Tag Archives: eric hall

Saturday 18th July 2009 – TERRY AND LIZ HAVE THIS WHACKING GREAT BARN …

… and it’s home to a couple of owls. Whenever you open the barn door first thing in the morning they fly out of the air vent. And after a couple of days trying, I finally managed to snap one as it fled.

You’ve no idea just how impressive it is to see them take to the air.

Terry came up in his own car this morning as he wanted to leave at lunchtime. Unfortunately the days when you were allowed to chain your workforce to the workplace are long gone and so I had little say in the matter.

Whatever happened to the days when employees were happy to work 24 hours per day seven days per week with just a crust of bread to keep them going? A sign of the times, I’m afraid.

But we managed to do all of the concreting and cementing none the less and that was a good sign.

An even better sign was that the batteries and the rainwater held out. We used 5 bags of cement, about 120 litres of gravel and about half the sand, which shows you how much we saved by mixing the concrete ourselves, and we even repaired the chimney.

After Terry went I had a pause for a couple of hours and then painted all of the old woodwork on the roof and then started to tidy up the barn.

I’m feeling a bit homesick so I’m staying here tonight even though I don’t have any electricity to speak of as we took down the wind turbine and the solar panels on the house and I forgot about that. I’d better hurry up and finish my posting before the battery on my laptop goes flat and I run out of

-2

Friday 17th July 2009 – THERE WAS THIS REALLY IMPRESSIVE VIEW …

… of the Puy de Dome as a low cloud sailed quietly past. The Puy is actually 1465 metres so that gives you an indication of how low the cloud was, which also gives you an indication of the weather today.

We woke up at about 07:30 but the weather was far too bad to go out and go a-roofing. By 10:00 it had stopped raining so we set off to Pontaumur to buy the concrete. But despite taking our money they had no concrete in stock so I renegotiated the deal for some money back and 10 sacks of cement.

Terry and I then dragged the old Sankey trailer out from underneath the undergrowth and set off to the nearby quarry for half a ton of sand. The sand cost us 18 Euros and luckily there was about half a ton of gravel still in the trailer from a project from 2003 when I was taken ill and so for a sum much less than the 14 bags of concrete we have enough cement, sand and gravel for about 5 times as much. And it won’t be wasted either.

But that was as far as we got, for the driving rain came back. With the wet, the slippery conditions and the possibility of lightning we decided to call it a day and have the afternoon off. A sensible precaution, methinks.

The weather forecast this weekend is for “better weather”. It would have to be, as it couldn’t get very much worse.

-4

Thursday 16th July 2009 – I TELL YOU WHAT ….

…. I’m ever so impressed with my electrical set-up.

We had four bags of concrete mix today and a 375-watt cement mixer. And it mixed all of the concrete using the power off the batteries in the barn. Admittedly there was bright sunlight pushing up the amps but nevertheless it was impressive. Just as impressive was that all of the concrete was mixed using rainwater out of the water butts.

But it was hard work today. The heat was unbearable. The morning was bad enough as Terry was painting and I was shuttering in between the rafters and infilling with stones. In the afternoon it was even worse, and I was climbing up the ladders to the top of the scaffolding carrying bricks, stones, buckets of concrete and the like. It’s just as well that we ran out of concrete (we’re going shopping tomorrow for more) because we couldn’t carry on like that in that heat.

I also dropped off Caliburn’s temporary registration at the bank so they can change the insurance over, and the postie came, bringing Caliburn’s permanent log book. She said that there would be a very violent storm at 19:00 tonight so I told her that when she’s finished her round she can get up on the roof with us and help us do the slating.

She never turned up though, and she was wrong about the storm. At about 21:00 the clouds closed in and we had some rain and there was thunder rumbling away in the distance. Right now, it’s P155ing down outside but nothing like what she promised us. We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

-2

Wednesday 15th July 2009 – NOW THAT I HAVE THIS IMAGE THING SUSSED …

… and I’ve also sussed out how to use my laptop on Terry and Liz’s internet connection, I can post some work-in-progress photos of the roof.

We fixed the remaining rafters to the front of the house, dismantled the rafters at the rear, cut the new ones to size, fitted them, sprayed them in wood preservative and then began to paint them in the brown stuff that I like that comes from LIDL (although that was after I took the pic). We also dismantled one of the new windows to see how it fitted in.

That sounds like quite a lot and indeed it was. We were totally exhausted by 17.15 and it was a good job that Liz summoned us back to the house as we were having visitors.

In fact the phone rang twice, which is no joke when you are 8 metres up in the air on a scaffolding. If it keeps on ringing like this, badger the ladder – I’m going for a batpole. When I worked as a chauffeur for a diplomat, our garage was about 4 floors underneath our office and I did suggest that in our next budget we made provision for a batpole. No wonder they kicked me out.

Tomorrow we are finishing off the painting and then concreting the rafters in. When that sets we can start fitting the insulation.

-3

Tuesday 14th July 2009 – I HAD AN EARLY NIGHT LAST NIGHT

Yes, after the bedtime story (I can get quite used to staying at Liz and Terry’s), which was “The Chronologically-Challenged Duck That Was Admired More For Its Personal Qualities Than Its Physical Attributes”, I dozed off to sleep.

But not for long.

At 01:30 we were treated to the kind of spectacular storm that you only ever see once in a lifetime. Thunder and lightning continually until about 05:00. Impressive was not the word!

Terry stuck his head outside at 07:30 and it came back in wet so it wasn’t until about 08.30 until I got my coffee in bed (I can get quite used to …… “you’ve said that once” – ed) and once the rain quietened down at about 11:00 we set off to continue our attack on my roof. We had all of the chevrons on the front off (and half the front wall as well – this is going to be a longer job than I anticipated – we are even going to have to demolish the chimney and start again) and put half of the new ones on before the rain drove us off the roof again.

Terry came home and I stayed on to do some domestic chores but in actual fact I fell asleep.

It’s still thundering now so I dunno what’s going to happen in the morning. It was odds-on that the weather would change the moment I stripped the tiles off my roof.

-3

Monday 13th July 2009 – YOU CAN GUESS …

… what happened today, can’t you?

Indeed. A house with no tiles and no roof, so we have a tropical storm. Dunno how much rain fell in that 15 minutes but in Liz’s plant bucket there was about 5mm of rain after the plants had had their share, and all the streams around here were raging torrents.

Mind you, it’s not as if there is anything likely to be ruined as first of all I don’t possess anything like that anyway and secondly the house is pretty much empty. In fact it will probably do a lot of good, washing away mice nests and all that kind of thing.

This morning though, Terry and I went into Montlucon for the rest of the material. And wise move too. Being financially disadvantaged as I am, I set my mind on just one roof window and the most basic of those – costing 80-odd Euros. “Where are the cheap roof windows?” I asked the salesman. “Over there on that pallet” he replied, pointing at some, complete with all the fittings and looking quite good quality on sale “special offer” at 69 Euros. So I’m now back to two windows, and also two for the barn. And Terry got four for his barn.

Tons of wood (chevrons as well as waterproof plywood) and all kinds of stuff. I reckon I paid in all about 1500 Euros which has punched a big hole in my budget.

But not to worry because all that remains to buy are the chimney lining and the guttering, and that will be that. Everything for the barn roof is here.

So if tomorrow is nice and dry we’ll start changing the chevrons and then fitting the insulation. And if there is a thunderstorm you’ll probably find two carbonised masses stuck to the scaffolding and neither Terry nor yours truly will be blogging tomorrow night.

-3

Sunday 12th July 2009 – WE STRIPPED THE ROOF

Yes, the roof is now off the house.

We all had a bit of a lie-in seeing as it was Sunday (and I can get used to having coffee brought to me in bed, I can tell you) and then we set off to chez moi. While I was sorting out the wood, the breathable membrane, the insulation and the new recycled slates, Terry did his war dance on the roof and the old slates didn’t last too long.

Getting up onto the roof though was easy. Not having a roof ladder (and refusing to pay £189.00 to Screwfix for one), the last time that I was in the UK I went to Toolstation and bought a bolt-on ladder hook for £25 or so and it’s certainly worth its weight in gold.

As well as removing all of the slates and much of the rotten wood, we also removed four mouse nests (and a large quantity of very angry mice), three birds nests, two plants and also one partridge and one pear tree. That took us until about 16:30 and in the words of the famous Arthur Naylor, “it’s not worth starting another case” and we drove back here.

Tomorrow we’re off to Brico Depot for the marine ply, some more chevrons, a roof window, the stainless tube we need for the chimney, the guttering and the crepi for the facade.

About 1000 Euros, I reckon. I’ll be selling my body on Boots Corner in Crewe if it carries on like this.

-8

Saturday 11th July 2009 – HELLO!

Welcome to the nth version of my blog.

The desertion of my previous blog was brought about by the closure of the service, although I left voluntarily just before the cut-off date.

It was in fact the first blogging site that I left voluntarily so I suppose that’s something to celebrate.

I’m only going to be here temporarily as once I find a reliable webhost for my websites I’ll be embedding my blog in there. That makes much more sense to me.

In the meantime, back to the plot. For those of you who have followed my adventures elsewhere, we finished putting up the scaffolding at home today. One leg went through the roof of the verandah and a lateral support went through the door. We had to knock part of the fence down though to get another lateral through.

And once we worked out how the scaffolding went and we put in the diagonals, it wasn’t half rigid. I can’t think of a purchase I’ve been more impressed with and it was certainly a good move to buy it.

Tomorrow Terry is going to smash in all of the slates and the rotten wood while I sort out the new wood, the recycled plastic roofing tiles and the insulation. At last I’ll be starting to empty the barn that I’ve been filling up for years and I can’t wait.

-6

AMAZON LINKS – READ THIS

Changes in my site and in particular the fact that I am reaching a much wider audience in North America than previously means that I now come within the scope of the
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
of the USA.

I am therefore obliged by law to inform you that I am an Associate of the various Amazon companies and that I earn a small commission from any qualifying sales that you make when you click on my links.

This commission is used to defray in part the costs of my web hosting. This comes out of Amazon’s profits. No extra charge is made to you.

Over the years, I have always mentioned this every so often in the body of my blog but now I have to give formal notice of the fact.

EPIC HALL

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