Tag Archives: plasterboard

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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Thursday 18th December 2014 – 18:00 …

… is the time that I knock off work in the winter. But today, even though I heard the reminder go off, I carried on working for another good half hour at least.

This was because I was enjoying myself today, just for a change.

Having finished what I wanted to do for now in the bar, and so I restarted work downstairs on the first floor (I’m living in the attic for the moment, which I have converted into a little studio, in case you were wondering).

plasterboard stairwell les guis virlet puy de dome franceFirst job was to finish off the plasterboarding on the upper part of the stairway up to the attic. There were three pieces that needed to be fitted, and two of them needed some intricate cutting. As well as the cutting, I needed to fit some more studding on the walls to which the plasterboard would be nailed. As a result, that took all morning to do all of that.

What didn’t help was that I had the wood for the studding propped up outside the house. And not only is it soaking wet right through, I couldn’t bring it into the house, with the scaffolding obstructing the front door. As a result I had to cut it up outside – just as well that it’s stopped raining now (we had 21mm of rain through the night, incidentally).

new floor landing first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon, I started to rip up the old flooring on the first floor landing, and I’ve begun to replace it – at least the first layer. There are going to be two layers of flooring on the first floor because I decided that I wanted some new, clean wood on the floor in the bedroom, so I’m going to nailit over what is already there.

I’ve solved the problem of how I’m going to bring things up to the first floor. It can’t come up the stairs as the turns are too tight, so the floor on the landing will be hinged so that it can be lifted up and objects pulled up through the hatch in the floor. It works fine in the barn, so why not here?

With some good music belting out of the MP3 player too – particularly the world’s second-best ever live album – this one is of course the best by a country mile, it’s hardly surprising that I kept on working until I came to a piece of flooring that needs to be cut in a complicated manner, which I’ll do tomorrow when I’m not tired.

It’s about time that I had a good day working on something that I enjoy doing.

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Thursday 20th February 2014 – I THOUGHT FOR A MINUTE THIS MORNING …

… that we were going to have a nice day. And so while I was in the verandah making coffee I hung the washing outside to dry in the wind (it’s still not dry since Monday evening).

However … you’ve guessed it. That was the Kiss Of Death and within 15 minutes it was teeming down with rain again, just like always.

So where did I get up to today?

All of the plasterboard is on the outer wall, and I’ve also fitted it at the head of the stairs. That meant cutting and fitting a set of counter-battens of course, as well as putting a second layer of that space-blanket insulation on the outer wall. This house will be the best-insulated in the whole of the world – and quite right too. No money ever spent on insulation is wasted, as I have said before. And that’s even more relevant as fuel bills rocket up to the roof.

Once that was out of the way, I trimmed off the floor in the attic so that it’s now flush with the beam that I fitted in 2009 (and I can’t think why I didn’t do that years ago) and I’ve faced off the beam with some of the pine shelving that I’ve been using to make the risers for the staircase. And in fact it looks quite neat.

I wish that I could say the same about the plasterboarding though. It’s a total mess and there are at least two pieces that need to be taken off to find out what on earth is going on underneath them. Both of them 10mm; both of them screwed to the same counter-batten – so why is the top one about 5mm proud of the bottom one?

Apart from seeing loads of places where I really should have done so much better with these stairs, I won’t ever build another staircase on outiggers and cantilevers like this one. Itwas by far and away the quickest way to build it when I was in a desperate hurry to move into this room back in late autumn 2009, but fitting the insulation, the counter-battens and the plasterboard has been an absolute nightmare. If I had realised that it was going to be as difficult as this, I would have ripped out the staircase last week, plasterboarded the walls in one go (probably have taken me an hour) and done the stairs another way.

But still, you live and learn.

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Wednesday 19th February 2014 – I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD SHOW YOU …

new staircase attic les guis virlet puy de dome france … a photo of the staircase as far as I have got today, because for the next couple of weeks this is as far as I am going.

There are 8 stairs in position as you can see – that is, 8 treads and 7 risers, and all are properly battened. For the first time in this house, it’s felt as if the stairs really are secure and solid.

I had to move the light that illuminates the stairs down to the ground floor, and then I had to carry out another major task. If you look to the right you’ll see where the plasterboard stops a huge beam bolted to the side wall of the house. I fitted that in 2009 and you’ll notice that the bolt heads are proud of the beam. They need to be set in flush and the easiest way is to use a hole cutter over the heads, make a recess, and then tighten up the bolts further. But do I have a heck as like hole cutter that fits over the bolt head that doesn’t have a spindle-centring drill? So after much ado about nothing, I had to unbolt the nuts, drill pilot holes all round, chisel out a recess, refit the nuts and then grind off the surplus lengths with the angle grinder.

No wonder it took me ages.

But anyway, Now I have one of the plasterboard pieces on the wall to the right, and I can do the rest tomorrow and see how far I can reach.

Terry rang me up and wanted me to contact Lieneke. Much to my surprise, she’s here right now and so we had quite a chat to catch up on what we missed. And then later on I made one of my legendary lentil-and-green-pepper curries and that will see me through to the weekend. No point in working if I don’t have to.

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Wednesday 5th February 2014 – IT TOOK ME LONGER …

… than I was expecting to finish off this wiring today. But the positive side of all of this is that it’s all done properly now. And much of it is now correctly sheathed and tacked into place, and hidden behind insulation. Under normal circumstances it won’t need doing again.

But I’m surprised that I did anything at all today. In the night I was being chased around by a bull and a herd of cows and I dashed into a house for safety. But Brain of Britain forgot to close the door, didn’t he, and the bull came in behind me, trapping me in the house. I don’t get on too well with big animals and this was definitely one of “those” moments. But I don’t recall having this type of dream before. What was that all about?

But back to current (well, we are discussing electricity) issues, we now have a four-gang light switch properly installed on the first floor landing. There are the two light switches for each of the flights of stairs, a third that will be for a light on the landing, and a fourth for the light in the cupboard at the back of the stairs.

But we did have an accident today. The 12-volt LED light on the flight of stairs up to the first floor keeps on falling out of the blub holder (these light bulbs are heavier than you might think) and today it finally smashed. But only the outer cover, the internal works are fine. And it’s much lighter now of course and the beam is much more spread out. Yes, after all of this, it still works.

In the middle of all of this, Cécile rang up for a chat and was on the phone for 45 minutes. It’s nice to chat to friends of course, but they always ring up when I’m in the middle of doing something, never when I’m sitting down with a coffee.

This afternoon I’ve padded out the stud wall at the head of the stairs up here with insulation and cut and shaped three pieces of plasterboard. I fitted the light switch for the light at the head of the stairs and I was in the process of filling the joins when I lost the light. Working long after my knocking-off time.

Tomorrow I’ll finish the filling and then I can start to fit the ceiling out here.

Isn’t that progress?

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Monday 3rd February 2014 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… we weren’t playing today because when the alarm woke me this morning, all I could hear was the howling wind outside. This morning was amazing, with another shed-load of wind and my clothes, the ones that I washed three weeks ago, they are finally dry.

And I also had the best night’s sleep for absolutely ages, especially as how I crashed out at 22:30 before I’d even put yesterday’s blog on line.

And the dream too. I was with a lady of my acquaintance and we were in Nantwich, going around all of the places that we knew in our adolescence and looking at how they had changed. The “Rifleman” pub, for example, all boarded up and overgrown with weeds and the like. But the little pub over the road, in a converted terraced house, that was still open and we went in there for a drink as my companion wanted to use “the facilities” and she had issues about using them without being a customer. I did explain that we could pay 5p in a public convenience and that would work out far better than buying a round in a pub but she was unmoved.

We noticed after that, that it was 18:00 and we had to be in Chester later that evening. It was a long walk of 20-odd miles (I did in fact walk it on several occasions through the night when my then-girlfriend Liz was at college there in the 1970s and I didn’t have a car) and I had to push my friend in a wheelchair. I therefore made a contingency plan by having her look at bed-and-breakfasts and guesthouses at Tarporley, at the halfway point, although I wasn’t convinced that we would be there by 21:00 either.

As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … if only my real life was half as exciting as my dreams.

So after breakfast, we had a little pause for an hour or so while I made up a charging cable. As you know, with the issues about Caliburn’s battery, I don’t actually have a way of charging up a van battery from the solar panels, which is probably the silliest thing imaginable seeing as how I have about 1500 watts-worth of solar panels all told. I therefore made up a lead of 6mm cable with a North American plug on one end and a pair of crocodile clips on the other. Once I’d made that, I put Caliburn’s old battery on charge and I’ll keep doing that every 15 days or so depending on the weather. If I can keep it reasonably well topped up, it’ll do for emergencies.

Once that was out of the way, I attacked the plasterboarding in the stairwell on the wall that is on the outside of my little room here. And by the time that I knocked off, that was all finished, even down to putting a couple more battens on the wall to support the plasterboard where there will be a join. We are indeed making progress.

But the weather was really gorgeous today too. Beautiful blue skies all day and a total of 145 amps of surplus solar energy in the water tank that took the temperature up to 56°C. The absence of winter is rather worrying.

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Thursday 30th January 2014 – ANYONE WHO HASN’T COME …

… here for a few months won’t recognise this house now, that’s for sure.

I had another late start but I made up for that by curtailing my lunch break so I didn’t miss too much time. And I also found the tiny music player that takes micro-SD cards so I had music while I work too.

I put my back into it too and by the time I finished I had fitted the shelves, fitted all of the plasterboard on the outer wall, and made a start on filling the joints. I wanted to have all of the joints filled by the end of the day but that didn’t happen unfortunately. Nevertheless I’m pleased with the progress that I made.

That wasn’t all of it either. When I finished working at 18:00 I went out and emptied Caliburn and I was still there at 18:20, with the daylight that was left. The days are definitely getting longer.

And why empty Caliburn?

Liz has a few things to do in clermont tomorrow and needs a little help. If we go in Caliburn we can go to the Brico Depot at Lempes and stock up on the insulation and buy the tongue-and-grooving that I need, as well as some light blue emulsion.

Yes, I’m cracking on.

-4

Wednesday 29th January 2014 – I’VE STARTED …

… to put the second piece of plasterboard onto the wall today, but it’s probably going to have to come off again, which is a pain. I was doing it in the dark and, unfortunately, it doesn’t look as if it’s on correctly.

Ahhh well.

But given that, you might be wondering what on earth I’ve been doing all day. The answer to that is that the day wasn’t all that I had hoped it to be.

This new mobile ‘phone isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Here 8 was, complaining about the 3-day battery life on the ancient Nokia. On the brand-new Samsung, it’s … errrr … 38 hours. I thought that it didn’t sound right when I first let it run down and so I timed it after that, and here we are.

The alarm function isn’t up to much either. The cock-crow is too strident and so I’ve been turning it off instead of letting it snooze me slowly awake. That might explain why my morning didn’t occur until … errr … 09:20 – almost two hours late.

But then I filled in the sheet of plasterboard I fitted yesterday – all of the screwholes and the edges and the like. After that, I had to cut the two shelves that I’ll be fitting. There’s a lot of work to cut them too and that took a while. Luckily with the reasonable weather that we had, I didn’t feel inhibited about using the mains circular saw to do some of that.

Anyway, the shelves are cut and now varnished, and they can be screwed in place tomorrow.

The insulation and counter-battening comes up about 8mm short of the upright beams that I fitted in 2009. I was trying to find some 10mm insulation to make up the gap but no luck there, so I’ve been today adding another layer of this space-blanket insulation. That will go hard-up to the plasterboard on the outside wall of the stairwell. As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … no money spent on insulation is ever wasted.

The final job was to insulate the false ceiling at the top of the stairs. I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago and I wonder how much heat from out of my little attic room has been wasted out of there.

And then, I started to cut and shape the second piece of plasterboard.

So you see that I’ve not been idle at all today, even though there might not be a lot to show for it yet.

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Tuesday 28th January 2014 – I’VE PUT THE FIRST …

… piece of plaster board on the wall today. This is progress indeed.

Mind you,it took me long enough.

I had to go to the bank this morning braving the flurries of snow – they wanted some information off me – and then round to Bill’s house. It’s been a year since Bill left us and his estate needs to be finalised. Consequently it was the final call for people to buy anything that remains, before the house clearance people come.

Marianne’s son Pascal wanted a few things and there was some tidying up still to be done, so I helped Marianne do that and then gave Pascal a hand, and then took his stuff to a garage that he’s using to store stuff until he moves to his new apartment.

That took all of the morning but I wasn’t finished yet. When I was strapping something onto the roof I noticed that one of the brackets holding the solar panel to the underneath of the roofrack had sheared off. That needed fixing before I went too far and so there I was making a new bracket.

After lunch I fitted the two counter-battens and replaced one of the rails that I’ll be using to support a shelf. It seems that Brain of Britain has measured up for a 27mm rail but fitted a 40mm rail instead? No wonder it didn’t look level.

So having done that, I had to free all of the plasterboard from the stuff that had accumulated on top of it over the last year or so. And then, I could start on the plasterboarding.

And for tea tonight, I made a lentil and mushroom curry. There’s enough forthree more days which is just as well, because it was delicious.

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Friday 19th July 2013 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day today.

And although it might not look at first glance that I’ve done much, first thing that I did was to deal with a huge amount of correspondence.

I’ve done most of it (still a few bits and pieces left), especially the important stuff, and I feel rather better about it now.

Amongst the piles of mail was one from Trixi. The house that she was buying has … errr … fallen through and so now she’s hot-foot after another one. That’s in the same neck of the woods as where Nina lives and they’ll get on like a house on fire.

This project of a woodburning stove with back boiler, and solar tubes for hot water in the summer, exactly like what I’ll be doing here, is still on though and so my usual late-autumn voyage to the UK might have a purpose just for a change.

It was nice to see her last year when I was in the UK – doesn’t Facebook have a lot to answer for?

Apart from the post, I finished up tidying up in the bedroom.

All of the plasterboard is now flat on the floor where it’s supposed to be, the rest of the floor is comparatively empty, and I have also fitted a work bench.

It even has power – mains AND 12 volt. Luxury indeed! You won’t recognise it in there.

That took me until 19:20 – yes, POETS DAY indeed – but I would have finished earlier except that I had a mid-afternoon interruption.

It seems that there’s a project to photograph everyone in the village (all 280 of us) and they wanted to know when it might be convenient. So tomorrow at 11:00 it is. I shall have to smarten myself up.

In other news, the city of Detroit has gone bust. That’ll teach the Septics to laugh when an EU country goes bust.

But, interestingly, when an EU country goes bust, the other members rally round to help the country out. I haven’t seen a single offer of assistance from any other American city for Detroit. Serve them right.

derelict run-down detroit october octobre 2010But Detroit is a depressing place.

In the 1950s it had almost 2,000,000 people. Now it’s down to just 660,00 and consequently huge areas of the city are abandoned, derelict and decaying.

I was there in early October 2010 on my way to the Trans-Labrador Highway and the place looked appalling.

They have serious trouble in that city, that’s for sure, with the dereliction, decay, murder and violent crime, and having no money to pay for support isn’t going to help them.

I’ve seen some poor neighbourhoods on my travels but Detroit beats them all.

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Thursday 18th July 2013 – MYSTERY SOLVED

It wasn’t the old abandoned house that fell down the other night. I managed to have a wander around there to see, and although I walked past it twice without seeing it, because it was so covered in ivy and weeds and so on, it’s still there, or, rather, what’s left of it is,

But I know what it was that made that noise.

I managed to make my way down to the compost bin today (high time I emptied the composting toilet – it certainly needed it) and I’ll tell you what – a cordless Ryobi Plus One hedge trimmer makes a magnificent strimmer for dealing with tall grass and weeds and the like – it’s a long time since I’ve been as impressed as this.

But back to the plot

There are piles of dead wood and twigs and branches covering the bottom end of my garden and there, in the next field where Lieneke had a huge old tree of some description, well she doesn’t have it now.

There’s about two metres of stump and then there’s absolute carnage. I’m not surprised that it heaved me out of bed.

shower room false wall plasterboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the shower room, well, it’s all finished as far as I can go until I buy the tiles.

And it was finished at lunchtime too (mind you, it was 14:45 when I stopped).

The good news is that the sink is not 50cms at all but just 43cms. That means that I can have a 45cm worktop instead of a 52cm one and that will give me much more room.

I have to admit that, in all honesty, my shower room is not going to be the place to be for anyone suffering from claustrophobia.

But there will be plenty of shelving and even a very small 20cm deep linen cupboard.

But seeing as I had finished by 14:45, how come I didn’t knock off until 19:45 then?

The answer to all of that is that, as I explained just now, I fought my way down to the compost bin, and that wasn’t the work of 5 minutes either as you can imagine.

And once I had finished attacking the vegetation, I emptied, cleaned and recharged the composting toilet. And it needed it too, as I have said.

After that, changing the habits of a lifetime, I attacked the the room which will be the bedroom and which I’ve been using as a workroom.

A pile of wood went straight out of the window for a start, and then I started to sweep up and tidy up. 3 large bin bags of rubbish and a bin full of sawdust for the toilet, and it’s not finished yet.

But it’s amazing the space that you can make if you put your mind to it.

I’m going to have a serious go tomorrow and see if I can’t make enough space to lie flat all of the sheets of plasterboard instead of having them propped up against a wall bowing away to themselves alarmingly.

They ought to be lain flat but I’ve never really had the space to do it.

Tons of tools recovered, as well as tons of nails and screws, and I bet that there will be others recovered tomorrow. But I’m not going to do too much – I have a pile of correspondence to deal with and some of that is urgent.

I felt like cooking tonight too, and ended up with a gorgeous meal – potatoes, carrots, cauliflower in a cheese sauce and a veggie burger. Absolutely marvellous.

Went down a treat with the ice cream sorbet that I bought for myself as a treat for finishing the shower room.

And we’ve had a storm tonight. First rain since July the … errr … 2nd? And we needed it too as the water situation was getting desperate.

I’m glad that I cleaned out the filters the other day.

-5

Wednesday 17th July 2013 – WELL YOU MISSED …

… all of the excitement last night, that’s for sure.

I didn’t though.

At about 03:30 I was awoken by the most almighty crash. My first thought was that, after singing the praises of my stone wall to Helena last night, that the lean-to that I rebuilt last year had collapsed. It was definitely that kind of noise.

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit I went for a good walk around my property, taking a torch with me. and there’s nothing missing or damaged that I can see. So after that I went to bed, even though it was impossible to sleep.

This morning though, the old abandoned house stuck in the abandoned jungle plot next to the spring doesn’t seem to be there.

I can’t get to it to check, but the last time that I looked, back in January if I remember, it was certainly on its last legs, and so that may as well be that.

The proprietors are Parisians and they’ve been trying to sell it for years. I made the odd enquiry about it, but they want to recoup the money that they paid for it back in the 1960s, even though they haven’t been there to visit it for 30 years.

In that time, house prices here have collapsed, and now it looks as if the house has too.

false wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was a little optimistic about my plans to finish the shower room today.

I’ve finished the false wall by the shower, along with a slight amendment to detail, and fitted the sheet of plasterboard.

I’ve also fitted the rails around the wall from which the false ceiling (yes, tongue and grooving, in case you were wondering – which I’m sure that you aren’t) will be fitted.

From then on, though, I was busy making the framework for the false wall by the composting toilet.

And I’m not at all sure where the time goes because I haven’t finished cutting the joints, never mind assembling it, and it was 19:40. I dunno where the time goes, though.

I haven’t stopped working today and yet I didn’t seem to accomplish much. It’s a mystery.

Too tired to carry on, I had an early night (last week I would have said that 19:40 was a flaming late night – how times have changed over a week) and came up here.

For the radio programmes I wrote just over 1500 words on collecting mushrooms and almost 2800 on salient points to remember in the different types of relationships in French family life.

That took me from about 09:00 to 12:30 and from 19:45 until 21:00.

Then I finished for tea, and that is that until tomorrow…

.

 

-7

Tuesday 16th July 2013 – EVEN MORE WHACKED!

And that’s hardly surprising either.

Despite yesterday’s Herculean efforts I was wide-awake and up and about long before the alarm went off and after breakfast I finished all of the notes for the rock music programme for the forthcoming month;

In the shower room quite early too, and I discovered to my dismay that I hadn’t fitted the bracing on the wall at the head of the stairs. That needed doing before I could fit the plasterboard.

But that was all done, the cables re-routed and the plasterboard fitted, and all before lunch too – mind you it was 15:00 when I stopped for I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way of doing what I need to do;

Into Pionsat to buy some bread and there in the Intermarche was Rick the Trailer Guy. Seeing as it’s harvest time I greeted him with a “hey, Rick” but, being Dutch, it went clean over his head.

Keen readers of this rubbish will remember back in August last year that Rick’s cello was blown away in a freak gust of wind and badly damaged, but he has it back now, “Playing even better”, so he says and I’m glad about that.

It was a real tragedy.

shower room stud wall plasterboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceJust half an hour for lunch and then I attacked the next stage of the shower room – the false wall.

And in a fit of reckless extravagence that’s installed now. It just needs one more horizontal brace fitting ad then the shower side can be cladded with a sheet of plasterboard.

All that then remains is the false wall for the composting toilet and that, dear reader, will be that.

The plasterboard around the windows is not all that important – it doesn’t need to be fitted in order to be measured up for tiles.

If I can finish the second false wall, then i’ll be two days ahead of my schedule, which is impressive enough.

And so it ought to be too because if you think that 20:35 was late for knocking off last night, this evening we finished work at 20:50, which has to be something of a record, I reckon.

But I’m too tired to cook and I’m too tired to eat. I’m going to bed and I’ll sleep for a week I reckon..

-3

Monday 15th July 2013 – I’M WHACKED!

And it’s hardly surprising.

If you think that 19:40 and 19:45 is late to knock off, how about 20:35? And I was having so much fun that I would have carried on too if I hadn’t been so tired.

This morning first thing I uploaded another pile of Nova Scotia pages and I’ve now arrived at Halifax.

The Halifax pages have been on line for quite a while, and so the next step is to go to Truro and then the Stellarton/Port Glasgow conurbation.

Once those pages were up and running I dashed off a quick 2002 words (in under two hours – I was on form) for the additional notes for the Radio Anglais programmes that we record for Radio Arverne

If that wasn’t enough, I sorted out the music and wrote part of the script for the Radio Tartasse rock programmes that we do. Yes, everyone is having their money’s worth.from me today.

In the shower room, I’m ahead of myself and doesn’t that make a pleasant change for once?

Just the plasterboard on the wall at the head of the stairs and around the window to fix now – all the rest is installed and the wiring is exactly where I want it, which also makes a change.

The gaps between the window and the wall on both the outside and the inside are now sealed too and that Ryobi Plus One mastic gun is an impressive piece of kit, that’s for sure.

I must buy myself one of those without any doubt.

base shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut where I am ahead of myself is that the shower tray is installed and fitted.

With two layers of flooring, I cut out a square in the top layer with the circular saw (and that took ages to get the correct shape – in places I had to use the drill and chisel) and then I had to drill a big hole in the second layer of floor to pass the drain through.

I didn’t have a hole saw big enough for that and so I cut four smaller holes in a cloverleaf pattern and with the jigsaw cut out the bit in the middle.

And then I lined the hole with the plumbers mastic that Terry gave me, dropped the shower tray in, and then sealed it off all round. It really looks impressive – seeing a shower tray in the shower room.

Whatever next?

I had a good chat with Rachel and with Cécile on skype this evening and I won’t be doing much more as I’m whacked.

Tomorrow I’ll be checking on the sealing around the shower base, fitting the missing bits of plasterboard, and then starting to build the false wall around the shower base.

When that’s in, I can measure up for the tiles.

-6

Saturday 13th July 2013 – THE BEST DAY …

… of the year so far.

And for a variety of reasons. Not least of which was the fact that I spent it in convivial company.

Up before the alarm clock, just by way of a change, I was washed, dressed and breakfasted and I’d done some more work on my web pages by the time 09:00 came round.

By 10:00 I had unloaded all the wood off Caliburn’s roof rack and I was on my way to the shops at St Eloy-les-Mines.

Although I didn’t spend anything more than usual, I called in at Cheze and bought some glue for the plasterboard so that I can fit that around the window, and also four tubes of sealant to seal the gap between the window and the wall.

dylan strawberry moose liz terry messenger sauret besserve puy de dome franceFrom St Eloy-les-Mines I round to Liz and Terry’s. Kate, Darren and the kids had arrived for a holiday and I’d been invited for lunch.

It gave me an opportunity to catch up with Strawberry Moose who had come down here for his holidays a few days ago.

I found him having a marvellous time playing on the trampoline and the slide with Dylan.

robyn strawberry moose liz terry messenger sauret besserve puy de dome franceThey very kindly asked me if I wanted to stay for tea and that was really nice. Then afterwards we sat on the terrace at the back.

That gave Strawberry Moose the opportunity to have a cuddle with Robyn, although I’m not quite sure who was cuddling who.

Terry also very kindly gave and lent me a few things to help me progress in the bathroom, not the least being the Ryobi Plus One mastic gun.

But he also gave me a present, which was really nice. Someone was selling some Ryobi Plus One hedge trimmers with lithium battery and charger, for less than the price of the battery and charger alone.

Consequently he bought two, and one of them was for me. I’m most impressed – thanks very much.

As the day faded out into the night, we watched the stars come out. There are thousands of them in the sky here – more than you’ll ever see at most places and that was one of the things that attracted me to the Auvergne.

All in all, it was a very civilised day.

But I was not so pleased when I returned home. It seems that someone has forced the door on my letter box.

Not sure if there’s anything missing though – I’ll need to talk to the Postie about that, but I’ll have to fetch the coppers in because you never know what it was that they might have been after

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