Category Archives: Les Guis

Wednesday 28th October 2009 – One thing that you need to understand …

… when you read my adventures is that I never ever make any mistakes. What I do is that I learn a lot, and sometimes learning can be expensive. In the olden days in the Wild West (yesterday in South Carolina, Rhys) greenhorns were continually being cheated at cards by people called “Doc”, and whenever anyone ever said anything, the response always was “you have to pay to learn“.

And so it is with house renovations.

And having got the preamble out of the way, let us now discuss the woodstove.

I lined the base with damp sand as required, and assembled a fire inside. “You need a 6x6x6″ fire, and be careful that it does not touch the sides“. How you do this when you have a fire that is 5.5×5.5×5.5” no-one actually said. But anyway I did my best and it toook ages to get going, but I slowly warmed it up. And when I was happy that it was burning I started on the grouting of the bricks I laid the other day (much more useful that laying eggs, I can tell you)

Halfway through the grouting the phone rang, so I opened the door to climb down the ladder to the phone, and “Blimmin’ ‘eck!” You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face with the smoke, and the fumes were overpowering. All through the house, even in my little room, was a pall of black smoke. I was appalled. as was the smoke.

Normally I would expect that the hot air would rise up the stovepipe and carry the soot and ash with it. When they burst out into the chimney the hot air would rise creating a current of air from the chimneys below, which would pull up the soot and ash. But not a bit of it. The soot and ash had descended in the chimney and come out at the bottom. So much for free circulation. And so much for the woodstove too.

I was toying with the idea of lining the chimney and putting the stovepipe all the way up to the outside, and I wish I had done it now. I can’t get the pipe in now that I’ve done the walls and so basically the woodstove will have to be put on hold while I think about this.

It’s not the end of the world though as I have the bottled gas heater, but I was hoping to get away from fossil fuels and go for a more natural source. What is going to be a major problem is that if the soot and ash can get from the attic to the living room it can also do the return journey when I light the fire down here. And that will be “an issue”.

Today’s image is entitled “What I saw when I opened the door”.

On the phone, as it happened, was a member of OUSA’s Executive Committee who wanted a chat. Of course I shan’t name names as talking to me is punishable by a “visit” from Pol Pot’s sibling, a whine from Caligula and her horse, and a thorough dressing-down from Turdi de Hatred (not to mention a thorough dressing up, in fairy boots if I remember correctly, by Lee “I’m a prostitute” Potty-mouth. But I digress – something that you ought to be used to by now)

I’ve now done all the grouting and the filling, and I started poncing (But not in fairy boots) this evening. Tomorrow will be finishing off the poncing, cleaning up the room and making a start on the wallpapering. D-Day is getting closer.

-5

Tuesday 27th October 2009 – You can guess what Terry and I have been doing today.

For a change I was up nice and early and with Caliburn fully loaded with scaffolding we nipped round to Terry’s to unload.

Then it was back here again to load up all of the rest and it was quite a struggle to move Caliburn what with everything in it. But there’s much less stuff to trip over around here now and I won’t be using the scaffolding before springtime.

Anyway, after a lunch of lentil soup (you might have guessed that there was an ulterior motive) we put up the scaffolding at the back of the house. Terry is keen to get some pointing done before the bad weather hits here. We managed to put it up without any major mishap. I avoided falling into the septic tank although I did put my foot into the drain.

You can see how impressive it is, this scaffolding. And this is by no means all of it. There are still two bays up at the side of my house where I need to do some pointing, and there’s a pile more that we didn’t put up yet. This scaffolding is a veritable bargain.

What was weird though was the weather. You know that I go on about the microclimates around here – at Terry and Liz’s the weather was as calm as a millpond yet at my place there was a howling raging gale with the wind turbine going round like the clappers.

Tea was vegan nut roast and veg followed by baked apple and vegan ginger and chocolate cake. And also an Eric bag full of leftovers. As I have said before, whenever there is an appeal for volunteers to do some work at Liz and Terry’s you get trampled to death in the stampede.

I also took advantage of the situation by asking whether I might use the shower there.
“I think it ought to be compulsory” said Terry
sniff> sniff> “I think you might be right“

-5

Monday 26th October 2009 – I didn’t do an awful lot today.

In fact, it was a day of interruptions.

Starting as we mean to go on, I wasn’t upstairs 10 minutes before the phone rang. The man from Nazar …. errr… DHL rang to seek directions to chez moi. I carried on with tidying up last night’s wiring efforts and Terry rang, asking if he could borrow my compressor.

Then Terry came round – and he helped me finish the wiring. I was struggling to get the 2x10mm cables for the heater element through the conduit – not something it’s easy to do yourself, so while Terry started it off I went to look for my patent cable dragger. And by the time I came back with it, Terry had threaded it through on his own. It pays to have an expert around the place.
In fact, I had a friend who was acknowledged as an expert by everyone else.
But in that case, it was spelt ex-spurt and ex is a has-been and spurt is a drip under pressure.

After that the man from DHL turned up with a little package for me, and then it was lunchtime.

Once lunch was over I played the usual game of “hunt the keys for Caliburn” and when I eventually found them I drove Caliburn round the back here and loaded him full of scaffolding to take round to Terry tomorrow – all the time half-expected to be confronted by The Ghost Of Farmer Parrett and his pitchfork again.

In the attic I did manage to do some work today. All of the chimney is now connected up, sealed and clamped together, and I’ve also done something to the concrete base.

If you follow the comments to the various entries (they are often the most exciting part) you’ll know that Krys and I have been discussing the edging to the concrete. I wanted to put a raised edge around it although Krys thinks (and rightly so) that it will be difficult to keep clean.

I’m still worried about flying embers though, but there’s no point in soliciting advice if you don’t intend to take any notice, so what I did was to put a raised edge around the front and most of the sides, and leave the back open so I can brush out around there.

And what did the man from DHL want? Well, he brought me my new lens that I talked about the other day. And that was quick delivery – I wish Amazon would be this quick from the States. And €36 customs and charges – that’s an enormous rip-off if you ask me.

I’m disappointed with the lens though. It’s very small and you would hardly notice it. Freud had a thing or two to say about camera lenses, something along the lines of them being substitutes for part of the anatomy in the same way that guns and sports cars might be. And I was hoping for a whopper. The filter size is 49mm, which I don’t have, so that means a 20-quid order to the 7-Day Shop.

The lens is a manual focus (not a problem because with the footy, the focus is always “full on”) and that reminds me of a story I heard about the two blondes on the beach, being approached by the beach photographer.
“Keep still” said one. “He’s going to focus!“
“What? Both of us?“

-6

Sunday 25th October 2009 – It was 9:03 when I woke up this morning

I thought to myself that that can’t be right – and it wasn’t.

Well, it was because in fact the clocks went back this morning and we are now on real time, although by yesterday’s time it would have been 10:03 and that is much more like a respectable time to wake up on a Sunday.

So having breakfasted I had to do a CD of footy photos for Xavier. He has some friends who play for Cebazat and I had photographed them the other week so he had asked me for copies of what I had. And as I was meeting him at Beauregard Vendon where the 3rd XI were playing this afternoon I needed to get my skates on.

First stop though was the fete de la pomme at La Cellette. I’d been invited by Marianne so I went along to say hello. Antoine, Liz and Terry were there so we had a good chat and then it was off to the footy.

Pionsat’s luck ran out today – they only had 10 players and not one of them was what could be called a goalkeeper. For much of the match Xavier was in goal and today’s pic features him diving to push a Beauregard shot round the post for a corner. There was precious little else to cheer.

On the way back home I went via the brocante at St Gervais. And what a waste of time that was. Most of the stallholders were Dutch and if you are a keen follower of my blog you will know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis. I was looking for a metal bucket or something similar to take away my ashes (well, not mine, the ashes out of the stove) but there was nothing that would do. Some stallholder had a battered aluminium casserole and he wanted €4:00 for it. It’s not very often I come away from a brocante empty-handed. Mind you, I met Gilles and Heidi there and we had had a good chat.

Back home I plucked up the courage to tackle that wiring job seeing as it was now dark. I took me about an hour to do it, most of which time was spent trying to fish the torch out from downbehind the battery box.

We’ll know tomorrow whether it works properly.

-8

Saturday 24th October 2009 – I have just seen …

…the most amazing game of footy that I have seen in years. In the driving torrential rain, 5 minutes to go and Pionsat trailing 3-1. Heads down, Montel-Villosanges on the rampage, crowds streaming out of the ground, etc etc.

And in a most astonishing and dramatic 3 minutes, Pionsat have three attacks and somehow, unbelievably, score 3 goals to end up the winners in a match that they never ever deserved to win.

Earlier in the evening the 2nd XI had played Menetrol and won 3-2 in a match that was scarred by controversy and had I been refereeing Pionsat would not have had two of their goals. For one of them, the Menetrol keeper takes a clean catch of a high ball but has come out with his foot up to ward off the Pionsat attacker. Now personally I think that if a keeper comes out with his foot raised then it’s “dangerous play” and if his foot does catch the attacker it really ought to be a penalty. You see this kind of thing in every match that you watch and even when there’s a collision a penalty has never ever been given. Yet tonight there was a collision and the ref gave the penalty. Like I say, quite right too but it would not have been given anywhere else.

Pionsat’s second goal I didn’t catch on camera. For the simple reason that I, like all of the crowd, like the Menetrol defence and like most of the Pionsat players except the guy with the ball, was waiting for the referee to blow the whistle in response to the linesman’s flag for probably the clearest offside I have ever seen. The linesman hurled his flag to the floor in disgust, and who can blame him? Normally the dubious decisions always seem to go against Pionsat so it’s about time they had some luck. But still ….

This morning I dodged the torrential rainstorm and went into Montlucon. At LIDL they were selling a video capture kit that enables you to plug your video recorder into your computer and copy al of your old tapes. I’ve been looking for one of these for years and at €19.95 it’s a bargain. I forgot more than I remembered at Brico Depot but I’ve got most of what I need now for my room and I’ll have to do without the rest.

And it’s still raining.

-6

Friday 23rd October 2009 – Even more Fiat Lux

You might think that this photo is rather blurred and underexposed, but it was taken with just 2.4 watts of light.

This morning I wired in the 230-volt lights but for some reason (presumably because of my bragging yesterday) I couldn’t get them to work. While I was musing on the subject Terry and Liz turned up so Terry (who is a sparky in his day job) had a quick look and noticed that I’d wired the light switch up wrong.

D’oh!

So once we’d got the wires in the right hole we had some light! All 2.4 watts of mains LEDs and you can’t dispute the brightness of those. This pic was taken from outside the room at 20:00 when it was pitch black outside.

You can also see the pot-bellied stove too. It’s all assembled and in place and it’s tiny. I’ve been cutting wood to a length of 30cms and I’ll need to cut that in half again in order to get it to fit in the aperture.

And would you believe that the chimney that came with it is the wrong size! The aperture is 107mm and the chimney pipe is 117mm. After much messing around I cut down another piece of chimney, sliced it downwards, fitted it inside the aperture (there’s a rim to stop it going into the fire) and lined the slice and the joint with fire cement. The natural springiness sprung it back into a tight fit and the fire cement should seal it, and then I sleeved the chimney over the top. Tomorrow I need to get a joining piece for where I had to cut the pipe and then I can fit the chimney stack completely.

I’ve also grouted the tiling. Krys was right when she said that grouting covers a multitude of sins. But there must have been more than a multitude with the tiling that I did.

Terry, while he was here, had a good look at my door.
“Do you know” he said, “that you can buy doors that come supplied with the doorframe?”
“Hmmmmm. I can see the advantages of that“.

-5

Thursday 22nd October 2009 – FIAT LUX!

And we aren’t talking about Italian cars and washing powder either.

This photo here was taken at about 20:00 this evening and the reason that you can see inside the room here is that I now have four lights all properly connected and switched!

They are in fact four of those 12-volt LED lights that I bought from LIDL a few weeks ago and while they may not look very bright; that’s just 4 watts of lighting in there.

Dunno about you, but I think that’s quite impressive.< And that's not all. I now have 12-volt power all around the room, and also mains power too. My electrical day was quite profitable and, much to my surprise, everything worked straight away. I didn't need to make any adjustments at all.

I’ve not done the 6-volt circuit yet though because I ran out of time doing the 230-volt lighting so I’ll do that tomorrow morning. And neither have I done the telephone. In fact, I dunno how to wire up the telephone plug so I’ll have to do some research into that.

Liz and Terry are coming round to pick up some stuff so I told them that if they can’t find me anywhere, look to see if there’s anything black and shrivelled stuck to the ceiling. That’ll be me having made a false move with the mains wiring.

But talking of Lux, the washing powder, do you remember the advert from the 1960s?
“If it’s safe in water it’s safe in Lux<" I wrote to them at the time "Now, about my goldfish ....”

In other news, I’ve been spending more money that I don’t have.

I’ve effectively abandoned night action photography because the lens on my camera won’t stop down far enough to let in enough light to take effective photos. And when I crop them they are far too grainy, as you will have noticed.

But that’s the problem with budget lenses – and by that I mean anything under about 500 quid and I don’t have that kind of money.

Rhys and I were discussing that last night and he found a second-hand lens, a Pentax 100mm f2.8 telephoto on the internet . If you don’t know much about photography, basically it’s one and a half times as long as the maximum on my zoom lens (which is a 17mm-70mm) so it needs less cropping, and it only needs about 2/3rds of the light that mine uses. It’s an old lens but they had a very good write-up and were much in demand by action and portrait photographers back in the old days.

And the price? Well, only $129 (plus $40 postage from the USA). I’m not going to get anything better than that on my limited budget so I’ve bitten the bullet and it’s on its way to here. I hope it works properly and does the business for me, as I’m not going to get anything better without spending a real shed-load of money.

And in other other news, this blog attracts quite a wide audience. It has its regular followers and contributors, but it also has a considerable number of lurkers who just quietly read it. I was talking on a messenger program last night to one of the aforementioned lurkers – Sheila – who I haven’t seen around for some time. It appears that Sheila’s mother has suffered an aneurysm – the same that did for poor Liz back in March – and while she has had the operation the prognosis is not too optimistic.

So what would be nice would be that we all find a quiet minute or two and think about Sheila and her mum and send them both some positive vibes. They could do with some right now.

-3

Wednesday 21st October 2009 – WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE …

… in this pic is all the varnish on the tongue and grooving. That’s because, for once in my life, I’ve found some clear varnish that really is clear.

So clear in fact that I couldn’t see where I was up to each time. I was impressed with that.

What you also can’t see is all of the rubbish, debris, sawdust, polystyrene offcuts and the like. I decided to start by tidying up and picking up all of the stuff.

And after half an hour of this I thought “This is ridiculous – I’ll be here forever” and got out the yard brush. One reason why I started from the top is that you brush the rubbish downwards.

And when I get to the ground floor? well, that’s easy. I’m putting in a suspended floor and all of the rubbish can go underneath.

Which reminds me – it rained today – about 8mms – and I happened to put my hand on the sandy soil that is the ground floor of the house (at least where I dug out for the battery box) and it is as damp as heck. A suspended floor is pretty much essential, I reckon.

And while I’m on the subject of that, now that I have the door on upstairs, the temperature is keeping pace more-or-less with what I get in my room. But it’s a totally different kind of temperature – like it’s a dry temperature upstairs and a damp wet one down here. I’m surprised I haven’t caught pleurisy living in here and I can’t wait to move in upstairs.

I’ve also installed all of the light fittings upstairs and started on the plugs at the “other” end of the room. It looks like I’m heading for an electrical day tomorrow.

-4

Tuesday 20th October 2009 – And so, to make up for last night …

… you can have two images this evening.

The first image is of the door, which is now hanging where it is supposed to be.

And not without some effort either. Don’t look too closely at it as it’s a bit of a mess.

I told you that the door was too large for the opening that I made, and I cut the bottom of the door so that the height was perfect. One of the edges needed to be trimmed and as the doorframe is out of perpendicular (how on earth did that happen?) it needed to be cut in a slight diagonal. And I was halfway through the cut when I realised I was cutting it upside down so the diagonal was going the wrong way. So now we have an an inverted arrowhead-shaped door, a padded doorframe on the bottom half of one side and on the other side the hinges on the top have had to be shimmed with washers.

In fact, it’s quite a shambles from that point of view.

But on the other hand, I mortised the door latch and lock into the frame and I’m quite impressed with how that has come out. I’ve also chiselled out the door so that the hinges will sit flush to the surface, and that’s turned out quite well. It closes absolutely perfectly so all in all, with that part of it it’s turned out quite well.

That was the morning and some of the afternoon taken care of, and for the rest of the afternoon I tiled the concrete pad that I had laid on Saturday. That’s turned out quite well too, and when it’s finished off it will look quite nice. I’m going to get some small bricks and build a raised edge to it, to stop ashes and the like falling onto the floor. I was planning to get those on Monday in Montlucon but those people who wanted to talk to me about fitting solar panels – they never got back to me. A pity that, as I would have gone into Montlucon on Saturday instead of going to St Eloy.

Mond you, going to St Eloy on Saturday had two noteworthy items that were so noteworthy that I forgot to mention them.
Firstly, LIDL now has the Christmas goodies in, so I bought a couple of bars of marzipan. They also do some nice soggy gingerbread biscuity things covered in plain chocolate, and that’s this weekend’s Christmas purchase.
Secondly, I saw an Opel Ascona (Vauxhall Cavalier to the Brits reading this) on the Carrefour car park, and it had rotten sills. Now when was the last time you saw a car with rotten sills? Back in the 70s and 80s I was welding sills onto cars all of the time but how often do you see a rotten car now? When I had my taxis I was buying 8 year-old cars and having to weld them up. You don’t ever do that now. In fact the last time I had my welding stuff out was to patch the Passat exhaust and I was still living with Laurence and Roxanne, so that’s at least 10 years ago.

Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on the varnishing of the tongue and grooving. That’s what I call progress.

-1

Monday 19th October 2009 – No photo today, folks.

I was too busy.

I started off this morning with the door to the room. Now you may remember that I carefully measured the door, worked out exactly how large the door opening needed to be, and I constructed it perfectly. And badger me if the door, the contrary item that it is, hasn’t grown 1cm in height and 2cms in width since I measured it and constructed the opening!

Luckily the circular saw rose to the task and dealt with the bottom and just as I was getting ready to do the side, Dave stuck his head around the door. So we spent the rest of the morning discussing the plumbing arrangements for the house. He reckons he can get something sorted out for me and he’ll teach me how to do plumbing next spring when he’s over again.

That reminds me – listening to 2 advertising executives talking about a colleague
“I taught him all he knows”
“All he knows?”
“Yes, all he knows. Not all I know – just all HE knows”

In the afternoon Dave helped me get my bed up into the attic and then we discussed the old office desk I have in the barn. I used it as a workbench but seeing as I made a new workbench last year it’s been redundant. So why don’t we get it into the attic?

Famous last words, those. I don’t know if anyone remembers Bernard Cribbins and “Right Said Fred“? That’s how we were up all the stairs. But it dismantles much more than you might think when you look closely at it, especially when you have it stuck halfway up a ladder and you can neither take it up nor down. So after much exertion and a great deal of bad language I now have a desk up there.

In February he’s thinking of going down to Southern Spain for some sun. I saw a photo of Gibraltar harbour the other day and I must admit that it did look quite enticing, especially with Africa looming just across the straits. I might be tempted to tag along if I can find some dosh.

And talking of voyages, Danielle was talking at the Anglo-French group tonight about going to the USA when she retires, but she doesn’t want to go alone. Perhaps I ought to look into this kind of thing as some kind of alternative career – professional holidaymaker-cum-companion-cum-guide-cum-bodyguard
“That’s a lot of …..”
“You said that the other day!”

But I dunno about an alternative career, whether I might have time for one, for following on to my posting last night I have been asked by the local correspondent for the local rag if I might accompany her to the Potato Fair (we don’t half have some fun events round here) at La Cellette on Sunday. Now that’s an invitation I find very hard to turn down, and for more reasons than just one!

-1

Sunday 18th October 2009 – In another major departure …

… from my usual schedule, I have been working on a Sunday morning.

Well, sort-of morning, because it was somewhat late when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And after breakfast, there was a little bit of morning left so I decided I would tile the back wall behind the concrete base I laid yesterday.

You can see that tiling is yet another one of the things that I’m no good at and it doesn’t help not having a wall that’s perfectly upright and straight either. But then again, it’s done and a blind man would be pleased to see it. And it’ll probably look better when it’s been grouted. But that’s not going to be for a while. At least all of the wood that will be stacked up in here to burn when the stove is connected won’t damage the wallpaper and the tiles will be easy to clean.

There’s a story behind these tiles too. When I was living with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, Roxanne’s class at school decided that they would make some mosaics out of broken tiles and the teacher asked all of the parents to send their kids to school with some broken tiles. I didn’t have any in those days so I rang up a tile fitter I knew to see if he had any.
“Come round and I’ll give you some” he said.

So I went round and he loaded up my car with about half a tonne of tiles. Some were broken but many were undamaged and far too good to send to school so I brought them down here. And as my room is going to be light blue, I had a good rummage through the pile of tiles and found a load of light blue ones.

And here you are.

15:30 when I knocked off for lunch and then this afternoon I’ve been doing my coursework. I have to get back into this studying thing again.

-1

Saturday 17th October 2009 – In a major departure …

… from my usual habits, I did some work this morning. I built a framework on the floor, lined it with a plastic sheet, and then concreted it. This will be a slab that will be tiled and the woodstove will be placed on it. Once I take away the framework, the slab will be held in place by the laminate floor that I’ll be fitting.

I’ve had to make the slab with a lot of stones so that it will knit closely together – after all, it’s only 2.5cms thick – but I made it too wet. There is nowhere for the water to drain away of course, with it being in a plastic sheet, so the water has floated to the surface and pockmarked it in places. But it’s not a problem as I’ll fill the pocks with tiling cement in due course.
fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire riom >After the shopping we had the footy tonight. And GRRRRRRRRR again to Pionsat. The match against Le Quartier was cancelled so I had a wasted drive down there and back again. I drove down again for the match at 20:30, only to find that it had kicked off at 20:00. As I got out of Caliburn, Riom broke down the field and scored, and as I walked into the ground, Pionsat went up the other end and they scored. I had also missed a penalty, but Riom didn’t miss it, and they ran out winners 2-1.

In other news – do you remember my footy photo from last weekend? It seems that the local newspaper, La Montagne, has published it. That’s a few of my photos the newspaper has used now. No money, of course (and I could do with some right now) but at least some of my work is getting an airing and they wouldn’t use them unless they thought something positive of them. And who knows where it might lead?

And tomorrow I’ll be tiling the back wall behind the slab. That’s where I’ll be stacking the wood so tiles will enable it just to be wiped down to clean. That’s a better idea than wallpaper. And that’s a novel idea too – working on a Sunday.

-4

Friday 16th October 2009 – And while I have something vaguely resembling an internet connection …

I’ll post Friday’s pic.

There I was, fiddling around with this perishing beading that never seems to want to go on where I want to put it, and suddenly I had a horrible thought.

Next weekend is, I reckon, the last weekend in October. And the clocks go back and although I gain an extra hour in bed, I lose an hour’s light. And it’s already getting dark far too early for my liking. Time to cut my losses and go with what I’ve got and get myself in there.

So b*****ks to the beading and I’ve started on the definitive wiring. On the back wall is, from left to right, a British 13-amp double socket (for mains voltage – I prefer them as the plugs are fused), an American 110-volt double socket (which I use for my 12-volt circuits as they are designed for hefty cable) and a British 5-amp single socket – which I’ll be using for a small 6-volt circuit seeing as I have a pile of 6-volt stuff.

Round the corner are the light switches – one bank of 2 for the 12-volt lights and a single one for the 230-volt lights, then another bank of American and British sockets, and a telephone socket. I now have 12-volt power into the room and if you look carefully you can see the mp3 player that is my hi-fi (connected to a pair of powered computer speakers) and a table lamp that’s actually working.

So downstairs and put my feet up, and no perishing internet. And no telephone either. The whole circuit is down. So use the mobile phone to dial up the repair service and “sorry, you cannot access this number from a mobile phone. Please use your landline to report the fault, or consult our website”. Someone should tell them that this is France, not Ireland!

So I dashed down to the local hotel-cum-bar-cum-restaurant-cum-meeting place …“that’s a lot of cum” – ed … to find out that it doesn’t open on Friday nights, Saturdays or Sundays. It’s also closed for holidays during August – what kind of way is that to run a business? But that’s another story.

In the end Liz very kindly reported the fault (it’s a general collapse of the Virlet exchange and everyone is cut off) and she posted a note on the blog to calm my eager readers. And consequently my mailbox is swamped with mails of goodwill, which is extremely nice.

There’s even a mail from a member of the OUSA Executive Committee – who shall remain nameless as reading my blog is punishable by death. “Hurry up and get back on line. We look forward to your pithy comments. All we have to read at the moment is this circular from Turdi de Hatred. Your postings are like shafts of wit. Hers are .. errr …. well, quite!”

-4

Thursday 15th October 2009 – Today’s photo is rather dark.

But there’s a reason for that – and I blame my own popularity. In fact I’ve never been so popular than I seem to be just recently.

I took the dolly round to Bill’s this morning and stopped for a coffee, where I was entertained by the Hound of the Baskervilles.

After that, I finished off the rest of the tongue and grooving as you can see in the pic, if you shine a torch onto it.

This afternoon, in between the phone calls, I started on the beading. I’ve done the corners of the 2 windows in the ceiling and I’ve started on the beading round the edges of the t&g. But it’s not going half as far as I reckoned it would and I’ve nowhere near enough.

And as the battery in the chopsaw went flat, I started the electric wiring at the stairwell end of the room, and just as I was getting into the throes of it, Bill and his neighbour appeared – they had brought back the dolly. So they had the guided tour too. I’ve had more visitors this last few weeks than I’ve had this last few years. Because I forgot to say – while I was round at Bill’s, Terry came round here.

What with all of that, it was dark by the time they went and so I went to take the photo. But firstly, no memory card in the camera – so back downstairs for the card. And secondly, flat batteries in the camera – so back downstairs to get some fully-charged batteries. Hence it was dark by the time I’d got my pick.

Last night it was -2.5 degrees and the water had started to freeze. In the heat exchanger it was -7 degrees. Winter is early this year. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll make a start installing the woodstove upstairs and get it running in.

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Wednesday 14th October 2009 – This should keep Krys and Rhys happy

What I did today was firstly to make the framework for the top of the doorframe into the cupboard and then to make the door (which you can’t see in this image).

And after that. I roofed the cupboard (and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either).

Next job was to finish the rear half of the ceiling. This involved trimming lengthways quite a few pieces of T&G but I’ve sussed how to do this now. You may remember me talking about standards (battens of wood 25mm x 25mm cut to a specific length), and how I have a 600mm standard (as a gauge for sheets of insulation) and a 1195mm standard as a gauge for sheets of plasterboard). I now have a 2000mm standard (2000mm being the length of a piece of t&g) and I’ve knocked a row of nails into it that protrude about 3mm out the other side. My circular saw has a bed of 50mm so the cut is 25mm inside the edge of the bed (if you see what I mean). So when I’m measuring up the width of a piece of t&g that I need to cut, I overstimate the measurement by 25mm, press the standard into the wood at the overestimated widths so that the protruding nails hold it to the piece of t&g, and then run the bed of the circular saw along the piece of t&g while being guided up against the standard.

Works every time!

So after much vicissitudes and a major rerouting of the wiring, I finished the rear half of the ceiling.

After lunch I set about doing the front half of the ceiling, but I never got anywhere. The phone went non-stop – firstly Bill wanting to borrow the towing dolly (I have to run that round to him tomorrow morning so that’s put paid to the early start), and then someone wanting to talk to me about fitting some solar panels to a new house in Montlucon (I have to go and look at the job on Monday afternoon so that’s that put paid to any work on Monday afternoon but I’m not complaining) and I can’t remember what the other call was.

After that, I had a visitor. Someone is rebuilding a house and wants to have solar panels on it so he talked to someone who talked to someone else etc etc and eventually my name crept into the frame. So he came round for a chat.

He was here for ages and it was dark by the time he went so that was the entire afternoon spoken for. But again, I can’t complain. I could do with earning some money.

And tonight, I finally succumbed and I had the heater on. The temperature outside has dropped to 2.5 degrees and winter draws on. After all, you know what happened to the three brass monkeys.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality