Tag Archives: chimney

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 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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Monday 26th July 2010 – Lieneke asked me …

roofing guus lieneke chimney pointing les guis virlet puy de dome france… to take a photo every day of the progress on her roof now that she is back in the Netherlands. And I forgot to do it until it was almost going dark but nevertheless here we are.

What we’ve been doing is to take off the roof tiles from the right-hand edge as far as the little window in the roof, replace a couple of chevrons, strengthen the principal horizontal beams and lengthen where necessary, extend the roof out from the chimney line so that it protects the stone wall of the house and then replace the tiles and add the extra for where the roof has been extended (basically, the bit to the right of the roof ladder).

So this morning we finished off the joinery and then replaced the rest of the tiles. This afternoon we took our lives into our own hands and pointed the chimney. It looks much better now than it did and it’s certainly more solid, although there isn’t anything that you can do about the tilt.

Finally we started to fit the edging tiles but one or two of them proved to be more difficult than you would think. And we were at that stage where we know from bitter experience that nothing will ever go right no matter what you do and how long you try to do it, and so we called it a day and we’ll finish it tomorrow.

But I wasn’t surprised. It was 18:10 when we finished and Terry was here at 08:50 so that’s not far off 09:30 hours that we were working. And it’s hard work too. Terry’s had me running up and down that scaffolding all day with buckets of nails, buckets of screws, buckets of tiles and buckets of mortar. It’s keeping me fit, that’s for sure, but it’s wearing me out as well. So much so that I’m going to press “send” and then have an early night.  

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