Minus Ten - It's snow joke

Some of you might be thinking that this is a reference to the goings on with the tax dodgers from Portsea Island, but no, it is actually about the weather.

This had been a mild winter over here, an up until the end of January, we had only had to use one line of our wood supply, to supplement the central heating. We had one snowy night at the start of February but the next morning it all melted. That was that for the winter we thought, but we were wrong. Very wrong.

A few days later, the temperature dropped to about -10 and stayed there for the best part of two weeks. Six inches of snow came two days later.

The French don't grit roads, unless you are in the mountains, so the roads soon became very tricky.

On the Sunday, Mr Bernard's car got stuck half way up the hill, and I had to get out and help the mayor pull him out of a ditch with his tractor. Amazingly, he only had a few tiny scratches on his paintwork. I put a warning triangle by our gate, and that seemed to get the message out, so the mayor and I were spared any more heroics.

On Tuesday we went out to do our usual weeks shopping, but we had to put the snow chains on to get to Roumaziers safely. If you think it is quiet around here normally, you should see it in the snow. You could count the cars going past each day on the fingers of one hand.

We kept both fires on all day to keep the house warm, and got through as much wood in two weeks as we had in the previous three months. Even though the barn was very warm, we stopped work because, after we had got the wood in, started the fires and thawed out the overflow, half the day was gone.

One morning we woke up and found we had no running water. I checked the meter. to make sure that we had no leaks, and then rang the water company. They said that they had no reported problems in Suris, so it was a fault at our end.

Following the water boards instructions, I opened up one of the valves on the back of the meter and got a jet of near freezing water in the face, very nice at -13 C. This meant that the problem was down to us, as it was their supply that hit me in the face at 3 bar pressure. Next up I opened the other valve, just to see if it was frozen, forgetting that I had switched the supply on again, and promptly got hit in the face with another jet of cold water. Oh how I laughed !

Tina tried melting snow, to get some water to flush the toilets, but it took loads of gas and time, and it turns out you don't get much water out of a bucket full of snow. We gave up on that and opened the well instead, as the winch still works well.

I did some Internet research about frozen underground pipes, and found one that said that the problem was likely to be where the pipes are nearest the surface. I looked around the pump house, and found a loop of pipe with a little bit of insulation on it, were the mains joined into the old supply from the well. We heated this up with Tina's hairdryer, and after 10 minutes or so, the taps started running again. Phew !

The pipes are now covered in 2 foot of rock-wool, just in case.

The swimming pool cover got a massive dip in it, from the weight of the snow and ice on it. I brushed of us much as I could, and chipped the ice off as far as I could reach every day, but it was two weeks before it thawed enough to clear it completely. Luckily the steel poles remembered that they used to be straight and went back to their normal shape.

Even after the temperatures returned to normal, it was still weeks before the lakes thawed out.

We were think of going down to the mountains before all this, but we have now decided that we have had enough snow for one year.

Bedtime ( part 2 )

The next step was to get the wardrobes in. We bought them in IKEA in the UK and had them shipped out to France, as this worked out much cheaper than buying them in Bordeaux.


Being IKEA, they are pretty solid, and easy to put together, but not that easy to manoeuvre. Levelling them all out took a bit of doing as well, even though we had tried to level the floor as best as possible.






The floor needed a bit more sanding, as it was impossible to move the cupboard into place without the odd scuff mark. 3 coats of varnish later, and we were ready to paper the wall.

Tina had chosen a bold paper for the wall above the bed. As neither of us had done any wallpapering for years, and the walls were 3 meters high in places, we got our friend Pete over to hang the paper, after we had sized the walls.



The first three rolls went up well, but then we noticed that the next roll looked slightly different. We checked the labels, and although all the batch numbers were the same, there were different letters on the rolls.

It turns out that the french use a letter as well as a string of numbers to identify the batch number, and we had bought two different batches.

We went back to Leroys where we had bought it, but they didn't have our batch left. They rung around all of the stores in the Charente, with no luck. In the end, we had to drive all the way down to Bordeaux. They didn't have the batch either, but they did at least have 5 rolls from another batch.

This meant we had to strip of the 3 rolls on the wall and start again.

It was all worth it though, as you can see.

Bedtime

The more alert readers may well have read the last two posts about the en-suite and thought,
"hang on, you can't call it an en-suite as you haven't finished the bedroom yet".

To avoid a nasty visit from the grammar police, we thought it best to press on with the bedroom, to correct this anomaly.

The chipboard floor in the bedroom had been screwed onto oak beams years ago, but over the years the beams had shrunk and twisted in places, particularly after the underfloor heating had been switched on. This lead to dips in some parts of the floor, and peaks in others, sometimes up to 2cm. This needed to be levelled out before we could start to fix the parquet.

After a lot of thought, I came up with a solution. The dips could be packed out, but the peaks would need something more radical. I decided to cut the chipboard either side of the offending beam, and then to fix the flooring onto battens screwed onto the sides of the beam.



Cutting them out wasn't too tricky, using a multi-master and a circular saw. After this I removed the chipboard from the top of the beam. Tina then stood on the now bouncy sheets of chipboard, checking a spirit level until the floor was level ( a fairly responsible job to give to a girl ) while I screwed the battens on downstairs.



Now we were ready to fit the parquet, using my friend Pete's nail gun.

It took a few days, as the room is so long. So long in fact, that I it was too long for my sash clamps. and I had to come up with other methods of closing the gaps. It turned out that whacking the back of the giant nail gun worked a treat.

Although the room is big, I still didn't trust myself with a giant belt sander, so I finished it of with a 1/2 sheet sander and a lot of patience.

En-Suite tout de suite ( part2 )

We were now ready to hand over to Mr H to do the plumbing. There are lots of skills that Tina and I have picked up over the last 5 years, but plumbing a bathroom isn't one of them.




We went for twin sinks, so we could see which of us makes the most mess ( me obviously).



I built up a wooden frame under the bath to support it, and covered it with chipboard ready to tile. This took ages, as I had to keep adjusting the levels, making sure the bath was level, that the u-bend was not too close to the ground and that the panels were deep enough for me to be able to tile on top.

I then tiled it, and fitted an inspection hatch for the u-bend, using some new magnetic clips. Unfortunately, the clips weren't strong enough, and the inspection hatch kept popping off every time you had a bath. This new-fangled invention has now been replaced with an old fashioned piano hinge and a hatch, which seems to work fine.




Here's one I prepared earlier.

With a few more finishing touches, we were ready to go.

En-Suite tout de suite ( part 1 )

With the floor finished, we were ready to press on with the tiling.

Last time I tried to tile a bath, the batten slipped on the wall, and the tiles sloped gracefully into one corner, so I took extra care this time.

The shower was tanked out, as an extra layer of waterproofing.

Before the rest of the plumbing could start, we then had to fit the shower cabinet.

This was a bit scary, as it had two big glass screens. To help matters, we didn't have any instructions, as it was an ex display model.

Adding to the confusion. it came with a bag of nuts and bolts that were nothing to do with it and one of the seals for the bottom of the glass screens was missing as well. It turned out that seals like that are no standard, and the shower screen manufactorer no longer existed, so we had to improvise that bit with silicone.

It took four of us all afternoon to get the glass into its supporting frame, as the rubber seals had gone so hard in the five years that it had been in storage . Not much fun, as we were all afraid that the glass might shatter if we pushed down on it too much.

Getting it vertical, and screwing it together was a comparative doddle after that.

But it does look good, now that it's in

Parquet

Cast your mind back to last February. Saints were still in league 1, Clegg and Cameron had just come back from honeymoon, and the only worry people had about Greece was broken crockery.

About this time, we were putting down the new floor in the Bathroom. We decided on Chestnut parquet. Research on the web suggested that it was a bad idea to use hardwood in a bathroom, but on further research, none of the people saying this had ever tried it. Also, our old house in Salisbury had pine floor boards, since the 1930's and that was still standing.

I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a nail gun from my friend Pete ( the orange thing through the door).

This made it very quick to fix the boards, and had lots of safety features, so that you couldn't go all Mel Gibson on any unexpected visitors.

The shower tray was a bit of a challenge.

I was lucky enough that the long board fitted round it with no cutting but, after that you couldn't get the clamps under it to tighten the boards.

Out of necessity, I learnt a few new tricks about rasping out the grooves to make a snugger fit.

Getting the last boards down next to the wall required a bit more fiddling and ingenuity.

After that there was the small matter of filling small gaps and sanding it all down. I used a 1/2 plate sander and took my time. I had tried using one of those large belt sanders that you can hire once before , and it left so many grooves at the edges that I had to hire a carpenter to come in and sand it all down ( with his 1/2 plate sander).

To finish it off, Tina applied 4 layers of varnish.

We were finally ready to fit the bathroom.

January 2011 - Plastered !

At the start of the year we were finally ready to start plastering the bedroom.

This was a big challenge, due to the size of room, the sloping ceiling and more importantly, the fact that neither of us are plasters.

We learned a few lessons from the bathroom, washing the walls down before we plastered to stop it from bubbling up, and also make sure you use the french 2000 plaster, as it is best fro skimming.





I also made sure to leave the last section I did each day for 20 minutes or so before I went back and polished it.








This cross beam was a nightmare, as you couldn't get the float behind them to spread the plaster evenly, so I had to improvise with jointing knives.

It took an bit of sanding down, to get a good finish, but not as much as the bathroom had. It took almost as long to get all of the dropped plaster and dust off of the beams, the floor and me.

I also managed to fill in round the window, covering all of the mortar and getting a decent finish, for an amateur.

.....

Before we could start to plaster the bedroom, Mr H advised us that it would be best to plaster board the other side of the walls. Otherwise you might find that your new plaster cracks while you are busy hammering something on the other side of the wall. First up, we had to finalise were all of the wiring and light circuits needed to go and wire it all up.

Then Tina had to but all of the insulation in for soundproofing. We just used rock wool for this, but you can spend £40 or more per metre on specialist soundproofing,if you are worried that someone is going to set up a recording studio in the spare room.

As you can see, this work involved standing on a wobbly ladder next to the abyss. Not pleasant, but we are hardy souls and are used to it.

The bottom layer of plasterboard was quite straight forward.

The top of the wall needed scaffolding to reach.

Now it is starting to look more like a house in there, not just a barn.

Bathroom update

We have been working very hard these last few months , and are starting to make great strides in the barn.

The bathroom is starting to look like a proper room now. I have plastered all of the walls and ceiling. This was the first time that I had attempted a whole room, and it was quite a challenge. The more I did, the more I got used to it, getting a more polished finish as I went along. It did take a lot of sanding down and re-filling, but we got there in the end.

Tina then took over, cleaning all of the plaster spillage of of the beams, and then re varnishing them. Then she applied two coats of undercoat, as plaster drinks up paint, and can change the colour. This did mean that we got away with only one coat of the actual paint for to finish it off.

We did have some fun and games with plaster bubbling up when it was painted. We think this was caused by patches of plaster dust on the boards, where they had been gut, or stepped on. Sometimes it took 2 or 3 attempts to fill them back in, so now we are a bit more careful about washing the boards down before I start plastering.

The next job was to raise the floor level, so that we could hide the shower pipe. This was quite good fun, as the existing floor was not quite level, and the 10 cm joists that I bought were actually between 9.5cm and 10.2. I bet you don't have that problem with German timber.

I had to use lots of different size bits of wood to wedge it all level, but luckily I have hoarded a pile of crap just for these eventualities.

A couple of the joists were so wet that they were twice as heavy as the others, so I used a lot of noggins, to stop the wood from twisting when it dries.

Now we were ready to fit the shower tray. It took three of us to shift it upstairs, as it was so heavy.

It has now been connected up, and tested for leaks, so soon we will be ready to put the floor down, once we have done all the mucky plastering and painting in the bedroom.

If you want to get ahead, get a hat

With all the snow last year, we found that the fins on the back of the compressor for the heat pump cot covered with thick ice, which bend some of them out of shape.

As extreme weather seems to be the norm these days, Tina thought it was best to build something to protect the compressor from whatever weather gets thrown at it, so we decided to build a roof over it. This is normal practice in Scandinavia, but didn't used to be necessary in South West France.

We bought the framework from Leroy Merlin, and fixed it to wall with chemical fixings, as the wall is a bit to crumbly for raw plugs, and the canopy will be a bit heavy once all the tiles are on.




I managed to re-cycle some old pallets to make the voliges that support the tiles.




We also had enough left over tiles to cover it all, so in a couple of days the whole thing was done.



Now we just need some snow to see if it works.