Tag Archives: les guis

Monday 12th January 2015 – WOO HOOOO!

Yes, I’ve finished the wallpaper in the stairwell this afternoon. It doesn’t look particularly pretty but at least it’s all on and it will be staying on now, and that is that.

I had something of a little lie-in this morning so it was about 10:30 when I started work. First job was to vacuum up the dust with the soot-sucker. It didn’t half clog up the filter, but I’ve had experience of this in the past and it didn’t take very long to sort it out.

And in news that will startle almost everyone, I didn’t knock off for lunch until 14:30 – 30 minutes after my usual time. Working later than the normal knocking-off time (18:00 in winter, 19:00 in summer) is not an unusual event, but to work on past the lunchtime break is absolutely unheard-of.

However today, it was 13:45, too early to knock off and a piece of blank wall looked so inviting. As I was on a roll, I threw caution to the winds and pushed on. And I’m glad that I did too, because after lunch and I cracked on, I was done by 17:30 and that was that.

I spent the remaining time doing a few odd jobs, including changing over the plug on the new table saw (I use British plugs and sockets here as you know, because the plugs are fused. By 18:15 I was done and dusted, and that was that.

I can’t paint the wallpaper for a day or two as the paste needs to dry thoroughly. It looks like Wednesday to make a start on that. Tomorrow therefore I’ll push on and do all of the masking-off and catch up with a couple of other jobs that need to be sorted out

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Sunday 11th January 2015 – I HAVE DONE …

… absolutely nothing today. I haven’t even made any food since breakfast.

And breakfast was rather late too. having had a more reasonable night last night, I was awake before dawn broke. But badger that for a game of cowboys. The nice clean me turned over in the nice clean bedding and went back to sleep until 10:20. I deserve it after my efforts of the last week.

I did manage to go outside once too – to bring in a few bits and pieces from Caliburn, but that was about that.

Something worthy of note, though. Another day in january when I’ve had no heating on at all. It’s going a little chilly now but I’m off to bed in a minute. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … stuffing this place full of insulation was the best thing that I ever did. Money spent on insulation is never wasted.

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Saturday 10th January 2015 – I’M A FIRM BELIEVER …

… that if a thing is destined to happen, it will happen. Regardless of however much input one puts (or doesn’t put) into the whole procedure. It seems to happen time and time again and the only secret of this is, as Jacqueline De Bellefort said in Death on The Nile – “You have to follow your star wherever it leads, even to death itself”.
é
And with this in mind, I went off to Commentry this afternoon.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t.

I had made a stunning breakthrough with this 3D program that I’ve been playing with. I had totally given up on the modern version of it ages ago and had gone back to an ancient version, and there I was last night trying to make a 4th Generation character work properly when, all of a sudden, it all clicked into place and I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was 06:00 this morning before I realised it, and I hadn’t had any tea either.

Consequently, it was 11:20 when I crawled out of my stinking pit and seeing the bright sunlight and clear sky I resolved to go to Commentry and the swimming baths. Pausing only to add a little more filler to the wall where there was a hole or two, at 13:30 I was off on the road.

The pool was a little (just a little) warmer than last time, practically empty and the shower was just as delicious, even though the private showers were closed for maintenance. And seeing that I was only half a mile from Bricomarché, I went off in search of some sunken hinges – I’ll need these for the trapdoor that I’ll be making in a week or so.

While I was there, not only did I find siome hinges that will do the job, I solved the problem of the handrail for the stairs. Some huge screwed eyes, with 16mm holes, and a 2-metre length of some very nice 14mm hemp rope – that will make a lovely handrail.

But here’s the exciting bit, that relates to what I was talking about earlier. I was thinking again about these wooden ends for the plasterboarding. Cutting up pine boards was my original idea but at Montlucon the other week the stuff on offer was rubbish. At Bricomarché the stuff is so much better, the staff is so much more friendly and they have cutting facilities too.

So while I was wandering around turning things over in my mind, I came across the tool sale, and there on offer at just €44:00, was a cheap 600-watt table saw. It was the last one in stock too.

It’s not the ideal thing, but it’s the nearest that I can find and i’ll need to build a table for it if I’m going to cut doors down doors and things like this, but for what I want to do at the moment it’s ideal. I can soon trim down half a dozen floorboards with this.

I went to the new NOZ at Commentry too. I didn’t buy anything exciting but nevertheless it was a good opportunity to have a look round.

Back here, nice and clean for once, I crashed out for an hour or two. And I’m not surprised either. And I’m off to bed in a minute with nice, clean bedding too. And as it’s Sunday tomorrow, I ccan have a nice lie-in.

But I’m glad I followed my star all the way to Bricomarché at Commentry today.

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Friday 9th January 2015 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

… will be astonished by this, but believe it or not, I’ve started to wallpaper the stairwell.

Despite the lack of electricity today (it was another grey, miserable day today) I cracked on with the sanding down with the electric sander, stopping for half an hour for the boulangère and tidying up in the barn while I was waiting.

stairwell sanded down les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt didn’t take as long as I was expecting to sand everything down with the electric sander. In fact, by lunchtime everything was done and I had even put another layer of filler where it was needed.

after lunch though, the second layer hadn’t dried fully so I couldn’t sand it down, so I cleaned up as best as I could at the moment. This was when I noticed that there were a couple of areas had turned out pretty well. As there was still an hour or so before I knocked off, I decided to bite the bullet and start the wallpapering.

I hate wallpapering, I really do. I’m not much good at it, and working in a confined space in a stairwell is not my idea of a good job. But no-one else will do it if I don’t, and so I prepared everything.

And turning back to a few days ago, I found out why that wallpaper wouldn’t stick – the xallpaper that I put on the little shelving space under the stairs. It was in fact clear varnish that I must have put at one time into an empty paste tub. I wish I had labelled everything because it’s not the first time that this has happened.

The second piece of wallpaper that I fitted was quite straightforward, but the rist was a nightmare. All of the dimensoions were different and I was there for half an hour trying to position it, fit it and cut it to shape. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I got it to fit something like, a fact that peased me greatly, and I was quite pleased with it by the time that I has finished.

So that was one of the two most difficult pieces in, and on Friday afternoon too. i’m getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I? I went down to do my shopping this evening at the Pionsat Intermarche with a spring in my step.

But I do hate wallpapering. i’ve always said that whoever invented decorating wants f*****g. Although Nerina seemed to be of the opinion that on our honeymoon all those years ago I said “whoever invented f*****g wants decorating”.

But I dunno.

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Thursday 8th January 2015 – IT WAS HARD …

… to get out of bed this morning. Being up and about at 04:00 might have something to do with it.

But it was a good job that I did get up though, because Terry came round to borrow a tool. And no-one was more surprised than me that I was able to put my hands straight on them.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was surprising. You may remember that I’ve been looking for the electric sander for the last couple of days? I had a flash of inspiration and went over to where it was supposed to be (although it’s been a long time since any other tool has been there) and, sure enough, there it was. However did that happen?

stairwell plasterboard filling les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo after all of that, I started work. with the aid of Caliburn’s ladder, I reached into the corners of the stairwell, masked off everywhere and attacked the gaps in the plasterboard and the screwheads with the filler. The, I made a very wet mix of filler and went around everywhere putting a second coat on the low spots, of which there were quite a few.

After lunch, I started to attack the filler with the electric sander. It looks like a snowstorm out there at the moment, even though I was only able to give about 30 or 40 minutes’ worth of sanding as the weather changed dramatically and I lost the sun behind a huge black cloud.

home made wiring clamp les guis virlet puy de dome franceLooking for something to do for the last hour or so before knocking off, I started on the wiring again. When I had straightened it out a few days ago, everything was in a real tangle so I didn’t make much progress. But with the hour or so that I had, I untangled everything, routed it properly and tidily, nd then made two wire clapms out of old wood battens and some 4×60 screws and clamped all of the wires to the ceiling beams.

Yes, we are definitely making major progress here and if I can finish the sanding tomorrow, providing that I can have 12amps of current, I’ll be ready for wallpapering next week.

I shan’t know myself then.

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Wednesday 7th January 2015 – NOW THIS IS REAL PROGRESS.

door cupboard behind stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou’ll notice that the cupboard at the back of the stairs has now grown a door. It’s amazing justwhat you can do with four floorboard planks, a handful of screws, two hinges and a tin of clear varnish.

And I do have to say that I am so impressed with this door -almost as much as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

It’s not perfect – for a start the hinges are not perfectly vertical so the door opens under its own weight when the bolt is undone, but bearing in mind that I knew nothing about carpentry before I started on this house

It took me all morning to hang the door, mainly beczuse I had to chisel out the lets in the doorframe in order to fit the hinges. I had also to go rooting around in the barn to find some laths to use as backing on the doorframe, and to cut down the panel over the door, so I’m not surprised about the time that it took;

After lunch I cracked on woth filling in the plasterboard. There was still a great deal that I could reach without the ladder, but tomorrow I’ll definitely be needing to use that. I’ll have to remember to unbolt it from Caliburn’s roof;

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Tuesday 6th January 2015 – ANOTHER MILESTONE …

… has been reached today.

Remember in the Spring when I bought that 500-watt ash sucker that I reckoned that I could convert quite easily into a vacuum cleaner? Well, without any conversion at all, I used it today to vacuum all of the dust that had collected on the stairs over the last year or so. And I was ever so impressed with this, almost as much as I wam with my galvanised steel dustbin. Even though it’s only 500 watts, it did a terrific job – much better than I was expecting. Once that had been done, I set to and masked off everywhere in the stairwell that I could reach.

The small ladder that I used when I fitted out the stairwell is now being used in the inspection pit and so I had to spend most of the day being an acrobat trying to reach the far-flung corners, and it wasn’t until I’d knocked off that I asked myself how come I hadn’t thought about the small ladder on the roof of Caliburn.

It took ages to mask off the stairwell and so that left me only about an hour or so to start to fill in the screw heads and the plasterboard joints. It’s going to take much more than that to do all that needs doing, and so I’ll be spending most of the day on Caliburn’s ladder, assuming that I remember to fetch it.

WHat else I’ll be doing is to try to hang the door for the cupboard at the back of the stairs. I put the final coat of varnish on that this morning and so tomorrow morning I can fit the hinges on the door and measure up to fit the hinges on the doorframe.

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Monday 5th January 2015 – I CRACKED ON …

… with the work today, but not necessarily in the direction in which I was intending to go.

I started off by cutting down some floorboarding planks to the correct size to make the end pieces for the plasterboard runs and the doorway into the cupboard at the back of the stairs and at the end of the wall by the stairs. The latter one involved some quite intricate shaping but it was soon done and doesn’t look to bad.

And I do have to say, if I haven’t already … "yes you have" – ed … that this Ryobi Plus One percussion screw driver is a tremendous piece of kit and I’m thoroughly impressed with this – almost as much as with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Next job was to clean off the stairs and mask off everything ready to start the filling of the plasterboard joins and screw holes, but then I had another idea.

If I sand down the filler (and for the moment, I can’t find the sander) the dust will go everywhere, including into the cupboard at the back of the stairs, so the cupboard will need to be masked off. And that gave me an idea. If I have to mask off the cupboard, why don’t I simply make the door for the cupboard instead? Killing two birds with one stone as it were.

door made of floorboards for cupboard at back of stairs first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs it happened, I had a pack of the cheap floorboarding left over, and that was exactly what I needed for the job.

I assembled the four lengths, battened them and reinforced the battens, cut the door to size (four cuts with the circular saw – just as well we had another Alpine day today) and then cut the lets for the hinges. The first coat of varnish went on too before knocking-off time and that was that for today.

This evening, the temperature in here reached almost 30°C as I cranked up the fire to cook some tea. I brought up some fresh wood and that burned fine, and then I put in some of that old damp stuff and it seemed to dry out as the fire became hotter. It was all quite impressive.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting the other two coats of varnish on the door and tidying up ready to start on finishing off the stairway.

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Sunday 4th January 2015 – THE LAST DAY …

… of my Winter Break today. It’s back to work properly tomorrow.

So to celebrate my last day off, I had a lie-in until all of 09:00 (I was in bed early last night) and since then I have done precisely nothing.

Well, that’s not true. Regular readers of this rubbish will know that I’m working on a 3D program thatI downloaded a few years ago – trying to make it work like it’s supposed to. I’ve spent all day on it working ona couple of knotty problems and much to my surprise I’ve managed to make one or two of them work – something that has taken me quite by surprise.

I was right about the fire too. With not having it on yesterday it was quite chilly here today and so I lit the fire this morning and had it running for an hour or so at breakfast. That warmed everywher up quite nicely. And then at about 19:00 I lit it again to heat the oven to cook my pizza. That’s about all of the heat today too – it’s not been all that cold outside today.

Apart from that, I was on my travels again last night and the highlight of my nocturnal perambulations was sitting on the stairs in a music shop somewhere playing a Gibson “longhorn” 5-string bass. I’m not sure where this comes from but it did remind me that I’ve not had my bass out for a week or two and I’m falling way behind with my schedules.

I must do something about this.

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Saturday 3rd January 2015 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING.

Make a note of today – the 3rd January. And today I have had no heating on at all in my attic.

This means of course that i’ve not had a hot meal today but it’s more important to try to run this place on an energy-efficient basis and with the temperature late at night being 15°C inside my attic then heating would really be superfluous.

What has contributed to this state of affairs is that at about 15:00 I had the gas ring up here going for about 15 minutes boiling a kettle so that I could have a really good wash, and that bumped the temperature up to 16.5°C at one stage. This just goes to show that all of the insulation that I have stuffed into the attic when I fitted it out has not been wasted at all. We have insulation in the ceiling, in the walls and under the floor as you know. Money spent on insulation is never ever wasted.

During the night I was working in an office somewhere and it was so hot in there that I removed my shirt and jumper. When it was time to go home and I put my shirt and jumper back on I nearly boiled away in the heat. I went off back home on the old Honda Melody that is around here – my urban transport mode when I lived in Brussels all those years ago and which is still here. The Melody hadn’t been used for so long that when I went to fill up with petrol the upper part of the filler cap came off in my hand leaving the lower part firmly wedged in and blocking the filler hole.

After breakfast I carried on with my relaxation and after lunch I had a good wash (see the above) and then went to Intermarché …
1) to do the shopping
é) to do the laundry which has been backing up here for I don’t know how long. Yes, it’s a godsend, this launderette here in Pionsat.

Back here, I’ve done nothing at all this evening except to sit in the comparative warmth of my attic. But I’m under no illusions – I’ll probably have to have a fire on here when I wake up tomorrow.

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Friday 2nd January 2015 – I WAS IN CREWE …

… last night, back at Gainsborough Road. The four members of Golden Earring were in bed, which was a mattress on the floor in a smallish room rather like back at La Batisse, and they were giving a concert to about four people while they were in bed. It was all rather weird.

What was even more weird was that someone was writing up a schedule of the “concert” and I noticed that, even deep in the arms of Morpheus as I was, that I could tell that the address that they had written was incorrect.

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, Golden Earring feature quite often in my nocturnal ramblings.

I was awake at 07:00 this morning but there was no possibility of hauling myself out of my stinking pit. I stayed there until about 10:00 instead and then had breakfast. I watched More Than Murder, the second part of this Mike Hammer spectacular. Its French title is “Il pleut des Cadavres” – which crudely translated by Yours Truly means “It’s Raining Corpses” and that sums up the film quite well.

These films are about 90 minutes long and more people die in them than died in the 90 minutes that it took to sink the Bismark. I don’t suppose that the films are too bad but they are full of plot holes and non-sequiturs and the action moves on at such a speed that there’s no time for a substantial plot to build up. They are clearly aimed at the truncated attention span of the American MTV generation.

It does make me wonder that if the Director hadn’t had the time constraint of 90 minutes and all that had to be crammed into it, what would these films have turned out like? Marlon Brando, when he directed One Eyed Jacks ended up with a “Director’s Cut” of about 9 hours or something like that, and the savage editing clearly showed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Director’s Cut of More Than Murder would double that with plenty to spare.

The Boulangere was late today but the time wasn’t wasted. When I built the woodshed Iused a pile of old pallets and there was tons of wood left over – the feet of the pallets and the like. So I separated all of the feet from the planks – some of them were quite substantial – and brought them up here. They didn’t half get the fire going.

And apart from that, nothing else happened today.

Now apart from FC Pionsat St Hilaire, I don’t usually talk about football very much on here. But I follow the antics of Bangor City Football Club. This is the largest and best-supported club in Wales, and I started to follow them when I used to go to Bangor to see a girlfriend who was at Uni there. They are having a dismal season this year, languishing at the foot of the Welsh Premier League and running around like a bunch of headless chickens directed by a manager who seems to have lost the plot completely in my opinion and a spineless Board of Directors who, it seems to me, have totally abandoned their responisbilities.

Had they won today, they would have risen off the bottom of the table because the team above them lost, but instead, they gave another clueless and inept performance and lost 3-0. It’s already looking like an odds-on relegation certainty, and this is a fine end to the biggest club in Wales.

It’s high time that the Board of Directors accepted its responsibilities, dismissed the manager, released some of the underperforming players and brought in a manager and some players who know how to fight..

What’s going on at Bangor City is a total shambles and the Board of Directors must accept total responsibility for the disaster that is staring them in the face before it’s too late.

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Thursday 1st January 2015 – HOWEVER DID THIS HAPPEN?

Yes, at 07:30 this morning, the alarm in here went off. I’ve had it switched off for over a week, so I’ve no idea what’s caused that to go off. And after an 04:00 finish last night, that was the last thing that I needed.

Never mind, I turned over and went back to sleep and that was how I stayed until just before 11:00.

After breakfast, I watched Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer in MURDER ME, MURDER YOU, one of Mickey Spillane’s detective films. It’s not the best of the hard-bitten private eye films – for that you are going to have to go a long way to find anything that will beat The Maltese Falcon or the Tony Rome films, but it was on sale with another Mike hammer film at a throwaway price in NOZ and I can say that I haven’t wasted my money.

Apart from that, I’ve had a day of rest today. I haven’t even cooked a meal. We have however had a beautiful Alpine day which had thawed out the taps so that I can at last isolate the front water butt and when I’ve emptied that I can change thr fractured tap.

I’ve had fire issues too. I tried several times to get the fire to light but to no avail. In the end I sorted out a pile of new wood offcuts and that managed to stimulate a reasonably healthy blaze.It seems that the wood that I brought in the other day is saturated and that’s not helping matters, to while I had a good blaze going with the new wood, I put some of the other wood in the oven to dry out. We’ll see what that is like tomorrow.

So Happy New Year to everyone. I wish you all for 2015 exactly the same that you all wished for everyone else in 2014.

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Wednesday 31st December 2014 – NOW HERE’S A THING.

While I was having (a rather late) breakfast this morning, I started to empty out the woodstove and clean the glass window. But much to my surprise, the big log that I put in there last think last night was still smouldering away.

It didn’t fire up however when I opened the foor, but it was still something of note to see it.

After breakfast, Iwent out to look at this idea of fitting the wood to the ends of the runs of plasterboard as I mentioned yesterday. However, I was thwarted right at the start, because it was one of these jobs where you needed to do several other things before I could start.

I had to fit a few lengths of tongue and grroving as a false ceiling, but before that I had to fit the plasterboard onto part of the stud walling. And before I could do that, I had to move some wiring around.

Anyway, you get the picture.

However, we have made a little bit of history because we now have, for the first time, plasterboard on both sides of part of the stud walling. That’s history in the making of course, and it means that whatever is between the two layers of plasterboard is there for good now, in exactly the same place as it’s going to be.

tongue and groove ceiling wooden plasterboard ends les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s 5 lengths of tongue and grooving in the ceiling as well, enough to clear the stairway.

And while I was doing all of this, I had another idea. I don’t have too much of this wood that I was talking about yesterday, so seeing that it’s good, heavy stuff I’m going to save it for where I’m putting the hinges for the doors. For the rest, I’ve been experimenting with floorboarding. I cut one to size, trimmed off the tongue and then with the circular saw I cut the width to size.

I had to file and sandpaper the edge where I cut the width to size, and it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I was fearing. A power plane or a belt sander would finish them off quite nicely but I don’t have them so I’ll have to do without.

So while it might not look as if I’ve done much today, it is in fact an enormous amount of progress both physically and psychologically too. Just one piece of wood to be fitted and then I can start to fill and then sand down the stairwell ready for wallpapering and painting

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Tuesday 30th December 2014 – WELL, THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME.

Remember yesterday when I was busy putting that piece of wood in to fill that unexplained gap in the woodwork and ended up falling down the stairs?

This morning I started to fit the plasterboard into position, and after a good hour or so at the cutting, measuring and fitting, and also fitting in some bracing which was unaccountably absent, the light suddenly went on in my head. Yes, where is the insulation in the wall?

Off came all of the plasterboard that I had cut and shaped, and off came the bracing that I had fitted, and on went 40mm of polystyrene insulation. And now I can see why there was that unexplained gap – it was for passing the insulation through and out behind the stairs. Still, it’s too late to do much about that now.

Before I had started on the plasterboard, I had taken the masking off the floor under the stairs on the landing, and put the first coating of varnish on there. I’d put the second coat on and fitted the stairs too. So that’s another job out of the way.

I’ve even had a bit of good luck too. Aeons ago, when I lived in Brussels, I bought a pack of 100mm wide 25mm thick planed wood planks to make some shelves, but I never used it. I discovered two of the planks and tried them as end-stops for the plasterboard stud walls. They seem to be perfect for this job and so tomorrow I’ll have a go at fitting tham.

I’ve also rerouted a pile of wiring so that it will run under the false ceiling on the landing and then down with all of the other wiring between the stud wall that has the shower room on one side and the head of the stairs on the other side, and I can’t think why I didn’t do this ages ago.

As for the water issues, the front tap thawed out slightly today and the leak isn’t anything like serious. It’s losing about half a litre every hour, but more when the tap is open. The rear tap is still frozen up so I can’t isolate the front tank.

Mind you, the frozen tap is doing that so it’s the same thing really, and as for the leak, the front tank needs to be emptied anyway so that I can change the tap so it’s neither here nor there. I’ve emptied 40 litres out of it today into various containers and I’ll keep on doing that for now until the weather warms up and I can isolate the front tank.

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Monday 29th December 2014 – OUCH!!!

Yes, I fell down the stairs today.

I was at the top of the stairs fixing in a piece of wood into the corner at the back of the upper stairs and I had to reach right across the stairwell to screw it in. And then I forgot that I was reaching right across a void and put my foot down again. And that was that.

But that’s not the worst of the problem. I’m going to be having water issues here when the thaw sets in. It’s not so bad at minus 10.5°C such as we had during the night, but the severe temperature has cracked one of the taps on the water butt. The other two taps that control the flow into the front water butt are frozen solid so I can’t cut off the supply. That means that if the front water butt defrosts before the rear one, then I’ll lose all of the water in the containers.

That’s not the only issue that I’ve had with water either. I keep a 5-litre container of water in the bedroom for all kinds of different purposes, and I’ve managed to kick that all over the floor.

And that’s not all either. After varnishing the stair treads and risers that I cut the other day, I went to emulsion the wallpaper that I’d fitted in the stairwell. The first tub of white paint that I found had varnish in it. The secpnd one had lime mortar in it. And that was that.

Luckily I had some crepi left over from when I did the walls in the cupboard under the stairs, so I applied that to the wallpaper. And when I checked the job an hour or so later, the weight of the crepi had pulled the paper off the wall. In the end, I pulled the paper off the wall and put the crepi directly on the plasterboard. And if I had done that first instead of last, this job would have been finished three days ago.

I forgot to ention that Brico Depot on Saturday was having a sale of LED light bulbs – 4.2 watts at €3:99 each which is a bargain in anyone’s money. I bought all 14 that were left and this will complete the bilbs that I need for the barn with a couple left over.I tried a couple in the barn and I wasn’t half impressed.

As you know, I’m working in the bedroom and on the ground floor at the moment so I took out the 1.2 watt LED light bulbs in each room and put the extra 4.2 light bulbs in there. And the difference is phenomenal. I can actually see what I’m doing now in there at night and that makes a change.

This was something else that I should have done ages ago.

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