Tag Archives: les guis

Thursday 26th February 2015 – I WAS UP …

… early this morning. However this was not due to any urgent desire to get to work. I knew that I shouldn’t have finished off that bottle of pop before I went to bed.

That gave me an hour or so before starting work and so I made a start on the next month’s issue of radio programmes. I might as well put this time to good use. I made quite a bit of progress too but like anything else, there’s never enough time to do anything.

I had a good day at work today. First job was to take that sheet of floorboarding that I had made up yesterday and cut off one of the doors for the wardrobe.

Once that had been done, it needed the diagonal bracing and the door handle fitting, and then I had to organise the hinges on the door and on the frame. With that done, I could hang the door. And while it needs a little sanding where it’s tight on the frame , it’s quite a good fit.

Next task was to cut down the remaider of the sheet of floorboarding to make the second door. And then to repeat all of the above procedure as on the first door and hang that.

That was a good fit too except once more, a little tight on the frame (but sanding will take care of that of course).

However, the width was about 2mm out but I was able to deal with that by undoing the bracing, using a large sash clamp to pull the floor boards closer together and then te-attaching the bracing. That way, I recovered the 2mm that I needed and the widths are perfect, which is certainly impressing me.

two pairs of doors on wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce the bolt had been fitted on one of the door and the lock and magnetic catch fitted to the second door, then we now have two pairs of doors on the wardrobe and this is starting to look serious.

Knocking off for lunch 15 minutes late and knocking off for the evening 45 minutes late – you can see just how much time and effort that I’m putting into this bedroom. I don’t understand why it’s not progressing much quicker than it is. That’s something of a complete mystery to me.

Tomorrow, I’ll be fitting the shelving brackets and then cutting the shelves to fit. That is, provided that we have some sun. Today, we were bathed in a hanging cloud all day, solar energy was nominal and the batteries didn’t half creak when I was running the circular saw. We need a good day pretty soon.

-1

Wednesday 25th February 2015 – BACK TO WORK TODAY

And I didn’t feel much like it either. A late night last night and the battery going flat in the mobile phone that I use as an alarm clock meant that I wasn’t awake as early as I would have liked, and I crashed out for half an hour at lunchtime too.

Once I actually started work (about 20 minutes late) I cracked on – or so it seemed – but despite working consciensciously throughout the day, I haven’t made all that much progress and I don’t know why.

The story of my life just recently, I’m afraid.

door hanging wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceI cut the second door of the wardrobe down to size (and much to my surprise, the width is millimetre-perfect), sanded off the edges with the new belt sander, did the lets in the door and the frame for the hinges and fastened them, and then hung the door.

Once it was in place, I fitted the handle, fitted the door lock and drilled out the hole for the key, and fitted the magnetic catch.

That took me nicely up to something of a late lunch and I went off upstairs for a little doze

After lunch, I rooted out another couple of packets of floorboarding (and also found the strips for the shelving supports for the inside of the wardrobe – I knew that I had them somewhere) and then made the sheet of planks from which I’ll be cutting out the doors for the other half of the wardrobe.

I also made the framework for the doors and that took me to 18:30, so having more-than-recovered the time lost due to my late start, I called it a day.

For tea, I cooked a mega-pepper-and-lentil curry that’s now divided up for another three meals, and now I’m off to bed.

I’ll be carrying on with my doors tomorrow – I wonder how far I will get.

0

Tuesday 24th February 2015 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And I celelbrated by doing absolutely nothing at all. And quite right too. I’m entitled to have a birthday day off work.

I intended to celebrate by having a nice long lie-in, and I managed until all of about 09:00. And apart from having to go outside for a load of firewood, hauling myself out of bed was the most strenuous thing that I’ve done today.

I’ve not cooked tea tonight – one of the main reasons being that I’ve hardly had the fire on. Just two little fires of about 45 minutes each – that’s been enough to take the chill off the room up here as it’s not been all that cold, despite what the weather has been doing outside. A late lunch and a few nibbles was sufficient.

And I’m feeling better today that I did yesterday, that’s for sure. Mind you, I don’t think that I could have felt much worse.

0

Monday 23rd February 2015 – I’M NOT SURE WHAT’S HAPPENING …

… but I’ve had a bit of a bad day today.

Despite having something of a decent night’s sleep last night, I almost crashed out recording the radio programmes this morning, and it was something of an effort to drive back from Gerzat this afternoon. Back here, I crashed out for 3 hours or so and now, at just 22:40, I’m dying to crawl into bed and forget about today completely.

Mind you, I had something of an exhausting night last night and that might explain a great deal. I was walking from Brussels back to here and in the traditions of the well-known Irish joke, I’d fund a boarding house with a typical boarding house landlady, and I was setting out there to walk the route. When I reached the end of the day and was tired out, I would walk back to the boarding house for the night, and then next morning, walk back to where i’d left off the previous evening, and start out along the route, walking back to the boarding house at the end of the day.

No wonder I was exhausted.

At Radio Tartasse, we learned the news that we had been dreading – that Henri had not recoverd from his illness. He was 90 years of age but looked probably no older than 70 and was full of vitality, but a short while before Christmas he went down as if he had been poleaxed, and aged 40 years overnight.

It’s something that catches up with all of us eventually, sooner or later, but I really enjoyed Henri’s company, his knowledge and his good humour and I shall miss him.

After lunch, during which I demolished the leftovers of Liz’s vegetable pie from yesterday, we went off to Gerzat. and although we had a half-hour wait for the studio, the recording sessions went perfectly and we’d done in an hour with no delay at all.

And then I had to come back here.

But now I’m off to bed, I’ve cancelled the alarms and I’m going to sleep for ever. I really must be sickening for something.

-1

Sunday 22nd February 2015 – HOW LONG IS IT…

puy de dome france … since I’ve posted a pic of the Puy de Dome?

Yes, I’ve been down to Liz and Terry’s this afternoon. On Monday we’re recording our radio programmes on Monday so we need to rehearse. Consequently Liz cooked a lovely tea and we ate it after doing whatever we needed to do.

It gave me a chance to see the Puy de Dome anyway, all bathed in snow and looking like a lovely Christmas cake with its coat of icing.

Liz and Terry had other guests too. Simon and Tina, friends of Liz and Terry, were there and as it happens, Simon is a drummer. That’s worth knowing and we shall have to work on that.

You may remember that I moved Caliburn up the hill last night. I didn’t really need to because although we did have snow, it wasn’t enough to worry about. And by the time I’d finished my leisurely morning, almost all of it had gone.

Back here tonight I lit a fire. But it didn’t catch and spluttered out. And seeing that I’m going to bed in a minute I’m not going to persevere so I’m classing this as a no-heat day.

0

Saturday 21st February – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… "der dit der dah dit" – ed … to something like darkness.

And it wasn’t as if it was very early either. The truth was that we had had a snowfall during the night and the roof windows were covered.

It snowed intermittently throughout the day too – quite severely at times – but nothing seemed to stick. Nevertheless, seeing as how I’m going out tomorrow, I took Caliburn and parked him at the top of the hill in the lane because the temperature will drop during the night and if it snows like it did today then we really will be having transport issues.

The snow put paid to any plans that I might have had about going out. I stayed in all day and did nothing. I couldn’t even summon up the enthusiasm to do any tidying up.

I did go out to take the stats and while I was there I filled up the empty kettles, and that was the lot.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. I’ve been working hard just recently and I deserve a day or two off work.

-1

Friday 20th February 2015 – AHHH WELL!

Yes indeed!

door wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceYesterday I told you of everything that I needed to do on the wardrobe, and how I would be lucky to do half of it. In fact I’ve managed to make the framework for one pair of doors, assemble a pair of doors and hang one of them.

And that’s it.

And I’m not sure why either. It’s not as if I’ve been slacking or been distracted, or spent hours looking for stuff either. I’ve put in a good shift and made good use of the circular saw and the new belt sander (with which I am very impressed – it does exactly what I wanted it to do) too, but for some reason I don’t think that I’ve advanced very much.

I’ll have to work much harder than this if I want to make progress because this isn’t very good at all. if I carry on like this I’m never going to accomplish anything. However, I’m not quite sure how I can work any faster. After all, as I have already said, it isn’t as if I’ve been slacking.

After knocking off, I went into Pionsat. Firstly, for a pile of shopping at the Intermarche of course, and secondly to put a load of washing into the washing machine there. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … installing the little launderette at the Intermarche was the best thing that the owners of the supermarket ever did.

I had the clothes hanging outside in the wind, because we’ve been having a lovely windy day today, but when I was outside later doing the stats, it started to rain so I’ve stuck it all in the verandah.

Now I’m all set up for the weekend.

0

Thursday 19th February 2015 – I’M ABSOLUTELY WHACKED …

… and I’ve no idea why either.

I was so tired last night that I was in bed and asleep by 22:20 and I’m not sure if that had ever happened before when I’ve not been ill. I slept right through until the alarm at 07:30 and I still managed to crash out at about 15:15 for a good 45 minutes after I had come back from Cécile’s. And I’d still go to bed right now given half a chance.

wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou may remember my target for today – to have the fixed shelving and the fixed fronts on the wardrobe by knocking-off time. Well, I managed to accomplish that and here you are, in all its glory.

It’s really quite funny but like most things around here, I ended up redesigning it, even when I was halfway through fixing it and it’s not quite thesame as it started out being. And I was almost held up by the lack of a 300mm plank for the intermediate shelf.

But not to worry – I remembered that I had two of them for my bookshelves up here in the attic and so I came up here and dismantled the bookshelves. Now I have books all over the place, but at least I have shelves in the wardrobe.

I’m well-pleased with this

What needs to be done next is for the moveable shelves to be fitted (if I can find the struts) and the doors to be made and hung. It’s quite a tall order to do that tomorrow – if i manage to do half of that I’ll consider myself lucky.

0

Wednesday 18th February 2015 – IF YOU WERE TO LOOK …

… at the photo of today’s work, you would be forgiven for thinking that I don’t seem to have made much progress.

In actual fact, I reckon that today was the day when I accomplished the most work in the bedroom to date, in that all of the electricity in the dressing table area is now installed.

electricity fittings wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s a pair of 12-volt sockets (you’ll notice that I use North American plugs and sockets for my 12-volt circuits as they take high-capacity cable), a 230-volt mains socket (I use British plugs and sockets here because the plugs are fused) and a light switch that powers one of these IKEA LED light strips.

All I need now is some extra-long screws to fasten the socket to the pattress, and also a mirror. But they will both come in the fullness of time.

I would have made much more progress too had I not fastened the connectors to the wire of the LED light strip before I’sd threaded it through the hole. I had to cut off the ends and pass the wires through, and then I couldn’t find any more connectors. I spent about half an hour looking too. In the end I had to invent something.

But you’ll notice the difference between today’s photo and yesterday’s. We have the mirror backing in position and also the other side wall of the dressing table area. We really are making progress.

Tomorrow I won’t accomplish too much because I have to go to Cécile’s to show someone round. But I’m hoping that I can fit the top of the wardrobe as well as the intermediate shelf. If I can do that, as well as to start to assemble the front walls, I shall be quite happy. But I have a feeling that I’m going to miss my target of the end of the month, and probably by a week or two as well, to finish the bedroom.

I had another helping of my vegan aubergine and kidney bean whatsit for tea, and I realised that I forgot to add the olives too. What a performance!

0

Tuesday 17th February 2015 – I’VE BEEN ON MY TRAVELS …

… during the night and was having such an exciting time that I was determined to remember every second of it when I awoke.

Of course, you can guess what happened. I awoke and … paff … it was gone.

Ahhh well.

So this morning after something of a slow start (I’m not quite sure why I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm) I cracked on. And much to my surprise, by the time that I had knocked off for lunch, I had really accomplished something.

home made chest of drawers bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceand here you are – my first ever home-made chest of drawers.

Don’t worry about the front panels by the way, they will be replaced eventually with pine planks when I have finished the wardrobe and know what offcuts that I might have left over. And they will pass in front of the wardrobe frame too, in order to hide the framework which isn’t quite straight.

Making the sides was exciting though. I had to make the first one and fit the runners in position by trial and error. And to my surprise, I only ended up 14mm out in height. And that was soon remedied with an offcut and from the outside, you would never notice.

The second side was of course so much easier, having already made the first and having taken copious notes.

The gap in between the two sides needed to be 549mm and to my total astonishment, having assembled the framework back in 2010 or 2011 or whenever, and doing it by guesswork, I had left a gap of 548mm. And what is 1mm betweem friends?

After lunch I fitted the top to the chest of drawers, fitted one of the sides of the wardrobe above the chest of drawers, and cut and shaped the piece for the back where the mirror will be. It’s all becoming quite exciting here as I progress.

But two things stick in my mind and one of them is annoying me intensely. I’ve designed the wardrobe so that the internal fitting is 500mm, meaning that I can use 500mm pine boards without having to cut them. However, the flaming, blasted, perishing 500mm pine boards are actually 505mm, meaning that I have to trim 5mm off each board.

This is a total shambles, I’ll tell you that. If there were anywhere else to go other than Brico Depot, I’d be there.

But the second thing that I have to say is based on the first thing, and this is definitely positive. That is that despite the hanging cloud that has covered us for all of the day, I’ve used the 650-watt circular saw intermittently today and you would never ever notice from the state of the batteries. Installing these new, big heavy-duty batteries back at the end of autumn was an excellent move. those old second-hand batteries would never have coped with this.

For tea tonight, I made an exciting vegan aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. I’ve lost a load of supplies, including the macedoine vegetables and the kidney beans. I’ve no idea where these might have gone but its bewildering. I’ve had to use subsititutes and it doesn’t taste the same.

But where have these supplies gone to then? This is bizarre.

0

Monday 16th February 2015 – I HAD A LATE START …

… this morning. I was up early enough, but you know how it is. I had a 15 minute free space before I needed to start work so I made a start on something else – a quick 5-minute job – and it wasn’t until 11:20 that I had finished it.

I’d been on my travels through the night too. Wandering around Glasgow with a small portable gas-welding kit doing odd jobs.

I’ve made great progress today anyway. I caught up with my late start by having a very short lunch break and also working on until 18:45, but I did spend half an hour chatting to Cecile on the phone and also to someone who wants to come and visit her house.

What I have accomplished is to cut, shape and fit the central shelf of the wardrobe and then screw it into position. That involved two planks of pine shelving that I had to go and search out from downstairs, and also a great deal of tidying up in the bedroom.

Having done that, I could fit the flooring into the wardrobe. That again involved searching out a couple more planks from downstairs, cutting, shaping and fitting them into position. And the good news from this point of view was that I could cut out the good bits of an old split plank that was doing no good anywhere and fit these good bits into place.

Final job was to assemble all of the drawers.

Tomorrow, I’ll be building the cupboard to fit the drawers and then fit that into the recess in the wardrobe.

It’s not half looking good in the bedroom now.

0

Sunday 15th February 2015 – ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about Sundays is being able to lie in bed. And when I have nice clean bedding to lie in, it’s even better. I must admit that I’m looking forward to having a nice bedroom and nice brand new bedding to lie in too, and that day is coming closer and closer too.

So despite being awake at 09:15, it was 10:30 when I crawled out of bed, and I do have to say that that was probably the hardest work that I have done today. I did manage to bring up a small load of wood and a couple of kettles of water too, but I can’t think of anything else.

With the rain that we were having (12mm today) I didn’t plan on going out anywhere anyay.

I did have a look in the bedroom though, and the crepi that I had put on the OSB wall was drying nicely and had changed xolour to match the crepi that I had put on first from the almost-empty tub. I’m pleased about that.

Funnily enough, the part that is taking the longest to dry is the part that is on the piece of OSB that I had brought in from outside.

And I did say that, after fitting this piece, I found a complete OSB board that I had forgotten about – and in the house too.

I’ve been making the most of my day off working with this 3D program and I’ve overcome another major issue that was holding me back, as well as finding a “hidden menu” – something that completely baffles me. It doesn’t baffle me that there’s a hidden menu – I can in fact see the prupose of it – but why it should be set as the default and needs to be switched off, rather than the items in the hidden menu being shown in the default mode and “hidden” being an option. It doesn’t make sense to me.

But I have had a tragedy here today. I accidentally closed my browser window (with 22 tabs open) leaving a pop-up window open. Consequently when I reopened the browser (configured to show the last open configuration) it was the pop-up window that came up and I’ve lost my 22 open tabs.

That’s a tragedy and no mistake.

-1

Saturday 14th February 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that I had a severe attack of cramp during the night?

It’s a good while ago, and so I was quite surprised to have one last night. Severe was not the word, and to make matters worse, there’s one position – my “recovery position” – where I can take the strain and ease the cramp a little, and I had an attack of cramp in that position too as soon as I eased myself into it.

It was absolute agony for a good 15 minutes before it eased off.

What was sad about this is that I was in the middle of a big discussion with Sir Winston Churchill and we were inspecting a couple of VW Beetles, having to be very careful about opening the bonnet of one of them in case the two kittens underneath escaped.

It was cold, wet and miserable this morning, raining in torrents. But I still set off for Montlucon and the shops. The only exciting items purchased were the 2nd and 3rd series of the Hercule Poirot TV series. Of course, they came from NOZ as you might expect. It seems that they are some kind of weekly or monthly offering in the French press and NOZ gets hold of the unsold copies.

But it’s really quite funny llstening to Poirot in French. 90 is translated into “Quatre-vingts-dix” as you might expect from a French TV station, but as everyone knows, Poirot is actually a Belgian and so he would never say “Quatre-vingts-dix” but “nonante”. In fact, all of the slang is translated into Francais de Paris rather than Francais de Bruxelles and it makes a complete nonsene of Poirot’s insistence all throughout the series that he’s Belgian, not French.

Mind you, who am I to complain? Any moral high ground that I might have had went right out of the window when Professor McGonagall said to the students of Hogwarts “I’ll be with you momentarily” in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I died of shame when I heard that, and it still makes me cringe even now.

At Brico Depot I bought a pile of floorboarding, some more beading, the missing hinge (about which much has been written) and all of the hardware for the wardrobe doors. I’m set up for next week now (I hope).

On the way back, I stopped off at Ice Station Zeb … errr … the swimming baths at Commentry. It was freezing although the water in the smaller pool where there’s the bubbling spa was warmish. I had a shower (which was the whole point of going) and tonight I’m going to treat myself to clean bedding.

0

Friday 13th February 2015 – THIS SUMMER DIDN’T LAST VERY LONG

It clouded over at about 18:00 this evening and by 20:00 it was p155ing down outside. So that’s that then.

But I have made enough progress today, so that it doesn’t matter too much.

First job was to sand off the second layer of filler on the wall. That didn’t take too long to do, and it doesn’t look too bad, although I would rather have been able to take off all of the plasterboard and start again. Anyay, it’s ready to paper and paint, whenever I’m going to be doing that – which won’t be for a while yet.

Next job was to move everything around in the bedroom so that the working space is next to where the wardrobe is. And hen I’d done that, I emptied the wardrobe. That was a horrible job and I hated every moment of it. I’ve found quite a bit of stuff that I had “lost”, as well as another hundredeight of screws and nails, but none of that compensates for the rubbish that I pulled out of the wardrobe area. There was even stuff in that corner that came from off the old roof when we ripped that out in 2009.

I can see a great big issue now in that I don’t have enough space left to store all of the stuff that I’ll be taking out of the bedroom when I need to empty it

There was still an hour left before lunch so I made a start on crepi-ing the OSB alls of the wardrobe. I worked up a good rhythm in there and I as doing so well that I ran a good half-hour past my normal knocking-off time and I didn’t care either.

crepi osb wardrobe wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfterlunch I cracked on with the crepi-ing and at 18:30 (another long day) I’d finished it all.

You can’t really see what it looks like because it as dark by the time I took the photo, but it’s come out quite nicely and I’m impressed. On Monday I can even fit the shelving, which will be progress indeed.

I had a nice hot wash in the water out of the home-made 12-volt immersion heater and then another load of the potato and lentil curry.

Now I’m all set up for the weekend – I’m off to Montlucon tomorrow.


-2

Thursday 12th February 2015 – I HAD A LATE START …

… today. I had about 10 minutes spare before I needed to start work qo I started on something really quick – and it was 11:10 by the time I finished.

But never mind – I still managed to accomplish everything that I had planned for today, and even found time to draw up a list of tasks to do before the bedroom can be called finished. There’s 15 on the list (and I’ve just thought of one more too) but I’ve already completed one of them so it’s not too bad.

First thing today was to sand off all of the remaining filler in the joints of the plasterboard. And now, of course, I look like a snowman … "snowPERSON" – ed. Once that had been done, I could put the second coat of paint on the landing wall. I still don’t like the colour but it went on good and thick and at 20:00 it was still wet.It’s going to take a while today.

This afternoon I had to fetch in a pile of wood as I’ve run out, and then I set to work on the second layer of filler on the plasterboard joints on the wall in the bedroom. It ddin’t take too much either – I must be getting good at this. Finally, I took off all of the masking on the landing and now I can get into the cupboard there and start putting stuff away.

I didn’t know what to make for tea tonight but just messing around aimlessly with a few bits and pieces here and rhere and I ended up with another mega-meal – this time of potato and lentil. It was nice, but it would have been even nicer had I had some onions handy, and there’s enough for four meals. So that’s problem solved until next week.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sanding down the second lot of filler, but then nothing’s going to happen to that for a while so I can leave it at that. I’ll also be emptying the wardrobe and painting that with crepi, ready to start fitting the shelves. I’m intrigued to see how far I can reach tomorrow.

-2