Tag Archives: edging tiles

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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Thursday 29th July 2010 – Today was exciting.

courgette strawberry les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis evening I picked the first courgette out of the garden and made myself a delicious courgette and lentil curry. It was magnificent, and furthermore there’s enough left over – and stored in the fridge – for 2 more days

I also went in search of strawberries as there were quite a few when I last looked, but it seems that mildew has done for most of those and there were only two left. And they were delicious too.

roofing edging tiles les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning we were back on the roof. One side is finished, complete with edging tiles all in place and properly cemented in.

We did however have a problem – the roofing tiles are 40cm so I dunno what possessed someone to buy 43cm edging tiles. Because of that, they don’t fit properly!

Still, we managed to get them to look very nice by using an aluminium straight-edge and an angle-grinder but it would have looked nicer with 40cm edgings.

kwikstage scaffolding les guis virlet puy de dome franceNow that we’ve done all of that, this afternoon we took down the scaffolding and put it up around the other side of the house. But that is on a slope and, like the Irish expedition to climb Mount Everest, we ran out of scaffolding.

We’ll have to finish off the other side of the edging tomorrow, and then re-position all of this scaffolding and then start to strip the roof.

roof collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter Terry left I went home and did something else that I was meaning to do for quite a while – years in fact. Keen readers of these outpourings in one of their many previous forms (it was after the Xoom blog but before the Yahoo one – might have been the Bravenet one) will remember that back in 2002 I was repairing a collapsed outbuilding when I collapsed, and it was never finished. But that is where the composting toilet is and where the washroom will be and I’m fed up of being rained upon. I can’t refit the roof just yet but I can put in the floor at the first floor level so I made a start on that. At least I won’t get p155ed on now when I’m riding the porcelain horse.

But, quite strangely, I’ve been hearing some bizarre noises in the verandah just recently and as I was coming back from this roof I heard a similar noise coming from the barn. I stuck my head inside just in time to see a flaming huge hedgehog drag a plastic bag full of wire rope off into one of the deepest and darkest recesses.

What is all that about?

The amount of stuff that I can’t find in that barn that I know full well is there – there’s probably a group of hedgehogs about to open a hardware store somewhere in the vicinity. I bet they will be doing deliveries too – using a SatNav that they will have acquired from somewhere.

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