Tag Archives: fireplace

Friday 7th May 2010 – I’ve finished doing the fireplace in the bedroom.

boarding up fireplace bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceI cut a piece of insulated plasterboard to shape, stuffed it in the hole over the top of the boarding and then screwed it in place. It was a perfect fit too, much to my surprise.

After that I filled in all of the joints with polyfilla stuff and that was that. Perfectly windproof and draftproof.

I’m not going to smooth it down or do a final filler coat for of course it will be covered by the space-blanket insulation, some more polystyrene stuff and then some plasterboard. In fact, if you look you can see where I’ve got to with the battening for all of that.

I’ve been working hard in the bedroom this afternoon, but in the morning I was out in the garden. I did some more succession sowing and then planted the main-crop potatoes. I’d left them in the sun and the warmth hoping that they could chit but they didn’t do all that much. But anyway I didn’t have enough so I went into the bag to get a couple more (there were about 30 left) and to my surprise those in the bag had chitted more than those in the sun. So I hastily prepared another bed to stick them in. No point in wasting them.

At training tonight they had a proper 6-a-side match seeing as how they had two goalkeepers. And I was ashed if I would referee it. Franck the trainer said that it would be a good opportunity for me to practise my technique but I reckon that it was more of a comment on my footballing skills last week. I’ve a lot to learn about refereeing – it’s easy doing it behind a desk in a classroom but it’s a different thing entirely on a pitch. But at least I got my positioning right. That’s always been one of my major gripes about referees.

In other, depressing news which will upset more than a few readers of these pages, Liz’s autopsy has now been published. It appears that while they were doing the surgery on her main artery they “nicked” another small artery nearby with one of the wires that they were using. Ordinarily that would have caused no problems but of course she had been pumped full of anti-coagulents so the cut didn’t clot and she bled to death.

Yes, medical manslaughter as we all suspected.

I remember just before the General Election of 1997 talking about the NHS with a friend of mine, a lifelong Labour supporter. Someone was extolling its virtues (it did have virtues then) and Nina replied grimly “yes, so they had better be careful in whose hands they leave it”.

Nina knew Liz. I wonder what she is saying now.

Thursday 6th May 2010 – I boarded up the fireplace today.

boarding up bedroom fireplace les guis virlet puy de dome franceI knew the offcuts from the tongue-and-grooving would come in handy sooner or later.

There’s a heavy-duty plastic sack at the back of this, and then a framework around the inside of the fireplace. Then the offcuts of tongue-and-grooving were cut to size and shaped to fill in the hole and finally I bunged up everywhere with filler.

Next step will be to screw some insulated plasterboard to the boarding and seal that all round and it should be a nice draught-proof seal.

This morning I woke up at 08:20 to the sound of the rain driving down on the roof. “Badger that for a game of soldiers” – and stayed in bed til 10:00. And after doing some work on my website I dodged the rain to plant out some more peas and beans and then to catch up with sowing some more succession seeds. I’ve a full greenhouse now and it looks impressive but nothing seems to be germinating. This year might be something of a washout in the garden in more ways than one.

But it stopped raining at about 15:00. Some blue bits appeared in the sky and by late evening there was even a sighting of that golden object that hangs around up there some time. But it’s still cold though and I had the fire on again up here tonight.

Tuesday 4th May 2010 – I’ve been working inside today …

bedroom fireplace les guis virlet puy de dome france… and I’ve made an exciting discovery. In the bedroom there was a wooden fire surround with a small coal-fired stove and a metal backplate. So as my insulating of the walls is now about to move around the corner I need to remove the stove and the fireplace.

Once I had done that the backplate came away and a whole pile of dirt dust and rubble fell away with it leaving (after I had cleared it up) a big fireplace.

Including a fire basket too, When I think of all of the time I have wasted looking for a fire basket and there we are with one bricked up in a wall.

So why have I been working inside?
The answer is –
water bucket max temp 11; min temp 9.5. Solar energy in the barn 0.0
Yes, a full and heavy cloud that has stopped any sunlight getting through, and has stopped the heat radiating back into the sky at night.
There’s no need to tell you that rainfall was a whopping TWENTY SIX mm today. You’ve probably worked that out already.

And so there you are.

Tomorrow Liz Terry and I are going to the Chambre des Metiers. I rang them up first thing and the woman explained that she would have someone call me back that morning. Of course they haven’t so it’s doorstepping time