Tag Archives: lieneke_guus

Monday 23rd August 2010 – It seems that …

… my inolvement in Lieneke’s roof has come to an end.

All that remains to be done is the plasterboarding, followed by the pointing up of the end wall, and then the tidying up. No labouring of any description is required and so after opening up the house for Terry and Simon I was paid off (well, not actually paid off because I’m not actually being paid). And I am not displeased by this either, as you can imagine.

First thing that I did was to stack all of the wood. There are tonnes of new wood lying around here that I haven’t managed to put away over the last few months and all of that is now neatly stacked and I know how much of it that I have. That took all of the morning.

After lunch I was in the barn, finishing the tidying up of the workbench, fitted the new vice that I bought in July last year, and did some more sorting-out of stuff. I can actually move around now inside the barn and that is progress. And the stuff that I have rediscovered ….

Tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the composting toilet and get that fitted. That involves making a box to put the bin in, and building a couple of walls. So all of these demi-chevrons and cheap tongue-and-grooving will start to disappear.

High time I organised the hygene around here.

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Sunday 22nd August 2010 – You’ve no idea …

storm lightning birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… how long I was standing on the birdwatching point at the back of St Gervaisd’Auvergne, watching this storm rolling across the ridge in the distance – the one that I live just a couple of miles behind.

Nor how many photos that I took either. What I was trying to do was to take a photo of a flash of lightning, and for a while there was plenty of that but I just wasn’t quick enough. And after a while the storm drifted off the the north-east as the wind swung round from the south.

But the storm was impressive from up there and you can see in the pic the sheets of rain that were falling down

I’d been round to Terry and Liz’s to discuss business and the like. We have a lot to organise – including trying to record SEVEN radio programmes at our next recording session. It seems that my trip to Canada (have I mentioned this yet?), if it comes off, clashes with Liz and Terry going back to the UK for a week  and so we will have our work cut out.

But this morning (or what was left of it) and the early part of the afternoon I carried on with the tidying up in the barn. I’ve found tons of stuff I had forgotten all about and which is now all put in boxes, and I’ve cleaned up half my workbench. I can now get into the drawer where the power tools are, and that is real progress.

Once Lieneke’s roof is finished off (and I’ve been saying that for a while now) I can do some more and have the place looking just a little more shipshape. It’s about time, too!

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Saturday 21st August 2010 – Here’s an interesting photo.

solar water heater temperature les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe time is 17:47, the air temperature outside underneath the solar shower is 31°C, and the water in the solar heating tank, all 20 or so litres of it, is 44°C.

Today has been a right scorcher right enough and I almost scalded myself when I had a shower. Believe me, 44°C is really hot and I am ever so impressed that I have managed to heat to this extent 20 litres of water in a black plastic container with an old caravan window over the top

But that’s not all either. The automatic water heater ran for several hours and I had 44.5°C in that. And that’s 50 litres of water in an open bucket with a 12-volt heater element floating on top, heated by surplus energy from the solar panels that would otherwise be dumped. Just imagine what the temperature would have been if it had been 30 litres of water in a sealed and insulated container.

That’s going to be my next trick – making an immersion heater, and I have a 30-litre container all lined up for use. All I need now is the time.

I reckon that the water heating, in summer anyway, is making great strides, and I have plans for the winter too. They involve some of that flexible copper tubing would round the chimney of my wood-burning stove. I also have 3 solar panels and a 400-watt wind turbine in the barn and I don’t use the power from there all that much – just the lighting in the barn, the washing machine and charging up the power tools. So if I made a portable immersion heater then in winter I could take it to the barn and rig up an automatic water heating system over there. I reckon that the batteries in the barn were fully-charged on an average of one day in two throughout last winter. Probably not by much, but nevertheless it will be worth seeing what happens over there and what results I would get.

While we are on the subject, I bumped into Simon at LIDL today. He had a 12-volt water tank in his van and he took it out a while ago. He’s offered it to me so I’ll install that in the barn for now and see what happens.

I had an expensive day out shopping today and I blew a mammoth €35. And all on the usual stuff today – nothing exciting or extravagant. I don’t know where my money goes. And while I was in the Carrefour I had to give directions to this Dutch guy who was looking for a public convenience for his little girl. And it wasn’t until we’d been talking for a few minutes and he said “are you English? I think that your Dutch is excellent” that I realised that we had been talking in Dutch. Well – he might have been, and I was replying in Flemish – ik spreek een beetje Vlaams – but I’m really going to have a go at remembering some of the languages I used to be able to speak.

What got me thinking about languages too was that I had a visitor this evening – the guy off this building site who wanted to talk about solar panels. He studied in the Soviet Union round about the same time that I was driving buses there and I reckon that I can’t remember anything at all of all the Russian I used to speak.

I’ve also been tidying up here. I have some tie-wraps with screw-holes that will be ideal for a job that we are doing on Lieneke’s house. But can I hell find them and my place is just a total tip. It’s high time I exerted myself to make an effort – yet another job for when this perishing job on Lieneke’s house is finished  

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Friday 20th August 2010 – I’ve had a TV …

… on in here this evening.

Even though I keep on telling people that I don’t have one, there actually is one here in the corner. And even though I keep on telling people that I don’t watch it, I did today.

But it’s not an ordinary TV. Dave who follows this blog (are you over there or over here, mate?) will remember it because I was with him at Hexham market when I bought it.

It’s a little portable TV that works off 12-volts and what is so important about it is that it has a built-in VHS player. It cost me all of, would you believe, £15.

Now I have tons of VHS videos stretching back for almost 30 years and for the last heaven-knows how long I’ve been looking for a 12-volt player to watch them on, so this TV thingy was the answer. And when I was in Brussels back in April I brought some of my cassettes back here. Tonight I sat back and watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

roofing lean to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, the reason why I spent the evening doing just that was because once again I’m completely worn out. We have now formally finished the roof and it doesn’t half look impressive as you can see in this photo.

The part from the right of the roof light on the main roof, where the moss has been cleared off, has been stripped, extended and refitted – and the chimney has been re-pointed and sealed at the base.

pent roofing lean to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd then the lean-to, which formerly had a flat roof, now has a pent roof – we raised that up at the back and fitted new tiles. It’s been finished off today with the edging tiles that protect the woodwork from the elements.

All in all we can be well-pleased with all of the work that we have done. I have to say that I think that our stonework is magnificent, especially when you consider that we’ve never done anything like this before!

pent roofing lean to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere is some pointing that needs doing on the side wall of the house. Some of the stones are quite loose and it might be that one might fall out and drop on the roof that we have done and we don’t want that to happen. There’s some pointing that needs doing round about where the flashing is too – just above the top row of roofing tiles.

I’m not sure how we are going to do the pointing though – I’m not standing on a ladder that’s canting right over the lean’to onto the side wall of the house, so there!

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs usual there was some mix left and so I added wome water and a huge bucket-full of gravel and then tipped it into my wall. You can see how much the wall has grown by just looking at this pic and comparing it with the earlier ones.

There’s still quite a bit to do yet and it’s going to need pointing when the levels have been built back up, but it’s still impressive.

And after a shower (summer is back again) I came up here and watched a video. And why not? It’s the weekend. Shopping tomorrow, relaxing on Sunday and then what may well be the final week at Lieneke’s as we get cracking on the bathroom. That shouldn’t take long and then I will be back working properly on here again.

And about time too. I have tons of work that needs doing.

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Wednesday 18th August 2010 – First pic today …

roofing tiles stone cladding wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france… features the roof of the lean-to. Terry went and fetched some more tiles this morning and while he was away Simon and I finished up building one of the side walls.

You’ve seen the breeze-block version of this photo a couple of days ago – that’s what it looks like inside. What we have done since then is to clad the wall with stones.

It looks quite impressive and from a distance you would never ever guess that it isn’t a real, traditional stone wall. Mind you, the pointing might give the game away. I bet that you have never seen pointing this good on a traditional stone wall.

So now that all of the tiles are on, what’s needed is to put the flashing at the top against the wall and then to do the edging tiles.

stripping plasterboard bathroom lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd we would have finished that today too except that this afternoon we had an almost-continual downpour. But now that we are authorised to do some work inside the house we cracked on with that instead.

What we did was to rip off all of the old plasterboard off the wall of the bathroom. Now that we have effectively redesigned the bathroom we need to rearrange the plasterboard in there and the easiest was yo do that is to start with virgin walls.

But it was cold, wet and miserable today. I was hard-pressed to point my walls with the leavings in the mixer, but it was a shame to leave it so I wasn’t going to let it all go to waste.

And tomorrow morning I have to go round to near Menat and rescue the scaffolding. The hire period is now up and there’s a customer waiting.

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Tuesday 17th August 2010 – Tomorrow the World!

gherkin plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceDo you remember that plant that I showed you a photograph of the other day – the one that had taken over the greenhouse? It’s actually a gherkin plant and here you can see it leaving the greenhouse and setting out for Montlucon.

At the rate that it’s going, it’ll get there before any UK Council Worker or British Rail porter will, that’s for sure, and who knows where it will head for next?

I’ve been gardening again today. Or at least, this afternoon.

stone cladding breeze block wall lieneke roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe had done as much as we could on the roof today. The cement on the stone cladding on the side of the house hadn’t quite set and you can’t put too many stones on a cladded wall like this in one go, and the tiles that we had ordered for the roof hadn’t arrived.

We hadn’t had instructions from Lieneke about the inside of the lean-to either, and with Terry and Simon needing to price up some more material, we decided on a half-day on the roof.

I dug up the garlic and weeded the onion bed – that was the first thing. Strangely, only half the garlic had taken and the other half was in its single clove. The latter I replanted in one of the herb troughs to see what happens. But there’s nothing like enough garlic – I’ll need to bear that in mind.

And while weeding, I noticed the onions. Nothing like enough of them either but they are there all right.

I also tidied up all of the wood at the front of the barn – the left-over new stuff at least. I need a rainy day so that I can have the time to stack it correctly inside without having to worry about working on Lieneke’s roof. In fact I have tons of jobs to do really – let’s hope that this week will see us finish the roof.

collapsed stone wall rebuilding lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou’ll notice a couple of little changes in the lean-to too. I’ve moved a couple of sheets of iron and now the end wall is totally exposed. I’ve fitted (at the top, at least) two demi-chevrons that will guide me in forming the top of the long wall.

There was a full drum of waste in the mixer when we knocked off and it was a lovely chalky mix and so I did a pile of pointing, including that corner of the other lean-to where I lived for a while and which was getting damp.

I cleaned out the mixer with stones again. built a couple of thin walls and poured the mixture in between. I hadn’t quite sealed the wall as you can see and so some of the stuff leaked out, but it’s progress all the same.

A solar shower (the summer sort-of came back today) and that was my lot.

The automatic water-heater switched on too – and a temperature of 45.5 degrees. This is looking quite optimistic.

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Monday 16th August 2010 – We start off today …

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france… with a couple of photos that features the inside of the roof, by way of a change.

Don’t mind the loose lath that is on top of the wall just there – we will be moving that in due course. But the rest of it looks pretty impressive.

You’ll also notice the black damp-proof membrane up there. That’s to stop the snow drifting in underneath the tiles and falling inside, something that’s a real problem around here in winter.

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see that we have extended the walls by mounting breeze blocks all the way up and we’ve put chevrons on there.

You will also notice the cross-beam that we fitted to the wall of the house the other day. The chevrons are supported on that. The cross-beam goes all the way across the wall of the house and it’s a good job that there were three of us to lift it as I remember it being flaming heavy.

roofing tiles lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceFrom the outside, however, it looks even more impressive. We had quite a few tiles left over from when we did the roof of the house and so we nailed the laths to the chevrons and popped the tiles onto the roof of the lean-to.

We didn’t have quite enough as you can see if you look at the top left-hand corner, and so we’ll have to go and pick up some more tomorrow. But we aren’t ‘arf cracking on with the job and we can be proud of this.

So my day has been spent in non-stop cement mixing – load after load after load, with a slight break to go to the quarry for more sand. So I’ve mixed a ton and a half of sand since the other day. No wonder I’m exhausted.

And so when we knocked off I went round the garden, weeded the carrot patch, pulled up some carrots, beans, spinach and a courgette, and sowed some lettuce and parsnips.

After crashing out I made tea – lentil courgette and split pea curry, with carrots spinach and beans. All followed by fresh strawberries. And it was gorgeous.

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Friday 13th August 2010 – When we knocked off this evening ….

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome france… there were still two buckets full of mortar left in the cement mixer.

And so “waste not, want not”, I took it round to my house and built up some of the wall of this lean-to that I have been slowly repairing.

You can see that I’ve built up around the central beam of the roof.

But I had an idea about this. Building with stone uses a lot of cement and you always end up with a filthy mixer full of dried cement and the like so I heaved a bucketful of gravel and a bucketful of water into the mixer to clean it. The gravel will scour the drum and the water will move it round.

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceI built a very narrow wall on the outside of the wall and a very narrow wall on the inside of the wall, with a large gap in between them. And when I finished and went back to the mixer the drum was quite clean with a load of what looked like very liquid concrete swilling around in it.

I tipped that into a bucket leaving the mixer nice and clean, and took the bucket down to my lean-to and poured the concrete solution into the gap. All nice and runny and you could hear it slurping its way down the fissures in the rocks and soaking into all the dry joints. It’ll take a while to set but when it does it will have done wonders for my stone wall. I shall be cleaning out the mixer like this every night.

roofing chevrons lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs far as the house roof goes, we are making enormous progress and if things hold out we may well be finished on schedule – and won’t that be a first?

You can see in the pic that we have built up all of the walls so that they are of the right height and all of the carpentry is now on. It won’t be long before the roof is finished, and then we will need to build up the outsides of the walls with a stone facing. Once that’s complete we will need to seal the top of the roof into the wall of the house and then just a few more small jobs will finish it off.

Mind you I didn’t want to get up this morning. I had slept through the alarm and was having a very pleasant dream for a change when Terry rang me to make sure I was awake. It’s sad when you have dreams like that – you don’t ever want them to end.

But it’s the weekend and I’m having a weekend off. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll go shopping in Commentry and then for a swim at Neris. The warm weather has let me down for the last few days and I haven’t been able to have a solar shower. If I’m not careful I’ll be picked up on radar soon.

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Thursday 12th August 2010 – I shan’t be sorry …

… to see the back of this roof. The rainstorm that we were promised for today never arrived and so we were up there all day. Well, Terry and Simon were mostly. I was out for some of the morning looking for supplies. And you can’t believe that a builders’ merchant would have no 40×27 laths in stock, and not expect any more until September. I had a little bit of a hunt to track some of them down after that.

But once I returned and we carried on with our production line method of roof-building, we made enormous progress as you can see in the photo below.

roofing chevrons lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france We’ve attached chevrons to the top crossbeam that we fitted to the house wall a couple of days ago, and you can see them fitted to the other crossbeam that we embedded in the cement on the top of the wall that we built up previously.

And now it’s all looking thoroughly impressive. I reckon that another 10 working days or so might see the job completely finished. And I shan’t be sorry for a moment.

So when we knocked off this evening I had to move Caliburn, and Simon got into his van and piddled off – and so did Terry – leaving me to put the tarpaulin on all on my own. Luckily Terry remembered and came back to help, otherwise it would have been embarrassing.

Once everyone had cleared off I took my life in my hands and moved the methane digester that had been by the barn. And once I had manhandled … "PERSONhandled" – ed … it down to the compost bin that I built the other day I tipped it all in and covered it with wood ash.

That’s the end of my experiments with the methane digester for now and I’m not sorry about that either. I can sit out on my terrace now.

After that I came in and crashed out again. I’m totally whacked. I’m not as young as I was and it’s not so very encouraging.

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Wednesday 11th August 2010 – We’ve been at this roof all day.

We started off by hanging a chevron (or rather two chevrons fastened together to make one long one) off the side wall of the house to attach the roof beams to. And that would have been so much easier if the holes for the anchor bolts hadn’t been drilled so deep that I needed to hunt down my lengths of threaded rod. And it would also have been easier if we hadn’t have got the SDS drill bit stuck in the wall!

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sloping wall roof lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut once we had organised that we finished building up the wall we started yesterday and then made a start on the two others. We need to keep these two level with each other so that we can cover them up with the roofing sheets at night.

Terry was doing the bricklaying, Simon was cutting and I was labouring. And it’s hard work mixing load after load after load of lime cement and then in my spare time bagging sand (we had to go down to the quarry with the Sankey trailer to buy another load).

.

roofing sheets sloping wall roof lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut we weren’t out there for all of the afternoon – we called it a day after a while because it’s absolutely p155ing down outside. You can’t work outside in this kind of weather.

We heaved the two left-over sheets from my barn roof onto the area where we were working to keep the rain off our working space and Lieneke’s bathroom and then we all went home. I for one don’t fancy the idea of mixing cement with an electric cement mixer in the pouring rain.

Shocking, what?

But all of this work is wearing me out – so much so that when I got back here I crashed out for a bit. I need to keep my energy for tomorrow

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Tuesday 10th August 2010 – Awwwwwwww Bambi!

deer les guis virlet puy de dome franceKeen readers of my outpourings will know that I have something of an interest in the local wildlfe. There’s such a lot of it about of course, and examples thereof feature in these pages at regular intervals.

You might remember the fox that I featured on here a week or two ago, but anyway here’s a deer that I noticed down across the fields about 400 metres away as I was tidying up after finishing work this evening.

deer les guis virlet puy de dome franceI thought at first that it might be Bambi but judging by those antlers, maybe not and he would probably be quite offended at the thought. He’s maybe come to challenge Strawberry Moose
for possession of the local herd but Strawberry Moose would soon see him off.

Anyway, he’s cute (I hope that it’s a “he” anyway) and I’m glad that I have a high-quality lens on the new Nikon D5000. He certainly merits a photograph or two on my blog.

rebuilding stone wall sloping roof lieneke roofing les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn other news, we are making progress on the roof of this lean-to.

The front part of the wall has all been built up level, inside and outside, and we’ve put the horizontal wooden beam in position, embedding it into the cement and packing behind it with stones and cement.

The wooden beam is important because first of all it gives us a nice straight level and secondly, we’ll be fixing chevrons and laths to it in the long run so it needs to be good.

kwikstage scaffolding roofing lieneke sloping roof les guis virlet puy de dome france We have also been making good progress with the inner lining of the far wall. We are lining it in breeze blocks, and you can see the slope that we are starting to put into it. When the breeze blocks are all in place we’ll be putting a cladding of stones on the outside.

Terry and Simon have been doing the masonry work and I’ve been spending most of the day mixing the cement and doing all of the fetching and carrying.

It’s wearing me out but it’s clearly doing me some good. It’s been a long time since I felt as exhausted and I’m going to bed just now before I fall …..

ZZZZZZZZZZ

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Monday 9th August 2010 – As you know by now …

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… my favourite photography spot is at the birdwatching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne where there is one of the most marvellous views in the whole of France.

And just as I crested the rise the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right onto the radio mast on the summit of the Puy de Dome.

It was well-worth a quick stop to take a photo even though, like most photos, it just cannot do justice to the view that we had. Nevertheless I reckon that it has come out rather well and I’m quite happy with that.

I say “we” because I was with Marianne the local journalist on our way down to Liz and Terry’s. They had very kindly invited a few of us round this evening for a drink and a chat. And it’s always nice to be with friends.

lieneke new roofing edge tiles woodwork les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, I’d been with Terry – and Simon too – for most of the day as we have restarted work on this roof of Lieneke’s.

Before I tell you anything at all about what we’ve been doing, let me first post a photo of what we’ve actually done so far. Here i this photo you can see that we’ve finished off the main roof. It’s all properly edged and trimmed and you can see the new woodwork that we’ve fitted to support the slates.

building up sloping stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut back on the new task today, what we need to do is to build up this edge to a level and then slope the sides upwards to reach the roof.

There was a flat roof here but a flat roof is no good around here, as a couple of modern builders will find out this winter. We have tons of snow and it lies on a flat roof without falling off, gradually melting and as the melt water is locked in by the snow on top the only way for the water to go is downwards. It percolates through the roof and the joints and then drops into the room below. A sloping roof is an essential – and a good slope at that. 40° is not excessive.

building up stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe built the scaffolding up at the end and at the sides and ripped off the old roof Once that had been done Terry built a brick pillar at the far edge to make a level with the half of the wall nearest the camera and with the stone pillar that was halfway along the wall

While Terry was shopping for breeze blocks Simon and I filled in the old window space with stones and I may say that we did an excellent job of that And when Terry returned I carried on mixing while Terry and Simon built up the rest of the wall

While I was clearing up, I had a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the second time that that has happened The first occasion was ages ago and two nice young women; today was some guy with a beard I don’t have an issue with them as long as they don’t harass me If they believe in what they are doing and don’t try to proselytise then that’s fine by me. At least it keeps them off the streets.

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Sunday 8th August 2010 – It was Sunday today.

And there was a vintage vehicle exhibition and brocante at St Maurice pres Pionsat as well.

And so I stayed at home.

Mind you it was … errrr …. 11:30 when I woke up and so I’d missed a good deal of the day. And then with working on my web site until 14:00 I missed a good deal more. But I went into Pionsat to the baker’s – and it was shut! It seems that last Sunday was a one-off seeing as how it ought to have been Pionsat’s brocante last week. But as I was quietly GRRRRRing to myself, out of the door came the boulangere, and so she sold me what I needed. It must have been my lucky day!

Back at the ranch, seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere I lit a huge bonfire and burnt a pile of stuff that has been lingering around here, and I also burnt the dried weeds that I had pulled up when I was working with Lieneke. In fact one of the reasons why I’m still awake now is that the fire is merrily burning away and I can’t go to bed leaving it unattended. But make the most of the sunny day – it won’t last, this weather.

modular home made composting bin les guis virlet puy de dome franceI also installed the compost bin properly in its proper place this afternoon after the temporary installation last night and added the compost from the collapsed plastic composting bin. At the moment it’s four sections high and the three that are currently unused are in shot. I’ll have to think of a place to put them.

You can also see the chassis for the Citroen 2CV that formed the basis of the Lomax kit car I once owned. There’s also a solar garden light and one of the solar cookers for the composting toilet. The others have now been incorporated into the compost and given a liberal dosing of potash.

Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the essential ingredients for any fertiliser. There are plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus in the contents of a composting toilet and wood-ash is a good source of potassium. So all the essential ingredients for my garden are right to hand. Now all I need to do is to work out how I can move the methane digester and add the contents of that to the compost. I reckon that I ought to neutralise its contents with plenty of wood ash and sawdust first though but that will just add to the weight.

Nevertheless, things are slowly moving around here. The composting bin was another thing that I’ve been meaning to do for ages and I’m glad it’s in position now.

I was so engrossed that it was 18:30 when I knocked off. And on a Sunday too! A nice hot 41°C shower rounded the day off quite nicely. Tomorrow I imagine that we will be back on that blasted roof.

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Wednesday 4th August 2010 – We’ve finished this roof!

roofing guus lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt looks quite impressive from down here, and so indeed it ought to because although we started at about 09:00 this morning it was 19:00 when we finished!

The first bits were easy. Fitting the broken tiles to the edge of the roof and then trimming down with the angle grinder, and then fitting the demi-chevron that will support the edge tiles. No problem there.

The ridge tiles were another matter. We only had three and we needed six. There were two extra but one had a large lump missing and the other one had a hole in the top.

So we did the tour of builders’ merchants and considering that this is the most common tile in the whole area and almost every house has them, not a single builders’ merchant had any, or could tell us where to go for them.

But that gave me an idea and so I said to Terry “to the woods!”. Not too far away from where I live is a ruined building that had fallen down years ago and was totally abandoned. And taking our lives into our hands amongst decaying walls and fallen trees we managed to rescue three ridge tiles. I’ve seen better ridge tiles, I have to say, but what can you do?

Nailing them in was an issue as the central beam is … errr … rather thin but the other neighbour managed to find a 10-inch nail and we made do with a couple of transverse battens and some very long screws for the rest.

The pointing was uncomfortable but we managed it, but the real fun was reserved for the crown piece and the first of the edging pieces. I shudder to think how long we were messing around trying to get them to fit and I reckon that of the game of “twister” – the one where there is a couple of you on a mat trying to move your hands and feet into different positions – ever became an Olympic sport then Terry and I would win the gold medal judging by some of the contortions that we were doing. At one stage there were both of us lying on the roof nowhere near the ladders with Terry holding the crown piece in position with a screw in the screw hole and me swinging a hammer blind over my head and his head to hit that screw somewhere down the side of the roof where neither of us could see it.

But when that was done the rest was fairly easy. We reckoned that at about 17:00 we could knock off but seeing as how we weren’t far away then we may as well stay and cement everything in and have a day off tomorrow.

Yes, a day off tomorrow, and I’m having a lie-in. So you just watch some b@$t@rd spoil it by ringing me at 08:00!

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Tuesday 3rd August 2010 – We cracked on with this roof …

fitting slates guus lieneke roof les guis virlet puy de dome france… today.

First thing that we did was to fit all of the laths, and it was far easier doing that this morning that it was trying to do it last night when all of the cement was still wet.

Once the laths were on we had to fit the voltige in between them. This is very thin wood and it is designed to stop snow and the like penetrating underneath the slates. Snow of course is a real issue round here in winter. Personally, I wouldn’t have gone for the voltige. Under my slates, as keen readers of my outpourings will know, I have sheets of waterproof plywood and you simply nail the laths on top. It’s much easier but then again this isn’t my roof. And of course we did my roof from scratch – here  we are trying to match it to whatever is there already – and has been there for probably 100 years – but that’s not an easy job.

Once the laths were on we refitted the tiles. And as we have extended the roof we didn’t have enough of course and this led to Yours Truly grubbing around in the undergrowth unearthing another 20 or so.

Tomorrow we need to fit the half-tiles to the edge and trim where necessary with the angle grinder, then a demi-chevron to support the edging tiles, then fix the edging tiles, then cement them in place, then fix the ridge tiles and finally fix the crown. Once all of that is done the rest of the chimney needs re-pointing and that will be that. It will then be time for phase two.

roof collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter Terry had gone home I carried on with the flooring in my lean-to. There was a strip of about 140mm that needed doing and luckily I had some lengths of 70mm left over from a previous project and so I used them.

You can see fairly well the hole in the floor. There will be a hatch there that will open upwards, with a set of stairs going downstairs. That’s much more civilised than having to shin up the fence and climb in via the window. It’ll look pretty good in here once I can sort out a tarpaulin to go over it where there is no roof as yet.

But if we finish the roof on Lieneke’s house pretty quickly and Simon comes to give us a hand with phase II then it won’t be much longer until I can crack on in here on a permanent basis.

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