Onwards and Upwards

We have now started to build our new bedroom, before we finish the ceiling off, as building wisdom is to build your walls first, before you try to join the ceiling to them.

First up is the outside wall. We opted for the lafarge metal railing system, as it is quicker and cheaper than the UK method of building wooden stud work.

We didn't need any scaffolding this time, as we were only going up 4 metres, so we could just use ladders. The railings are joined together by crimping them with a specially designed tool. It is very quick, but hard work if have a girly handshake like I do.

The insulation is a by product of the NASA space program, and it turns out that something that stops Astronauts from cooking is also good for keeping your bedroom warm. It does also look a bit like a set from the old sci-fi series "Blakes 7" although it is a lot more sturdy.

It only took a few days to build the whole wall. The trickiest bit was fixing brackets on the wall, halfway up the railings, as the railings can twang a bit, if you use long lengths, and a twangy wall is no good to no-one ( apart from Blakes 7 that is).

More Death Defying Stunts

Not content with making the extractor fan duct disappear, as if by magic, our next trick involved feats of daring unseen since Blondel walked across Niagara Falls.


Not really, but it did involve working up a very tall scaffold.






We had a load of insulated plasterboard left over from last years work that had started to bend a bit, so the best way to straighten it out seemed to be screwing onto the ceiling. That's all well and good, but to get to the ceiling it meant that I had to build the scaffold really high.





To get to the highest bit, the scaffold had to go right to the edge of the landing, leaving me staring at a 6 metre drop.





When it came to the front part of the barn, we had to put the scaffold up yet another layer, making it extra wobbly. Extra care had to be taken when any Queens of the Stone Age or Undertones was played on the radio, in case I pogo-ed my way to an early grave.

Luckily, this was all done a couple of months ago, before Saints went into administration, or else the local pompieres (fire brigade) might been needed to talk me down from the edge. It is comforting to know that apparently it is not Rupert Lowe's fault, according to ......... uhm Rupert Lowe . Perhaps now that he has a bit more time on his hands he can pop round to Fred Goodwins house, and they can swap notes .

Hello again readers

Yes I know that this hasn't been updated for months, but I do have a good excuse, as our PC broke down, so I had no Internet for a couple of weeks while we waited for a part to arrive.

I'm not saying that I use the PC too much, but using Teletext instead just wasn't the same, a bit like methadone ( for any smack-heads out there).

Anyway, we have been busy working again, and have finally finished the kitchen, making the ducting disappear.

We had to sort through the last of our stack of old wood from the barn, a clean it all up and treat it which to a while, as it was all covered in whitewash and 50 years of farm waste.

But after a couple of weeks work, hey presto ........

... it's vanished .

As if by magic !

Cabin Fever

We have been snowed in for almost 24 hours now. The snow fell on Monday night, and we managed to get out on Tuesday for a bit of shopping, but since then we haven't left the house.

The road's are frozen, the bins haven't been collected, and the post lady has abandoned us. Today our post was delivered by the mayor. Can't imagine Boris Johnson doing that, but if he did, I would move to London and buy a mad dog just to chase him.

We had about 3 inches of snow in all, and this morning it was minus 10 C at 9:30 am.

Niemi has been out for a look around, but not for too long but Henri loves it. He is out hunting all the time, and runs in and out of the cat-flap like he is on speed. He has caught a couple of birds, the first of which he ate, but we did manage to rescue the festive Robin.

Festival time

We've just returned from England and we have had a few complaints, all justified, that the blog has not been updated in a while.



A lot of this is due to the fact that Saints have been so bad this year that I can't type and listen to the commentary at the same time, or if I did it might read something like this "Tina and I have just finished GET SOMEONE ON THE NEAR POST FOR F SAKE" .



Anyway, I will start with an account of our Summer Holiday this year.



We have both been fans of Radiohead for a while, but had never had the chance to see them live as tickets in the UK were almost impossible to get hold of, given the anorak wearing reputation of their fans. With the new album out, we new that they would be touring, and kept an anxious eye on the web to see if they would come to France. We hoped that they might come to Angouleme, as it was a fairly Eco friendly Festival, but the closest that they came to us was Arras, up near the Belgian border. We looked into hotels near the site, no tents for us, and found that special trains had been laid on from Lille for only €5 return. My brother and Tina's sister were also able to come over for the weekend, on a ridiculously cheap Eurostar deal.



As Lille was such a long way from our house, we stopped for a night in the Champagne area to break the journey. We had a nice hotel, in a small village outside Epernay, but is must have been the only village in the region without it's own Champagne house, so we couldn't nip out for a tasting, although they did have a good choice of Champagnes in the hotel bar.



The next day we took the scenic route through the spectacular hills and vineyards of the Champagne, some of which were so steep that they would be mountains in the UK.

We arrived in Lille around lunchtime, parked up at a Park and Ride at the edge of the city and caught the metro into the centre, none of that city driving for us country folk. We had a good hotel, in the historic centre of Lille, close to lots of bars, shops and restaurants. Tina and I had a couple of hours to find our way around before Terry and Helen arrived, and we found one quiet street that was full of all sorts of bistro's and restaurants.

That evening, the four of us went for a few drinks before we headed of for something to eat. The quiet street had changed completely. The pavements were now covered in tables, and there were tow trucks hauling cars away so that more tables could be set up in the road. The bistro that we had our eye was overflowing by 7:30 but we managed to get into another one for some typical Flemish cuisine, beouf carbonade etc. The food was great, not expensive and that atmosphere in the street was so busy. I can't think of many countries where they shut down a road every evening just to eat.



The next morning, we had time for a bit of sight seeing, before getting the train to Arras. Lille is very Flemish in it's architecture, as you can see in the picture above, with cobbled streets and grand squares and is definitely worth a weekend trip.

The 'Main Square Festival' as the name suggests is in the main square of Arras. It is good spot for an urban festival, as the square is long and slopping, so that you can see the stage from anywhere. All around the square were galleried walkways with bars and cafes that had set up counter serving food and drink. The only beer on offer was Heineken ( much better than Carling in the UK) but we couldn't see any wine for sale anywhere. In the end I asked at one of the bars, and they went inside and got Tina a nice glass of rose for €2.50. As the evening wore on, the measures got bigger and she was getting a full half pint! We could see lots of people thinking, where did she get that from, which just goes to show, if you don't ask you don't get.

Anyone that lived on the square seemed to have have security bracelets on, so that they could sit in their windows and watch the bands for free. Not so good the night before when Mika was the headline act.

On the minus side, there weren't nearly enough loos, and no hedges for us blokes. Also, all the alleyways around were guarded by bouncers, so you couldn't nip off for a wee. In the end, all of the men were weeing on the walls of the toilet block leaving a river of wee flowing past the portaloos. Added to that, everyone seemed to get hungry at the same time, and so we ended up in a long panicky queue for burgers for about an hour, only to find out that our favorite bar was still serving merguez baguettes late into the night.

Onto the music.

The first band up were New York indie kids Vampire Weekend followed by Wombats, from Liverpool, as you can probably tell from the lead singers perm.



Wombats were very lively, and the drummer had taken the effort to learn some French so that he could engage the crowd, only to run out of steam mid sentence "Bonjour, nous sommes Wombats et nous sommes de Liverpool. Le prochaine, er , ah .... oh bollocks". Tina and I enjoyed both bands, but I think they found a Radiohead audience hard to warm up.

A French ,The Do's, were next up, and they were OK, better than most stuff on French radio, then it was on to the main acts.

We hadn't really heard of Sigur Ros before we booked the tickets. They're from Iceland, and are a bit unique musically, a four piece but with a string and brass section as well. You might know the music from BBC's Blue Planet series. They started their set of quietly but then, like a lot of their songs, the sound builds up into a crescendo. We were all just stood there with our mouths open, what an incredible sound/row.

We couldn't understand a word of it, as it was all in Icelandic, and some of it was in a language the lead singer has made up, but it was brilliant.

The link has a recording on someones phone, that gives you a bit of an idea, but it is much better with your own ears.


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qCD4P8A7JS8

When Radiohead came onstage the crowd suddenly seemed to get taller, and we had to move further back to be able to see.






They had an amazing light show, with these long tubes full of little lights that seemed to move in time to the music. A few of those tubes would look great in our barn, if they have finished with them now.

They did a full 2 hour set, with the whole of In Rainbows and lots of old favorites, but not Creep (sorry Helen).

The link below has a high quality video of one of the songs, from the French TV.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bhQaPU08U


At 12:00 it was a mad dash back to the train station to get the indie-kid special back to Lille and a well earned rest.

It was a long trip back home for all of us the next day, but we all agreed that it had been worth it, to see such a great chin rubbing double bill.

Dream Kitchen - Finishing touches

The kitchen is now finished, more or less. We found some tiles we liked after looking everywhere for green tiles, we found some nice grey ones in Leroy Merlin at Bordeaux ( as a bloke, I know nothing about colours, so it was down to Tina).

With all the tile factories of Spain and Italy so close across the border, we where a bit surprised when the ones we bought were by a British company. We think that they match the cooker and the units quite well.

The lights above the island unit where a bit of a pain to fit, as we had lost the instructions, but we managed to work it all out in the end. It took us all day, with the worst bit trying to fix the transformer to the ceiling and the wooden ceiling turning out not to be flat!.

The walk in larder is now all kitted out as well. Tina has been through all of the boxes in the barn and found all sorts of bits and pieces that no kitchen should be without ( although we did alright for two years while the stuff was in boxes) and we still have some space left in the new units.

The cooker cable is now well camouflaged in a false beam, conjured up by my friend Peter, who is very handy with wood. He knocked it all up in an hour, when it would have taken me a day at least.

The utility room has been tiled as well, so both rooms are now more or less finished.

We are still debating whether or not to try and hide to extractor fan duct under some wood, or to leave it as some sort of post modern industrial minimalist statement. Who knows ?

Dream Kitchen - Part Two

Now for the refit.

The first task was to put in the units around the source for the new cooker, so that Mr H could switch the gas supply over.

I managed to get all of the wall units, and the cooker hood up on the wall beforehand and so we soon had a bigger kitchen than we started with, although we didn't have a sink.

As the cooker was on an internal wall, we had to run a duct across the ceiling and through to the outside. This was a hell of a job, as the walls are over 2 foot thick, and there always seemed to be a large rock in the wrong place. It took me the best part of a day, and we ended up with 3 buckets full of stone and an enormous hole, compared to the size of the duct.

We did a test run of the extractor, and the exhaust parted your hair, but luckily I hadn't glued it on so we were able to switch it round.

Now it was full on to finish the units.

The sink was a bit tricky, as it is a bit nerve wracking cutting holes in an expensive worktop, and the island took a bit of construction. Ikea units ( other brands are available) are very good, and quite easy to put together. They have guide holes for fitting the legs and for fitting the cupboards from side to side, but nothing for building a back to back island unit. We had to drill lots of holes, and screw planks underneath to hold it together, but it hasn't imploded yet.

Dream Kitchen Part1

Hello again.

I know that the updates to the blog have been few and far between, but we have been very busy lately, working 7 days a week some times.

We have been fitting our new kitchen and, as you can imagine, life without a kitchen is pretty tricky, hence all the unpaid overtime.

Anyway, before we could start, we had to redecorate the old living room and move the table and dresser out of the kitchen, to turn it into a breakfast room.







This only took us a couple of days, as opposed to the 9 months it took to build the living room.

Now it was the turn of the kitchen.

First we ripped out the sink and worktops and stripped all the old tiles off the walls.







This left us with an emergency kitchen like this, no worktop and no sink.






Now I had to re-arrange all of the electrics to fit the new kitchen units. This meant cutting lots of holes in the walls, and running cables all over the place. We had an added complication when I checked out Tina's new cooker, and found that it was so powerful that it would blow the cable for the existing cooker socket, so I had to run a thick 6mm cable through the back of the house to the new consumer unit I put in last year.

We built a stud wall under the stairs, where the cooker used to be, to turn it into a larder, and then came the fun job of filling in all of the holes that I had just cut for the wiring, and plastering the walls where the tiles used to be. (step one, skim the walls , step two sand them down again, step three try another skim ......)



Finally, Tina was able to paint the wall, and we were ready to start fitting the kitchen.

The in between bit

The wasteland between our new living room and the rest of the house is finally taking shape.

After the loo was knocked out and the pipes removed, it looked like this.




With a lot of hard graft, it has now been transformed to a working utility room and a cellar ( OK, I know it's not under ground, but it has no windows and a wine rack, so we call it the cellar).



The floor is Vietnamese marble, which was a nice price, and looks right for the age of the house, but it was a sod to grout, as little tiles means lots of joints. Tina was well 'grouted out' by the end of it.

We were uming and ahing about what door to put on the cellar. A hand built one by Mr Chattilon would run to about €600, so we looked at getting a shop built pine door, which would have cost about €100. Mr H, our builder friend, persuaded me that I could build one myself, so I gave it a go. It was tricky to rebate the door frame, and the gaps where the boards meet are a bit more visible than on Mr Chatilons doors, but then he has been making them for 40 years. For a first attempt, we were very pleased.



The only other problem was getting door furniture, as my timber yard could only supply boards that were 22mm thick, and most doors are 30mm, so no locks would fit, but we got one in the end. When I make the doors for the rest of the house I will have to get hold of some thicker timber so they look the same as the others.

The units all went together OK with no bits missing, which is good for IKEA, but we will have to see how lucky we are with the kitchen. I had a bit of fun with the plumbing, as one of the flexible pipes that they use to connect the taps was nice and waterproof when it was straight, but not so good when you tried to do the flexible bit.



We've also got the washing machine installed now, with no leaks (touch wood) although there was some fun in the bathroom, where I cut down the old waste pipe for the washing machine, but decided to have a shave before I went to get the plastic cap to block it off. When I emptied the sink, a fountain of stubbly water shot out of the old pipe. Never interrupt plumbing for personal hygiene!

What we've been up to while we haven't updated the blog

Once again it has been a long time since we updated this, as we have been working hard and not got round to typing.

We've extended the patio around both sides of the pool now, which make it look even bigger. Mum and dad helped to prepare the ground work while they were over, and Tina and I did all the concreting and slabbing. This time I tried laying the slabs directly onto concrete, rather than concrete with a mortar layer on top.






This radical new method is popular in Italy, where they will lay tiles directly onto a wet concrete floor, but that wasn't why I chose this method, I just bought the wrong type of sand at the builders merchants ( problems in translation).



It proved to be a bit faster, in some ways, as you only have to mix one layer, but it is also more difficult to get level, due to the big bits of gravel in the concrete mix. I think next year, when we do the bottom end of the pool, I will go back to the traditional way, and leave the new method to the Italians.








It looks like it's finished in this picture, but you can't see the mud at the other end. We will have to wait until next year until it settles down, so that it is stable enough to build on. Last week, as it has been so dry over here this month, we had big cracks appear along all of the trenches that we had filled in, a bit like a 1970's Charlton Heston movie. No other seismic activity to report.