Tag Archives: flooring

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?

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Wednesday 24th June 2015 – MANY YEARS AGO …

… I was engaged for a short while to a girl called Liz (you’ve no idea how many people called Liz have featured in my life). It didn’t last too long, mainly for the reason that I wasn’t ready for such a commitment – and I’m probably still not ready even now.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … last night when I was on my nocturnal ramblings, we met up again and resolved to get back together. We arranged to meet up at a park entrance somewhere but we didn’t think about which particular entrance. It was a huge park too, with quite a few entrances so I was constantly driving from one entrance to the next to see if I could find her. Also featuring in this voyage were a very old friend of mine and his wife, a woman with whom I don’t particularly see eye-to-eye. They were constantly interrupting me as I was driving around and I was starting to panic that I would never ever meet up with Liz at this rate (and indeed I didn’t)

What was strange about this is that I was reading a story last night, just before I went to bed, about a couple who had rekindled their relationship after 22 years apart. And it also brought to my mind an occasion in the mid 1990s when I had to meet someone at an Underground station in London, but there were so many exits to this station that we didn’t meet up. However, I’d given no thought at all to this ever since – until I awoke this morning.

What this couple were doing in this story I really don’t know. But it’s bizarre that these couple of events in real life should become entangled in one of my nocturnal voyages.

With all of this going on, I was up and about at about 06:50, long before the alarm went off. And after breakfast I cracked on with the radio programme. It’s all done now, all 7,000-odd words of it. 41kbs that works out at, or about 13 weeks of text discussion. That should really keep me out of mischief for a while.

door frame shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the door frame, that’s not only started but finished (please excuse the photo – the flash on this phone-cam is not up to all that much). I cut down a couple of floorboards with the table-top saw (which struggled with this -the poor thing couldn’t quite manage properly) and I found an offcut in the barn that I cut down to give me all that I needed.

There’s a batten in there too. That’s for a shelf support as there is going to be a shelf there and that’s where the towels will live. I didn’t have a batten that size but when I installed the flying staircase down to the ground floor, I just used chevrons in a standard length for the columns without regard to what was actually needed. Cutting one down to size gave me more than enough to make the batten.

I just had to sand it down, and the new belt sander that I bought a couple of months ago did that for me.

I was so engrossed by this that I hadn’t noticed the time and it was 19:25 by the time that I knocked off. Really carried away, I was.

So tomorrow, I might have a go at fitting the hinges for the door, and then cutting the door down to fit. I’d love to have that fitted and working by the end of the week.

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Monday 30th March 2015 – OUCH!

Yes, I don’t know what it is that I’ve done, but I have a pain in my right wrist and I’ve pulled a muscle in my left shoulder.

The wrist isn’t too much of a problem but the shoulder is – I can’t lift my left arm any higher than my shoulder and I can’t carry any heavy weight with it.

It’s probably due to my exertions during the night. I don’t remember too much about it except that at one moment the hero of the plot (whoever he was) rounded up a baddie and his girlfriend and held them at gunpoint. Having calmed the situation, he turned his back on the baddie in order to give the girl some instructions. A silly thing to do, turning your back on someone, as events subsequently were to prove as the baddie bent down, picked up a length of 4×2 and whacked the hero across the back of the head.

Despite the hour that we lost on Sunday, I managed to be up and about at a reasonable hour for a working day. And after breakfast I made a prompt start on the tidying up. Half an hour saw tons of stuff gone out of the attic and it’s a long time since I’ve seen it look so empty. I can see plenty of clear floor. Tomorrow, I’ll do a little more and see what that brings me.

Cleaning the dust off everything was quite easy. I just threw the stuff downstairs and that dealt with that issue.

Having dealt with the attic, I turned my attention to the ground floor. I moved 12 sacks of rubbish out of the ground floor – 2 of household rubbish, 7 of builders’ rubbish and three of plastic bottles, tin cans and papers.

Once all of that had been thrown out, I could turn my attention to the rest of the ground floor. A few more bits and pieces, notably the cable sheathes, found their way into the lean-to and I was able to bring in the floorboards out of Caliburn, swapping them for the rubbis.

With a little bit of space downstairs, I could start to stack things better in the ground floor and I can even see some floorspace there too now. So feeling pleased with myself, I knocked off at 18:15.

Tomorrow, I’m going to clear out the bit of the barn that I cleared out before, and then I can see what I can move out over there. If I can move out the wood and the portable gas heater, that will make tons of empty space and I’ll feel much happier about all of that.

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Tuesday 24th March 2015 – SO WHAT …

… have I done today then?

First thing was to trim off a corner of the door that is catching on the floor. And having done that, it was then catching somewhere else. It seems that I have a warped floorboard and that is what is causing the door to catch.

The solution was therefore obvious – out came the big new belt sander and that soon dealt with that issue. There was a lot of vacuuming to do with the new vacuum cleaner, but that’s impressive too. There is however a design fault – a 90° bend in the pipe inside the machine that leads into the dust bag. That could easily be eliminated and so it should be, because it blocks up quite easily.

Next job was to fit the beading around the window and the framework for the sheet of glass that will be fitted above the door.

I had to sort out the issue of the flooring in the far corner. The walls are of course nothing like straight and there’s a gap that varies from about 15mm to 3mm. I tried to carve a piece to fit but gave up after half an hour. Instead I went into the barn and found a 4.5m length of 20mm x100mm left over from when we did the barn roof. I trimmed that down to 70mm using the desktop saw, and that will do to pad out the skirting board so that the gap is covered.

I then spent the rest of the morning vacuuming and cleaning up.

After lunch I masked off by the window and then started to varnish. I’ve done the window sill and insets and also the interior of the wardrobe and that took until all of 19:00. And I’ve had a bit of a shock in that I’m not going to have anything like enough varnish to do it all. A trip to Montlucon is therefore on the cards, well before my planned trip on Saturday.

I had a fire in here tonight. It wasn’t that it was that cold, but it was cold enough and it meant that I could cook my meal in comfort. It was left-over hot-pot from Sunday night – Liz gave me a doggy-bag. Not enough for a meal but with a handful or two of pasta thrown in, it made a lovely meal.

And now I’m off to bed – a nice early night.

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Saturday 21st March 2015 – THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING …

… although you xould never have guessed it from the weather. We’ve had a hanging cloud on the mountain all day, it’s been pouring down with rain and I’ve had almost no solar energy. Consequently I’ve disconnected the fridge

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt hasn’t stopped me from working though. Yes, I’m at it again, working once more on a Saturday morning.

I’ll tell yuo how good that little machine of Simon’s is, because it took me two hours to fit the final three runs of floorboarding using a hammer and nails. There’s not enough room to use the machine on the final three runs. To fit the other 35 runs, it took just five and a half hours, so you can see exactly what I mean.

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceEventually, I finished it and all that remains to be done (the big stuff I mean) is the varnishing, the skirting board and the glass panel over the door. This is a dark house so you need as much light as possible filtering around.

When I had finished that, I went and did my shopping and then came home to chill out.

Now if anyone had said that FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI would draw against Aulnat, anyone at the club would have taken that without even kicking off. And when I saw that 5 of the players on the field were regulars from the 2nd XI in the 4th Division, then even more so.

But drawing 2-2 after being 2-0 up and having a 3rd goal disallowed under controversial circumstances has to count as 2 points thrown away rather than 1 point gained. To make matters worse, the equalising goal was really rubbing salt into the wound. Cedric, playing at centre-half, clears an attack by hoofing the ball out into touch, but the ball cannons off the back of one of his own players, rebounding right into the path of an unmarked Aulnat player standing in front of goal.

That just about sums up FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s luck as far as I am concerned. It’s a tragedy.

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Friday 20th March 2015 – MANY THANKS …

fitting floor boards bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france … to Simon for lending me his floorboard nailer.

I’ve had some exciting and interesting tools here while I’ve been doing work but I’ve never had anything quite like this. Floorboarding has never been so easy and had I not run out of floorboarding (there are a few more packs in Caliburn) I might well have finished it today.

The first couple of pieces needed careful shaping and it took a while to align them, but once they were in place the rest followed quickly. And once I’d worked out the best way to employ the machine then it went even better.

But as I said, I ran out of wood here and so I called it a day – at 18:50 as it happened so I’d already put in a good day’s work. And apart from taking the stats I haven’t been outside at all. And that’s not a surprise because the weather has been awful today – pouring down with rain all day.

I’ve not even been to the shops (something that I usually do on a Friday evening). I’ll have to do that tomorrow – after I’ve done the flooring because I’m going to have another hour or so working on the floor, despite it being a weekend.

I was on my travels again last night and, interestingly, it was a continuation of a voyage that I had made a short while ago (which is the point that this person doing this experiment was trying to prove). I was back on that coach journey where that family from round here were passengers. I’d gone to bed and I sensed that I was not alone, looking up from under my eyelids, but still pretending to be asleep, I saw the girl from this family. She had come into my room. When I gave a sign of life, she shuffled off out again quickly.

This prompted me to go to look for her to find out what was going on, and that wasn’t going to be too difficult as the hotel rooms had windows facing the corridor, rather like the older part of our school, which amazed me from a privacy point of view, although the windows were frosted glass.

From ere I found myself working the office where Nerina was working, although the bosses put us to work in different rooms to keep us apart. I spent a lot of time chatting to a girl who worked there, and I stayed there until late evening to miss the rush hour traffic. In my car, which was a white Cortina mkIV estate with the spare wheel in a holder on the left-hand side of the tailgate, I saw the girl with whom I’d been working so I waved at her to make sure that she would see me and then go back to the office to tell everyone what a big car I had.

This was a quite exciting voyage, I have to say that, and it went on for ever. I wonder how it is sometimes that I find time to sleep. But I do wish that my real life was as exciting as what goes on when I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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Tuesday 20th January 2015 – I’VE HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… today. And it all went wrong as early as breakfast time. I was thinking to myself that my breakfast coffee tasted pretty awful, and closer inspection revealed that I was in fact drinking merely hot water in a coffee-flavoured mug. That depressed me for a start.

And then going downstairs I fell through the trap that I had made yesterday, and only quick thinking by grabbing the beam as I fell through it prevented me from plummetting down to the concrete floor about 3 metres below.

I’ve done myself quite a mischief, but while I was hanging there from the beam working out the best way to haul myself back up, I came to the conclusion that maybe the hatch was not such a good idea after all.

I mean, it is an excellent idea but it won’t work here, because there’s not sufficient support around the edges to carry the weight of whatever is going to be walking across it, as I had just demonstrated. Consequently, once I had ccrawled back up onto terra firma, I ripped out the hatch and the surround and spen the rest of the morning refitting both layers of the floor. I’d nearly finished by lunchtime but I carried on regardless until it was finished.

I know that I said that I was going to vacuum out the bathroom and put the first coat of varnigh on the floor, but as you might expect after I’ve talked about such things, we were having a slight snowstorm and there was a hanging cloud here for most of the morning. That put the kybosh on the vacuuming.

After lunch I fetched a pile of wood into the house for the fire, but all of a sudden, the sun put in a bried appearance. Out came the vacuum cleaner and I cleaned out the bathrrom and then did the first coat of varnish.

As for the vacuum cleaner, there will be some who would complain about the lack of efficiency, but these people would have seen the price tag (€29:99 reduced to €14:99) and not seen the power of the machine – 600 watts instead of the more usual 1500 watts. I knew exactly what I was buying and I knew exactly how it was going to work, and so I was not disappointed at all. It did exactly what it said it would and did it quite efficiently too, and I was delighted.

I spent the rest of the working day cutting a board that I need for the head of the stairs – I’d forgotten about that. I’ll fit that next time I’m working here as I’m out all day tomorrow.

I’ve also fitted the handrail for the stairs. Two huge screwed eyes and a length of 14mm hemp rope, and that’s made quite an effective handrail.

It’s not 100% my own idea though. I knew that I had seen something like this before, and the other night, watching the absolutely outstanding Green For Danger, there it was, on the stairs of the Nurses’ Home. It looks as if I’m going back in time.

I was working long after 18:00 but I had a phone call that interrupted me for 10 minutes. Terry had the census people round there and they didn’t speak English, so I was required to interpret.

So tomorrow, I won’t be here as I have things to do. But I’m going to put the second coat of varnish on the bathroom floor before I go, and if I remember, I’ll put the third coat on when I come back and that’s the flooring all done down there.

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Monday 19th January 2015 – I HAD A LOVELY EARLY SUMMER’S DAY …

… working outside this morning. And I do mean early summer too because it was glorious.

First job was to empty the beichstuhl – such are the delights of my mode of living – clean it out and recharge it ready for use. Ohh the joys of low-impact living.

Next job, which took me right up to almost lunchtime was dealing with the water butts. You may recall that the tap on the front tank had cracked in the severe cold that we had the other day. Good job that I had fitted a series of isolation valves so that I can separate one tank from the other. I’ve been drawing the water off the front tank as it all slowly leaked away and by the end of last week it was finally empty.

When I was in Montlucon on Saturday, I bought everything that I needed, and so I set about dealing with the tap as well as giving the tank a good clean while I was at it. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of the system that I’ve designed and built here that aftera couple of years, the front tank wasn’t particularly dirty. It didn’t really need a clean but nevertheless I gave it a good going-over.

Then, I dealt with the tap. That was soon fitted, and not only do I have the tap but I now have an overflow as well as a depth gauge. Now I can see how much water there is in the tanks.

The tap has been insulated and I’ll need to insulate the clear plastic pipe that forms part of the depth gauge once I work out how to do this. I’ll have to give the matter some thought.

This afternoon I sanded down the floor in the bathroom, seeing as how we had plenty of sun. Tomorrow morning, I’ll vacuum up the dust, which will give me an opportunity to see how well this dust cleaner will perform, and then put the first layer of varnish on it so that it will go dry while I’m havine lunch. I’m out on Wednesday so I can put the second coat on before I leave, and the third coat as soon as I come back. I want to do this while I’m not doing any work, so that there’s no dust about to stick in the varnish.

So as well as sanding down the floor, I’ve been working on the floor on the landing. The first board is nailed in place, the trapdoor has been cut out, and the second board has been cut to shape and filed down to take the recessed hinges. If I can finish this on Thursday, then I can varnish this at the same time that I’ll be doing the stairs – namely on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

I’m really crcking on with this place now. If I’m not very careful, it will start to look as if someone is actually living here.

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Friday 16th January 2015 – AFTER ALL THAT I SAID LAST NIGHT …

… about having loads of sun so that I could sand down the floor of the shower room, then I woke up this morning to a hanging cloud. I suppose that that was odds-on, wasn’t it?

So having put the kybosh on the sanding, first thing this morning was to put the second coat of wood treatment on the old exposed beams. That didn’t take too long, From there, I attacked the floor on the landing on the first floor.

And cutting the first floorboard took almost all of the morning. It needed three lets cut in it so that it could fit around the verticals, and they had to be cut pretty precisely. Once that had been done, I had to cut a couple of countersinks into it so that the hinges that fit into it will be flush with the surface.

go on table saw bricomarche commentry les guis virlet puy de dome franceI needed to cut some floorboarding planks into 50mm lengths to make a framework for the trapdoor, and so despite the absence of electricity I decided to put the new table saw to use.

As I suspected, it is a cheap rubbishy thing (as I suspected) but it did the job well enough once I’d worked out how to fit the guide rail. But in news that will surprise most people, but not the more cynical amongst us, the built-in measure is reading 4mm short. Good job I measure up after I cut the first one, isn’t it?

After lunch, I filed down the offcuts that I had cut so that they made a neat line, and then went off to look at the painting. My masking isn’t up to much, it seems, as I have plenty of white spaces where the masking tpe prevented the wallpaper from reching, and also some of the wood treatment on the old beams has filtered down behind the tape. I’ll have some touching up to do on Monday.

Last job tonight was to cut the second “long” plant to size. That needed trimming off and a couple of lets cut into it to fit around the verticals. That’s now done and so on Monday, another thing that I can be doing is to cut out the trap door in the lower layer of floorboards. Whnen that’s done, I can fit the last two sheets of plasterboard on the studding on the landing, and then cut out the trap on the upper layer of floorboards.

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Thursday 15th January 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the painting of the walls in the stairwell today. And I’m glad that I put a second coat of paint on the walls as they certainly needed it – when it was dry, the first coat didn’t look as well as it had looked when I was doing it.

As the colour dried out, it went darker. Consequently I tipped another litre of white paint into the 3 litres of blue paint that was left over and the paint mixer attachment that I fit into the Ryobi Plus One drill mixed it all up quite a treat. I shall be doing a little more of this paint mixing now that I know that it works.

This afternoon I started to strip off the superfluous masking and I must admit that it looks quite nice, especially the contrast between the blue paint and the wooden ceiling and window surrounds. Mind you, the removal of the masking took longer tha I expected.

Once I’d done that, I had to remask around the roof beams that are visible, and I put the first coat of dark brown wood treatment on there. The second coat will go on tomorrow morning first thing.

Finally, I cut down to size the piece of wood that I’ll be using as the end stop of the shower room floor that fits under the door. That is now fitted into place now, ready for me to start tomorrow on fitting the floor on the landing (unless we have plenty of sun in which wase I’ll be sanding down the shower room floor ready for varnishing.

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Monday 22nd December 2014 – NO WONDER …

blocked chimney les guis virlet puy de dome france … that the fire wasn’t working properly last night. Just have a look at this little lot!

Yes, the chimney was totally blocked and the smoke had no possible way of reaching the outside, except via the door and the air vents of the stove.

I consequently dismantled all of the tubing and spent over an hour cleaning everything out. And it certainly needed it too. In places it was solidly blocked.

The upshot of this all is that the small fire that I had this evening was burnt up in half an hour and the temperature had risen from 14.2°C to … errr … 34°C, and all in half an hour too. The food tonight was cooked in seconds instead of the usual couple of hours.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile exercise, cleaning the chimney. And I’m glad that I did too, because during the night we had a severe frost, the first of the year and the temperature had dropped to minus 2°C outside (lucky that I had plenty of residual heat in here). That also meant that we had one of these Alpine winter days today – not a single cloud in the sky all day. The first day like this for ages and the batteries are now fully charged at last.

fitting stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceI spent the rest of the working day on the floor. Not horizontally of course, although I did have my moments. I recut some of the horizontals for the stairs on the lower part of the staircase so that they are flush with the uprights of the stud walls. And I am well-impressed with the Ryobi plus one percussion screwdriver. That drove the big long screws home in no time – much better that with the normal screwdriver.

For lunch, I made some hummus again. This time with olives and tomatoes, and a bit more water and oil so that it was a little more damp than before. And it did taste good too.

After that, I fitted the riser for the lowest stair on the staircase, and then fitted the second layer of flooring behind it. Finally, I fitted the two pieces of plasterboard that go there.

Tomorrow, I’ll fill the screwheads in the plasterboards that I fitted today, sand them off and then fit the treads for the stairs. Once they are done, I can varnish the flooring in there and then I’ll have a couple of shelves for storage.

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Friday 19th December 2014 – NOW, HERE’S A THING!

Yes, two projects completed in a week, and two goals achieved. That’s something of a record for me, isn’t it?

floor board landing first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceAt knocking-off time at 18:00 this evening, I was just fastening down the last piece of boarding for the floor of the landing. Bang on cue, in fact.

it’s only the first layer, of course. There will be another layer on top of this, a layer that will run through into the bedroom through the doorway that you can see to the left. But to do that, I need to go round to Cecile’s to rescue the floorboarding that we stocked there when we were trying to make some room here.

It wasn’t particularly easy to do this part of the flooring, what with the stud wall being built on top of the old floorboarding. To remove thet, it’s necessary to drill a line of holes along the base of the stud wall, rather like perforations, chisel down as much a spossible, and then using a huge crowbar, prise up the flooring and hope that it breaks off along the perforations. Finally, chisel off the rough edges to make sure that it’s something like a neat line.

But I’m glad it’s done anyway. It’s not often that I reach my targets.

Mind you, I managed it despite a few interruptions. Sophie the boulangere was late coming round with the bread and that interrupted my work, waiting for her. To pass the time, I took all of the food out of Caliburn and stored it away. And then, somewhat later, we had an avalanche in the European Cardboard Box Mountain, and I had to refill one or two of the boxes and restack the Mountain. One or two of the items that fell out of one of the boxes were things that would have come in handy over the past few days – but that’s what usually happens, isn’t it?

After knocking off work, I went round to the Intermarche for the weekly shopping. And this turned out to be rather expensive, due to the fact that I bought a few other bits and pieces to nibble on for Christmas

i was on my travels during the night too. I was running ly taxi business again, and it seemed tht some of the things that I needed – the books about tourist sites all over the world that I had been making up, had “disappeared”. I spent ages climbing over the roof of some old Ford and Bedford Lorries during the pouring rain and the soaking cardboard boxes and old mattresses, but they were nowhere to be found. Being fed up of all of this, I ordered all of my staff to assemble on the Common at the back of the allotments. My intention was to give every last one of them the statutory notice to leave my employment.

I walked up there and on the way, I fell in with a girl with whom I went to school from age 5 to age 18. Strangely enough, this is a girl about whom I haven’t given even one moment of thought, whether at school or subsequently, so I don’t have a clue how it was that she put in an appearance.

This led on to a recurring dream that I have every now and again, one that is so real and vivid that I often wonder whether or not it ever did take place, but subsequently to my selling my business in 1989, and after the purchasers died, I ended up with a couple of Mzrk III cortinas and I started running the taxi business on the side again, everything totally unlicensed. I abandoned that after a few months, but a short while later, restarted yet again. Of course I know that this never happened, but it’s such a real dream, I’ve had it so often and it’s left such an impression on me that I do have to convince myself.

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Thursday 18th December 2014 – 18:00 …

… is the time that I knock off work in the winter. But today, even though I heard the reminder go off, I carried on working for another good half hour at least.

This was because I was enjoying myself today, just for a change.

Having finished what I wanted to do for now in the bar, and so I restarted work downstairs on the first floor (I’m living in the attic for the moment, which I have converted into a little studio, in case you were wondering).

plasterboard stairwell les guis virlet puy de dome franceFirst job was to finish off the plasterboarding on the upper part of the stairway up to the attic. There were three pieces that needed to be fitted, and two of them needed some intricate cutting. As well as the cutting, I needed to fit some more studding on the walls to which the plasterboard would be nailed. As a result, that took all morning to do all of that.

What didn’t help was that I had the wood for the studding propped up outside the house. And not only is it soaking wet right through, I couldn’t bring it into the house, with the scaffolding obstructing the front door. As a result I had to cut it up outside – just as well that it’s stopped raining now (we had 21mm of rain through the night, incidentally).

new floor landing first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon, I started to rip up the old flooring on the first floor landing, and I’ve begun to replace it – at least the first layer. There are going to be two layers of flooring on the first floor because I decided that I wanted some new, clean wood on the floor in the bedroom, so I’m going to nailit over what is already there.

I’ve solved the problem of how I’m going to bring things up to the first floor. It can’t come up the stairs as the turns are too tight, so the floor on the landing will be hinged so that it can be lifted up and objects pulled up through the hatch in the floor. It works fine in the barn, so why not here?

With some good music belting out of the MP3 player too – particularly the world’s second-best ever live album – this one is of course the best by a country mile, it’s hardly surprising that I kept on working until I came to a piece of flooring that needs to be cut in a complicated manner, which I’ll do tomorrow when I’m not tired.

It’s about time that I had a good day working on something that I enjoy doing.

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Monday 15th July 2013 – I’M WHACKED!

And it’s hardly surprising.

If you think that 19:40 and 19:45 is late to knock off, how about 20:35? And I was having so much fun that I would have carried on too if I hadn’t been so tired.

This morning first thing I uploaded another pile of Nova Scotia pages and I’ve now arrived at Halifax.

The Halifax pages have been on line for quite a while, and so the next step is to go to Truro and then the Stellarton/Port Glasgow conurbation.

Once those pages were up and running I dashed off a quick 2002 words (in under two hours – I was on form) for the additional notes for the Radio Anglais programmes that we record for Radio Arverne

If that wasn’t enough, I sorted out the music and wrote part of the script for the Radio Tartasse rock programmes that we do. Yes, everyone is having their money’s worth.from me today.

In the shower room, I’m ahead of myself and doesn’t that make a pleasant change for once?

Just the plasterboard on the wall at the head of the stairs and around the window to fix now – all the rest is installed and the wiring is exactly where I want it, which also makes a change.

The gaps between the window and the wall on both the outside and the inside are now sealed too and that Ryobi Plus One mastic gun is an impressive piece of kit, that’s for sure.

I must buy myself one of those without any doubt.

base shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut where I am ahead of myself is that the shower tray is installed and fitted.

With two layers of flooring, I cut out a square in the top layer with the circular saw (and that took ages to get the correct shape – in places I had to use the drill and chisel) and then I had to drill a big hole in the second layer of floor to pass the drain through.

I didn’t have a hole saw big enough for that and so I cut four smaller holes in a cloverleaf pattern and with the jigsaw cut out the bit in the middle.

And then I lined the hole with the plumbers mastic that Terry gave me, dropped the shower tray in, and then sealed it off all round. It really looks impressive – seeing a shower tray in the shower room.

Whatever next?

I had a good chat with Rachel and with Cécile on skype this evening and I won’t be doing much more as I’m whacked.

Tomorrow I’ll be checking on the sealing around the shower base, fitting the missing bits of plasterboard, and then starting to build the false wall around the shower base.

When that’s in, I can measure up for the tiles.

-6

Monday 8th July 2013 – LAST NIGHT WAS …

… so hot that it was well gone 02:00 and I still hadn’t been able to lie down. Over 25°C up here, it was.

And so I did something that I’ve only ever done once, I think, before.

That was to leave the inverter running all night and I dug out the mains desk-top fan and left that running on the “low” position all through the night.

On that position the fan makes just a gentle humming noise and I think that that rocked me gently off to sleep.

Up at the usual hour of 07:30 as well (although I didn’t feel much like it) and after breakfast I carried on with the website for at least … ohhhh … half an hour, before the first interruption of the day.

Despite having his internet fixed on Friday morning, it’s gone down again so Rob was looking for the use of my cable for half an hour or so…

Ohh yes – who’s next? Yes, there’s this local Reactionary rag called the Trou des Combrailles – the local hippies and activists feuding within its pages.

They are doing an article on wind turbines and they want to feature something about me in it, so someone was sent to interview me.

Apparently they are against wind turbines because they “look ugly”, so I asked the reporter chappy if he would rather have a nuclear power station or a coal-fired generating plant up there on the brow of the hill,

However, in common with most NIMBYs (and these environmentalists are no different that anyone else) they would rather have their electricity from a nuclear power plant next to someone else’s back yard rather than something ecologically and environmentally-friendly near to them.

Eventually I managed to attack the shower room wall seeing as how we had some kind of good clear weather.

And after much anguish looking for my other arbour (which I eventually found) it was all systems go.

breather pipe shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe hole that I started is now finished off, with the pipe cemented in place and with the outer filter fitted.

It just needs to be cut to length though on the inside of the wall and so I’ll do that when the plasterboard is in place.

As for the second hole, well…

The long arbour and the huge core drill are so heavy that I couldn’t lift the SDS drill. How I wish I had a small arbour!

There is one but that’s for an ordinary drill and so I tried that. The very small one is only a 10mm chuck but the other one is 13mm and that fitted, but I broke off the chuck key.

Tightening it up with a screwdriver didn’t work and so it was the SDS drill or nothing.

Of course, it’s a rubble wall on the interior and we collided straight away with a big lump of ironstone and that brought everything to a juddering halt.

But using the battery SDS drill with a 300mm (and then a 500mm) drill bit I spent a couple of hours breaking up the ironstone in situ and once that had been done I could attack it with the big SDS drill and the huge core drill.

By the time 19:00 came round and the power started to drop off (it IS 1400 watts, after all) I’d done well over half of the core drilling. And there was dust everywhere (and blood on my new wooden floor – drat!)

My hair was a real mess and so in the end I cut it all off and gave it a run over with the sheep shearer. After that I had a hair wash, a long chat with Marianne and another one with Cécile (her mum has had another fall and is now in hospital – a wise decision for Cecile to return).

Now I’m whacked and that is that.

Tomorrow I need to have another go with a standard SDS drill to break up some more of the rock in the wall and then, if nothing else goes wrong, finish off with the core drill.

If I can get all of that done I might have time to strip down the water filters and have a play with them.

-7