Tag Archives: false ceiling

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… to beat the alarm clock this morning. It was a little more difficult to crawl out of my stinking pit this morning.

Still, I had breakfast and had the usual several hours on the computer sorting out a few things that have been hanging around for a few years. I also had one of these telesales people on the phone trying to sell me window shutters and I kept him on the telephone for 30 minutes.

After lunch, I attacked the bathroom ceiling and I can now say with complete assurance that it’s all finished. It didn’t seen too much trimming either, much to my surprise. Just a case of nipping off a couple of edges with a mallet and chisel.

I was half-expecting to have to trim down a full length of board, so no-one was more surprised than I was about how good the fit was. I couldn’t have done it better had I measured it up purposely.

The bathroom ceiling is lower than the ceiling on the landing so it needed an end-piece. A rummage around in the barn produced an offcut length of floorboarding that was soon cut down to size (I’m as impressed with this new circular saw as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin) and trimmed to fit, and then sanded off with the belt sander. And it’s come up a treat, that’s for sure, fits quite nicely and looks quite good as well.

I finished off the afternoon by tidying up in the bathroom and that’s almost completed. If I can finish that off tomorrow and do the masking off, I can start to varnish the ceiling. 3 coats of that and I’ll be ready to do the tiling.

For tea tonight I made a mega-red-pepper-and-lentil curry to keep me going for the next four days, and I’ve noticed that I seem to be overrun with ants in the verandah and the downhill lean-to. Where have all of these come from? Is it a coincidence that we had another brief shower of rain earlier in the evening?

0

Thursday 16th July 2015 – NO PRIZES FOR GUESSING …

… what was the first act this morning.

With it being rather hot up here, I went to open the window at the head of the stairs. And there on the windowsill underneath the window – well, I’m sure that you can guess what it was that I found.

The irony of it all is that I can see the windowsill from where I’m sitting. How I failed to see Cailburn’s insurance papers, I really do not know.

This morning I was up early once again and after breakfast I had another marathon session on the laptop and that took me right through until lunchtime. I edited a load of pages from 2009 as well as doing a few album lists from previous Radio Anglais programmes.

But I’ll tell you what – having seen the prices at which some of my CDs are on sale (one is on sale at €199:00) my CD collection must be worth a veritable fortune. And the irony of it all is that I doubt that there’s very much for which I’ve paid more than €10:00.

suspended ceiling shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I cracked on with the ceiling in the shower room. That involved drilling a few holes, sorting out the wiring a little better and so on, as well as having to find a few tools and things.

But I came to a resounding halt, mainly because I’ve run out of the tongue-and-grooving that I’m using for the ceiling and I’ll have to buy some more. I’m about 10 rows short, which is a shame. I’ll have another scratch around to see if I have any more, but I’m not very hopeful.

Rosemary rang up too – she’s planning on paying me a visit on Tuesday, and then Rob called. The head gasket has gone on his car and could I help him fix it?

Yes, it’s THAT time of the year again.

0

Thursday 29th January 2015 – THIS DOOR HINGE ISSUE …

… still isn’t resolved, despite my best efforts this morning.

This morning, I was up quite early and I’d finished my breakfast by 08:30. Se seeing as I had to be in Marcillat for 10:30, a sudden idea entered into my head given the time available, and I shot straight off to Commentry and Bricomarche.

There are indeed right-handed and left-handed hinges, and all of the hinges were totally muddled up. I very carefully sorted out three right-handed hinges (as well as a hosepipe connection for the overflow on the water tank). However, the boxes were more mixed up than I thought, and I’ve ended up with 2 x 110×55 and 1 x 90×45.

Ahh well.

But at least I have the shape to use to cut the lets into the door and the doorframe.

At the radio, we recorded our Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse and then went for a coffee and a chat.

varnished shelf stairwell attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceBack here, first job that I did even before I took off my coat was to put the third and final coat of varnish onto the shelves in the stairwell up to the attic.

These shelves are now finished and that is really the first completed task of this phase of the work. These shelves mean that I can now start to empty the attic of all of the cooking stuff, the pots and pans and so on, and put them on the shelves outside, as soon as the varnish had hardened off.

This is definitely progress.

suspended false ceiling recessed light plasterboard landing les guis virlet puy de dome franceSecond job that I did, likewise before taking off my coat, was to fit the crown onto the LED light bulb and recess it into the hole in the false ceiling on the landing.

You can see the varnished ceiling and the plasterboard on both the walls but the light hasn’t come out well enough. I’ll take another photo of the ceiling when we have some daylight, but that wasn’t going to be today as so far we’ve had 35mm of rain and it’s still teeming down.

I’ve also cut the three lets into the hinge side of the doorframe so that I can fit the recessed hinges in due course and I’ve also cut down a floorboard to make the latch side of the doorframe.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off cutting down the floorboards for the rest of the door frame and for the head of the stairs, and if I’m lucky, I might even be able to put the first coat of filler on the screwheads and joins in the plasterboard.

-3

Wednesday 28th January 2015 – THIS LANDING DEFINITELY …

… won’t be finished by the weekend now, that’s for sure.

I didn’t realise this at the time, but now I do, that the “drop-in” hinges that are quite common here and that I like to use are “handed”. I need three right-handed ones for the bedroom door and three right-handed ones for the shower room door, but I seem to have acquired six left-handed hinges.

I can’t believe this, because I’ve fitted three doors here, some right-handed and some left-handed, and I’ve always managed to find the xorrect hinges without even knowing about it. Talk about beginners’ luck. But now I’ll have to wait until I can go either to Montlucon or Commentry.

This morning though, I fitted the ceiling in the landing and cut out the hole for the recessed light that I’ll be fitting. All of this took a while but it’s finished now and doesn’t look too bad at all.

We had a flash of sunlight too for half an hour, so I sanded down and vacuumed the shelves over the stairs, and then put the first coat of varnish on them and also on the landing celling. That all took me until 14:20 – a good 20 minutes after my normal lunchtime pause,but I’m less interested in pausing than I am in doing the work on the place.

After lunch I went into the barn to find the doors for the bedroom and the shower room and then cut down one of the planks that I’ll be using for an end-piece for the stud wall. And it was here that I discovered the issue with the hinges.

Never mind though, there’s still plenty to do. I ended up finishing off the routing for the wiring on the first floor (although I’ve since remembered two things that I’ve missed) and then put the second coat of varnish on the shelves and ceiling.

Tomorrow I have to nip to Marcillat and record the Radio Tartasse radio sessions, and when I come back I’ll be putting the third coat of varnish on the shelves and fitting the recessed light on the landing.

And until I can sort out some hinges for the doors, I’ll be fitting as many end pieces as I can and then starting on the bedroom. No reason to stop working just because I’ve messed up these hinges.

-1

Tuesday 27th January 2015 – I’M POSSIBLY BEING A LITTLE OPTIMISTIC …

… about finishing the landing by the weekend. It’s been slow going today.

Mind you, it hasn’t helped in that I had a lot of housekeeping to do here this morning. I ran out of both kindling and logs, and the compost bucket needed emptying too. Doing that latter task, I found that the tie that’s holding up the collapsed apple tree had come apart and so that needed sorting out.

Eventually, I managed to start to attack the landing and Shock! Horror! all of the plasterboard is on the wall now. And not only that, the wiring is all tidied up and the light switches are in place.

I’m not going to post a photo of it though, because it’s a mess. What didn’t help the artistic impression was that I had spent an hour carefully carving a piece of plasterboard to fit perfectly and to take the pattress for the light switches, and then I dropped it from a height right onto the edge of the steps upon which I was standing, and knocked a huge lump out. Never mind, I can fill it but it isn’t pretty.

I had to put loads of battens in place too for the plasterboard, and some of the wood took a while to find. My aim to have it all done by lunchtime was thus totally missed. It was 17:00 by the time I had done all of the plasterboarding.

I’ve fitted the rails for the suspended ceiling – and that wasn’t easy either. And even though it was after 18:00 and knocking-off time, I fitted the symbolic first piece of ceiling. It was 18:35 when I finally made it up here. What helps about working late is having really good music to listen to. I’ve made it round to Hawkwind’s Astounding Sounds; Amazing Music, which features, inter alia, two of the most magnificent rock music tracks ever recorded – “Reefer Madness” and “Steppenwolf”.

As well as that, as I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … that Ryobi Plus One percussion screwdriver is immense – it pushes 6×100 screws in like nobody’s business.

Tomorrow I’ll be fitting the rest of the ceiling and putting the first coat of varnish on. And if I have some sun (which isn’t likely, I have to say) I’ll be cutting the end pieces for the plasterboard runs and seeing if I’ll have the time to fit them.

It does however occur to me that in order to fit the end pieces on the stud wall between the landing and the bedroom I’ll need to have the bedroom door in position and the hinge lets cut out. That’s going to take a while and will be the big reason why I’ll miss my target of this weekend for the landing to be completed.

-1

Wednesday 31st December 2014 – NOW HERE’S A THING.

While I was having (a rather late) breakfast this morning, I started to empty out the woodstove and clean the glass window. But much to my surprise, the big log that I put in there last think last night was still smouldering away.

It didn’t fire up however when I opened the foor, but it was still something of note to see it.

After breakfast, Iwent out to look at this idea of fitting the wood to the ends of the runs of plasterboard as I mentioned yesterday. However, I was thwarted right at the start, because it was one of these jobs where you needed to do several other things before I could start.

I had to fit a few lengths of tongue and grroving as a false ceiling, but before that I had to fit the plasterboard onto part of the stud walling. And before I could do that, I had to move some wiring around.

Anyway, you get the picture.

However, we have made a little bit of history because we now have, for the first time, plasterboard on both sides of part of the stud walling. That’s history in the making of course, and it means that whatever is between the two layers of plasterboard is there for good now, in exactly the same place as it’s going to be.

tongue and groove ceiling wooden plasterboard ends les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s 5 lengths of tongue and grooving in the ceiling as well, enough to clear the stairway.

And while I was doing all of this, I had another idea. I don’t have too much of this wood that I was talking about yesterday, so seeing that it’s good, heavy stuff I’m going to save it for where I’m putting the hinges for the doors. For the rest, I’ve been experimenting with floorboarding. I cut one to size, trimmed off the tongue and then with the circular saw I cut the width to size.

I had to file and sandpaper the edge where I cut the width to size, and it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I was fearing. A power plane or a belt sander would finish them off quite nicely but I don’t have them so I’ll have to do without.

So while it might not look as if I’ve done much today, it is in fact an enormous amount of progress both physically and psychologically too. Just one piece of wood to be fitted and then I can start to fill and then sand down the stairwell ready for wallpapering and painting

-1

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