Tag Archives: demolishing bedroom wall

Friday 27th November 2009 – I’ve finished knocking down the wall today.

demolished wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took me longer than anticipated as I took my time doing it. It’s made of large hollow lightweight bricks and it occurred to me that with having to build retaining walls outside as Krys wants me to, a supply of large hollow lightweight bricks might come in handy.

I’ve salvaged about 50 of them and put them to one side.

This afternoon I’ve fitted the insulation to the stud walls at the head of the stairs – it’s made a difference to the sound travelling through the walls so it has undoubtedly made a difference to the thermal qualities. And just as well, too. The temperature has fallen dramatically and I was obliged to put the heater on for an hour tonight – the first time in two weeks.

I dunno what kind of weird sense of humour people have round here. If you look at the wall under the stairs you’ll see the wallpaper from about 100 years ago. This house is built of stone and then someone plastered over the stone – and then lined the plaster with stone-patterned wallpaper. Why didn’t they simply forego the plastering?

hammer and sickle carved on wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd not only that either. When I scraped off some of the wallpaper to see what it was like underneath, I came across a hammer and sickle insignia crudely carved into the plaster on the wall. I wonder what that’s all about? It’s something else that strikes me as totally weird in this place – we’ve discussed sacrificial chickens embedded in the concrete before now.

I’ve rescued all of my pointing tools and given them a good clean. Apparently we are all pointing at Liz and Terry’s chantier tomorrow. But I hope the weather is better than it has been for the last few days. Nothing but miserable grey skies and rain. The clothes I washed have been rinsed innumerable times by the heavens but the could really do with drying.

And we have two footy matches tomorrow night – the 1st XI against hated local rivals St Gervais d’Auvergne and the 2nd XI against hated local rivals Charensat. A large crowd is assured (if the weather is half-decent) so just you watch the hotel next door close its doors right on the final whistle. No wonder they can’t make any money.

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Wednesday 25th November 2009 – Now you see it …

bedroom wall les guis virlet france… now you don’t. That could either refer to all of the mess in what will eventually be the bedroom, which has all been swept up and bagged for binning, or the wall between the stairway and the bedroom, half of which has been demolished.

That wall needs to be demolished and moved one roof-beam in towards the camera. And then with my patent narrow stairs I can fit a U-shaped stairway in.

The space that will be saved by having the stairs in a U-shape will be the bit by the window (at the foot of where the stairs are right now) and that’s where the shower room will be. I’m not sure if you can fit all of the OUSA Executive Committee in there, though.

I need to fit two floor beams in and that will be tomorrow afternoon’s job after I’ve demolished the rest of the wall.

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I’ve gone berserk with a sledgehammer. And also a broom too.

And why not tomorrow morning? Well, Terry is coming round. He needs a hand to fetch some sand and as he has no tow-bar as yet on his new van to pull the trailer, we need to bag it up at the quarry.

Rhys and I were earlier talking about brassieres and the subject seemed to veer round to chastity belts. It reminded me of the time just before Nerina and I were married and we had to go to see the priest.
“Are you chaste?” he asked Nerina
“Quite often” I replied. “And she always lets me catch her“.

And in other news, Day 2 of this public enquiry is going down a storm. Apart from the Government’s case having fallen away to nothing already (and there’s another 9 months to go!), we have a plainted “(Iraq) had shown itself willing to use weapons of mass destruction on its own people and its neighbours and was flouting a range of UN disarmament resolutions.”. We know this of course from yesterday. It was our best friends the Septics who sold the weapons of mass destruction to Iraq and provided the intelligence to enable Iraq to use the weapons to the best effect. And it was also a whole series of British and American companies, in some cases aided and abetted by the British Government, who were encouraging Iraq to flout the resolutions.

But if you want to talk about a country that is using weapons of mass destruction on its own people and flouting a whole range of UN resolutions, where is the criticism of the Zionists and the crimes they are committing against the Palestinians, many of whom are Jews and some of whom – shock, horror – are CHRISTIANS?

And while we are on the subject of the Zionists, there’s this huge outcry about the fact than Iran may one day sometime have a nuclear bomb. Well, so what? The Zionists have plenty and no-one says anything about that. So if they have them, why can’t Iran have them to balance out the power? Keen students of british history will know that all through the 18th and 19th Century it was British foreign policy to keep the peace by having a balance of power.

During the period that the Soviet Union was “confronting” (which it wasn’t – it was strictly abiding by the terms of the Yalta Agreement) the west, the wars involving European powers were few and far between. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the USA and the UK have been dragging the world through the mud.

Vive la Soviet Union! say I.

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