a waterproof surface on top of the wood-chip-silo, and it certainly seems to be waterproof now. Trouble is, it is a much rougher surface than the 90-year-old concrete that was there before, and it is crying out to be tiled. I am not sure that I can face any more tiles right now.

And for a break, I spent the weekend over at the Poterie du Don, learning how to use a potters wheel. It will come as no surprise that this is a bit more difficult than it looks.



The windows really are a funny shape. I blame the architect. No change there, then.

And as for the sticking plaster on my head, I can only blame myself. I put the post-box just where I would hit my head on it when I straightened up after putting down a concrete sill in the farmhouse cellar.

the end of the tiles?

well, nearly.

In case you don't remember what tiles look like, this is one of the last:



The tiles were irregular shapes, and difficult to fit. The ones bought a year ago were even more difficult, as they were on average half a centimeter bigger than the newer ones. I had to saw the edges off to make them match. But all that I have to do now is seal them (three or four coats of linseed oil), and grout them. Then the last floor will be finished. Almost. There are some oak edge strips to be done too. And sealed with linseed oil.

And, talking of sealing, the new lid went back on the septic tank, without breaking. A bit of grease round the edge helped it slide in place nicely. Naturally I am not sufficiently indelicate to post a picture of either the lid or the septic tank itself, and certainly not the grease, but this is the mould I made the new lid in:



Getting it firmly back on was - err - a relief.

creeping towards the end of the bathrooms

It seems to be a very slow process, but we are very nearly there. I've finally done all the tiling and grouting except the two removable hatches into the space below the bath, and the mirror for the second bathroom.

This is the mirror in the red bathroom (it's easy to remember which one that is, as of course "the East is Red"):



The plastic over the round window is not (entirely) an admission of defeat, in that we haven't yet been able to get the coloured glass to go into it. It's more to keep the new cat out of the bedrooms, though at present getting her to come out from under the cooker would be something of a triumph.

And this is the west (blue) bathroom, just waiting for the plumber to put the fittings in. And of course I hope they will fit, as the floor levels do need to be just about right:



I've also been casting a new lid for the septic tank in (regrettably yes, in) the farmhouse. The old lid had cracked and the smells would gradually percolate up from the cellar to the kitchen (naturally the septic tank doesn't have a vent pipe). I am keeping my fingers crossed that the rather wet concrete won't cure into something fragile. If it does, though, I'll still have the mold and I can try again. It was tricky getting the reinforcing to fit, as it comes in 20cm squares and the width of the lid is just exactly 40cm. I crimped the rods of the steel mesh a bit and that shortened it. Hopefully enough. Though I won't know until it starts to rust where the ends project (if they do).

not strictly building

but just about as hard to do. I've been re-assembling the walnut armoire. It took about an hour to knock it apart and bring it from the farmhouse to the barn. It took pretty well all day to put it back together again.

Partly this was because re-assembly involves getting every part loosely in place before tightening up any of the joints. And as there are four large sheets that slot in place into grooves in the structure, it's not that easy to do. Then new pegs had to be shaped to fit the assembly holes (creative use of an electric drill and some sandpaper), waxed and then whacked in.

And in addition there were some repairs and reinforcements to be done as part of the assembly: drawer runners that had broken away, through woodworm and long use, split panels in the base that needed new wood to hold them together - see here -



where I am in the process of knocking the very last peg in. But then the main beam had to be chipped away to allow the wardrobe to go right back against the wall. With some further work on the beam and the top of the wardrobe to enable it to be levelled, and - finally - cutting away the cornice to shape it around the beam. But I'm happy with the finished result:



It does need a quick squirt with the Mr Sheen and some serious polishing, though. And the four front peg holes, which don't show in the picture, have to be filled with special wax. Probably a good idea to push some of it into the capricorn beetle holes too, and then it will look a lot better than it has for a good number of years.

toys for the boys

Yesterday I bought a new sliding mitre saw, and now - having spent a couple of hours assembling it - I am looking for things to do with it. Apart from making doors, of course, which was why I bought it. It was surprisingly cheap and I will probably find out why. All I still need is a pillar drill to help cut the deeper mortices. I'll see if I can sneak one in soon.

In the meantime I've finally finished putting in the filler round the ill-fitting doorframes. This is an unwarranted slur on the menuisier, who made them and did his best. What really doesn't fit is the openings the frames go into. They are simultaneously out of square and not vertical, guaranteeing some interesting gaps at one point or another. Or at one point and another. And another....

So now we'll be able to treat the doorframes (linseed oil again?) and paint the walls. Which will make the room look a lot better. Regrettably the doors really need an architrave to cover the (filled) gaps between doorframe and wall, and that won't be easy, given that the walls are not vertical but the doorframes are. Some other time...

Tomorrow it will be tiling.

oh yes, that old chestnut

I've made - a bit amateurishly - the first of the five internal doors. As this one is the door to the boiler room, I wanted it thick, and it is, two layers of chestnut.

The door frame still needs filler round the outside, and then finally it will be possible to paint the wall and take the sticky-tape off. I still find it odd that the menuisier will supply and install the door frames, but doesn't regard making the door frames fit properly into the openings as part of his job.



I was pleased to find a builders' merchant in Aurillac with a load of planked chestnut, varying widths but all 2.1m long and 20mm thick, which is a good size for a door. The rebate in the door frame as installed a long time ago is 40mm, so two thicknesses fit it nicely. The wood has polished up well, just using a sander on the sawn surface (OK, I used a plane on the worst bits), and it's treated with linseed oil, so it's both shiny and it smells good too. The sawmill's original saw-marks show up better in this flash photograph than they do in ordinary light, and what look like gaps at the top and bottom of one plank are actually where there is a little bit of much darker sapwood and bark (so, just not a photogenic door then). The planks all had a degree of warping in all three directions, so getting flat surfaces was a bit of a chore. I hope they won't warp too much more.

There isn't a door handle (and maybe one day there will be), but that's largely because I've used the same style of latch as found in cottages in Kent:



You put your finger through the hole to lift the latch. I've seen them with a string from the latch, through the door to a bobbin on the outside (these have the finger-hole as well), presumably to help the old and arthritic (or perhaps just for children with short fingers?) My largest drill was 25mm (or an inch on the other side) and ideally the hole should be just a little more, maybe an inch and a quarter.

This is a rather clumsy version, and for the subsequent doors I'll hope to make slimmed-down versions. Most of the parts are oak, so they would be strong enough even if they were only half as thick. They are made from offcuts from planks I have salvaged from the old barn floor, which is why they show the much darker colour at the two outside edges.

I didn't spend much time with the sander and plane on the inside surface - this is the boiler room, after all. In the picture the construction method shows. It's a bit like those old church doors, full of nails (in this case posidrive screws), with the two layers of wood at right-angles to each other. I will try to be a bit more sophisticated with the subsequent doors. This one is very heavy, but that is just what was wanted, as the boiler is noisy. The door has cut down the sound from it very satisfactorily. It's now possible to sleep through the boiler start-up first thing in the morning. Before putting the door in, it was better than an alarm clock (as you couldn't turn it off).

no longer craning my neck

The ceiling in the room downstairs is now finally done, and I can try to get the twists out my neck caused by spending the last week working on the ceiling.

In progress it did have a resemblance to a conceptual art installation, though the theme - the transient value of what appears in newspapers - has already been overdone. Today it's news, tomorrow it's lining the cat's tray. In our case protecting the beams from the B&Q bargain value white emulsion.



Thanks to our fine electrician, Claude, the finished view now also has the lights installed, and the plug points and light switches finished too. The wall is only thinly painted, so the white should subsequently be a bit whiter, before we move in the wardrobe (it sounds better as an "armoire"). Though actually moving it in from the farmhouse will be a bit challenging, as I think it weighs getting on for a quarter of a ton. And the door-frame needs to be filled around the edge, and maybe an architrave too.



And one day, one day, we'll also have a bedroom door in the doorway, instead of a sheet of bubblewrap (or nothing).

the ceiling is filled

Not much to show for a weeks work, so I won't show it. The plasterboard is all filled, and smoothed off, and then filled again, and smoothed again. When I used the sander after the first filling session, it knocked out some of the less well-filled edges, and it was these gaps that needed the second filling. And the work has taken its toll - my sander died and had to be replaced. Plaster dust probably isn't very good for its electrics. My fingertips are particularly painful - sandpaper and splinters.

The last job was hoovering the beams to get the last of the dust off, which is a funny kind of job, involving a cricked neck and a lot of dust in my face.

But the ceiling is now ready for painting, probably tomorrow, as we've got visitors coming on Sunday and we're hoping the house will look its best.

It's been very cold indeed for the last week or so - daytime temperatures getting up to minus 3 - and the thin snow is frozen (as are the outside taps, the washing machine, and my nose after the first couple of minutes).

hitting the ceiling

I've been filling in the gaps between the plasterboard and the beams.
So I've been climbing up one or other of these:



The one in the middle was the one that got my knee a few years ago. I found it after it fell off (presumably) a builder's lorry onto the A20 outside our house in Kent ten or more years ago. The one on the left was inherited from the Moroccan builders, the next one was one of my first purchases in a builders' merchant in France (note the recent accident with a pot of paint visible on its lower steps), the white kitchen one second from the right belongs to Paul, who will probably collect it tomorrow, and the smallest one was inherited (a bit more literally) from my dad.

A trap for visitors (and other weighty matters)

I've made a "trappe de visite" (inspection hatch) for the newly plasterboarded, but not painted, ceiling of the boiler room.

This is it, before any of the tidying up started:



and this is where it goes:



It allows access to a large set of ball valves set into the water supply for each of the various rooms in the barn, allowing individual supply pipes to be cut off - for replacing taps, etc - without affecting the rest of the system.

We've finally got curtains up in the bedroom:



and the bathroom is actually finished, the tiling is done and Caro has been hard at work painting the walls, the ceilings, and herself. She now has a stiff neck, and I have tiler's finger-tip. I've repeatedly used the same finger to smooth down the tile cement and the grout at the edge of the tiling (and off the joints), and as both the cement and the grout are abrasive, and contain cement, I've burnt the skin on the end of that finger. But the end result is fine, and I'm sure the skin will heal:



Today I've started tidying up with a view to finishing the plasterboard ceiling in the hall. It need the gaps at the edges by the beams filled and smoothed, rather a dusty job. And Caro is still painting - the shower room, this time.

And we have also started work laying the very last bit of floor, the concrete slab in the workroom. It will have a raised plinth at the outer edge, supporting the worksurface with a sink, the washing machine, fridge, etc - because the existing concrete isn't level. It slopes up to that edge, and you need a good couple of inches to be sure it doesn't crack. So here is the raised plinth:



and possibly tomorrow the rest of the floor will go down. Then we'll be able to tile it and a major source of dust will have finally gone.

tiling ..... and .... tiling

This week I have mostly been tiling. Every now and then I have been doing some grouting for a change. Then some more tiling. As a result I have hands like sandpaper (about 80 grit) and the two downstairs bathrooms are fully tiled. And grouted. Finsihed in fact. Maybe a picture later - bathroom tiles look pretty much like bathroom tiles everywhere.

I've re-started on the upstairs bathroom, but by some act of providence I have finished the tile cement so there will be a short break before I buy some more. It's been very cold - well below zero - and there's about an inch of snow all round, so although it looks very pretty, driving to Mr Bricolage will be a rather slow business. For that matter I don't have enough tiles either, even with the extra ones on order (due maybe next week?), so it will no doubt be a while before it is all finished.

Here's the snow:



I am telling myself it is just the sun that has melted the snow on the rook, rather than a lack of insulation. Or perhaps the wind blew it off.

another nasty job

but the worst bit is done. We're putting up the ceiling in the boiler room, and as the boiler makes a constant groaning noise when it is feeding fuel in, we want to insulate between the ceiling and the floor above, in the hope of soundproofing it. With fibreglass (laine de verre over here). The fibres get everywhere when you cut it and when you try to get it up between the pipes and plasterboard supports. Then the fibres come down into your mouth, nose, ears, eyes ... and they prickle maddeningly. For that matter you also get the loose whitewash off the beams to, a really attractive combination of unpleasant materials.

Still, here's what it looks like while in progress:



This view shows how we've had to build in a step, to get round the lower pipes. It won't be a flat ceiling, but hey, it's a boiler room. There will also be an inspection hatch, as many of those pipes have valves allowing different parts of the hot and cold water system to be closed separately (to do tapwashers, etc).



Putting the plasterboard up doesn't bring much more dust down, and there's not a lot more to do anyway. I hope.

It has made a substantial difference to the noise level upstairs. Downstairs won't change much until I can install a door on the boiler room. And on the bedroom, for that matter. A couple of jobs for later.

A day on the tiles

For reasons I can't explain, tiling a small area of bathroom wall made me lose my temper. The crosser I got, the more reason I had to be cross, as the ready-mix adhesive sloshed from the spreader onto the floor, onto the other tiles, onto the bathroom fittings, onto me, and in fact onto anywhere but the wall where it was meant to go. Slowing down, breathing deeply for a minute or two, helped reduce the splatter, but trying to keep that way was very difficult. It might be because there is a difficult edge to finish - postponed for another day - which I feel won't be quite satisfactory whatever I do. It was a case of "not starting from here" - half the wall is already tiled, but it would have been better to have started from the other edge.

So I am sitting down with Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt instead.

Bathroom tiles aren't very interesting.

filling up drafty holes

up a ladder, of course. These gaps somehow got ignored by the professionals, but it is hard to ignore the drafts, which blow under the eaves and out behind the insulation into the main room.

Here is an (almost) before picture, showing the gap and the battens I put there to take the plasterboard. The triangular cut piece of wood will fill the top corner - otherwise the filler/mortar just pushes out behind and leaves an opening. You can't cut plasterboard to a fine point and expect it to stay in one piece.



This is the plasterboard in place - it'll need to be smoothed off and cleaned up before painting, but at least right now it keeps the drafts out.



And this shows where I have been working - the green plasterboard just shows in the top left-hand corner of the picture, above the suspended light fitting. We moved the desks to get the ladder up, and of course I banged my head on the oak beam just in front of the gap.



In fact there are still drafts, where the old roof timbers are exposed, but this has certainly reduced them - when the wind blew from the north-east you really noticed them.

We started the day dealing with the heating fuel (chipped wood). Water flowing down over the door of the silo had made the door swell and jam, so I couldn't get in. So I took the hinges off (torx screws, of course, lucky I had the drivers) and prised the door out. Then it was a simple matter of raking the woodchips from the ends where the mechanical sweep doesn't reach them, into the middle, and that got the boiler going again. Mind you, the boiler still turns itself on (noisily) at 6am each morning. I've decided to inflict a minor deception on it about the time of day - persuade it that it is living in England - and with a bit of luck we'll be woken up at 7am instead.

books do furnish a ... barn

While Caro was painting the roughcast walls a colour almost indistinguishable from cement (but they look very nice, I hasten to add, really they do), I was sawing up bits of pine cladding to stop the books falling out of the end of the bookshelf. I cannot imagine what the design spec was for this bit of furniture: perhaps the designer had never owned a book? The shelves are wide enough for us to put books in from both sides, as we have, but the bookshelf relies on diagonal wire struts to keep it rigid - it's meant to go up against a wall. These do look just slightly odd.

Here it is:



Luckily the book titles are too small to recognise (I hope) as it is a very random collection, grabbed from anywhere. Books in the farmhouse get a little damp in the winter, so this is rehab for them. They are drying out.

Tiling the blue bathroom

Today I finished off the floor tiles in the blue bathroom, grouting them and cleaning it all up. I found that in the three months since I last did any grouting, I'd forgotten such vital matters as how long to leave the grout before washing the tiles, and then how long before I could clean them off with a dry cloth. What a good thing there's the internet out there.

So this is what it looks like, with the floor finished and the walls and other surfaces all to do later:



The area by the door isn't quite right - you have to finish putting down the tiles in the doorway - if not you can't get out of the room. But that means that the last ones go down into a space where three sides are already in place. It's OK if the gaps turn out a little larger than they should be, but both times I ended up a little tight at the end. But it only shows if you know what you're looking for.

When we drove back from England last week, we called in on our friends Jo and Alan Taylor. Alan had just finished a painting for us, showing the outside workshop as it was in September last year. This is what it looks like - click on the picture to see a larger size version.



It's now hanging in our room in the barn, and looks very good there. Even though, as Alan pointed out, everyone will be able to see we have a problem with woodworm, to judge by the industrial size tin of Xylophene visible there. And that's only the most recent of five or six of them.

Interlude (winterlude?)

We went off to a warmer climate - the Lakshadweep Islands - for a spot of scuba diving over Christmas. It's very unspoilt. This is the dive hut:



And this is the dive boat, made of wood sewn together with rope:



We stopped over in Cochin, where the latest fashions were on display



They go in for Christmas there in a big way.

But now we're back in France and the work has started again.

the bathroom is ready for tiling

The carreaux de platre were finished last night (and so was I). The tiling will have to wait until January






which is when the next blog is likely to be - I'm off on holiday.