Tag Archives: garage

Wednesday 9th March 2011 – The situation here now is …

 that Terry and I have started on the odd jobs. It seems that major tasks for the two of us have finished.

I didn’t paint my doors today for the simple reason that the paint that I bought is nothing like the correct colour and so we decided that just the one coat (that which I put on yesterday) would be enough. And so I spent all morning scrubbing the floor in the cupboard and then mopping it out.

This afternoon I scrubbed the wall at the back of the terrace at the back of the apartment. It’s come up really clean and ready for a nice coat of white stone paint. Just the thing to set off the black tiles that we put on the floor. To finish off the day, I sanded down the doorframe of the front door – outside in the hallway. That will have a coat of gleaming white gloss first thing tomorrow – it’ll be the first thing that prospective purchasers will see so it needs to look good.

Terry was busy too, doing all kinds of things around and about. He’s also hung the curtains in the living room, taken another huge pile of stuff down to the garage, and been moving stuff around in the living room.

Liz though has been extremely busy. She’s been scrubbing the parquet floor in the living room, sanding it down with an electric sander, spreading about some liquid wax that I found in the garage, and then polishing it up with Terry’s electric car polisher. And do you know what? The results are quite impressive. It’s flaming hard work though and she was exhausted afterwards and so to save everyone’s energy I took everyone to the fritkot for tea. The food there is really quite good and I thoroughly recommend it.

In other news, I’ve posted on the internet a trial page of my Trans-Labrador Highway tour from last autumn. It’s the page where I visit Red Bay, the site of the 16th Century Basque whaling station. Have a read of it and let me know what you think as I have a cunning plan involving this page and so it needs to be good.

Thursday 8th July 2010 – Wahey!

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sheets barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I now have a barn roof duly completed, complete with ridge tiles and guttering, all cut nicely to shape.

We started off this morning by bending the ridge tiles to fit before we took them up and in 45 minutes with no worries and no panic they were all fitted. I wouldn’t say “nicely” but they are all on and firmly fixed and cover up the ridge of the roof.

And then the fun began.

We coupled up an inverter to power the jigsaw for cutting the sheets but the inverter burnt out. So after some messing around we went on a tour of the local shops in Youx, Montaigut en Combraille and St Eloy les Mines for a decent heavy-duty metal saw but without luck. We then tried another inverter and the Scorpion saw but that was no better. In the end we had a brainwave – and the Ryobi circular saw came to the rescue. It badgered up the blade well and truly but it did an excellent job.

But then we realised that the roof had been cut too long and the blade was too badly damaged for another cut, so Terry fetched his huge battery-powered saw and as luck would have it the blade off my 650-watt mains saw fitted right on.

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sheets barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceAll that remained was to fix the guttering. We did as much of that as we could but we didn’t have an angled joint for the bend, and it was too sharp to wrap the guttering around. I can do that at a later date, or else I’ll have to invent something.

I also need to re-position one of the brackets at the end of the roof but that can be a ladder job too.

solar panels aspire recycled plastic slates house roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce all of that had been done, we needed to take down the scaffolding. No reason to leave that up against the barn when it can be doing other things.

But before we did that I climbed up on the roof to seize the opportunity to take a photo of the house and the solar panels. I haven’t had a good shot of those yet. And it looks as if I’ll have to fix the guttering on the house roof before I’m much older, doesn’t it?

Now the scaffolding is down and Terry has gone and it’s all absolutely superb. I’m really impressed and a major thanks to Terry for giving me so much help and getting me organised.

Krys asked me what I intend to do in the barn when it’s finished. In fact it’s going to be for storage, a workshop for joinery and engineering projects, and a garage workshop for my collection of old cars that I can now go and rescue.

Tomorrow will be a day off as I’m whacked. And I sincerely hope it rains buckets because I’ll go outside and watch it.

And yet another solar shower this evening. I’ve abandoned (for the moment) the LIDL garden shower and am using a hand-held shower head.