Tag Archives: glass

Friday 27th March 2016 – WE NOW HAVE …

varnished floor skirting board les guis virlet puy de dome france… a fully-varnished floor – three coats of varnish on there and I hope that that will do the trick and seal it all properly.

It does look nice, I do have to say. And at 90 minutes per coat, so it ought to. It’s much better than my first idea of putting laminate over the old floorboards and I do wish now that I had done this in the attic.

You’ll also notice the skirting board. That’s fitted all of the way round now. Glued and nailed on two sides, and just nailed on the third side whzre it’s packed out from the wall. I had some long nails and they went through the packing and right into the battens up against the wall, so the tack nails will hold the skirting board to that. Which is just as well, because this glue is rubbish. More Brico Depot garbage.


glass pane in frame above door bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe also have a glass pane in the frame above the door.You can see the transit sticker on there, which I left on for the purpose of the photo.

What astonished me was that I managed to bring it home the other day, carry it upstairs via the obstacle course downstairs and then fit it into position, without dropping it or otherwise breaking it. That has to be somethig of a first.


clothes rail wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd this is certainly progress.

We have some clothes rails now in the wardrobe/ I’ve emptied one of the wardrobes in the attic and hung the clothes in the wardrobe. This is a sure sign that the work has practically come to an end in the bedroom.

I’ve started to dismantle the big wzrdrobe in the attic, and I’ll finish that off, empty the other one and dismantle that, and them move the rest of the clothes and the chests of drawers downstairs too. I can’t believe how much room I’m going to have in the attic when I’ve done that.

It was however astonishing to see how much dust had accumulatred under the wardrobe. It was a case of shovelling it out rather than brushing it out.

Last thing was the shower. The verandah was a warm 24°C and the water was a hot 59°C so a heated shower was absolutely gorgeous. Now I’m nice and clean, with nice clean clothes and nice clean hair.

How long can I keep this up?

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Wednesday 25th March 2015 – I DID WELL …

… to light a little fire up here last night. I awoke to a relatively balmy 16.2°C and yet outside we had 5cms of snow. So much for Spring, hey?

And I’d been on my travels during the night too. I had aroused the antipathy of the factory bully who ended up chasing me around the factory brandishing an enormous club. He was intercepted by a few of his colleagues who persuaded him to use a slightly smaller club. But it all ended happily ever after as I ended up walking across the park towards some buildings in the distance, hand in hand (and later, arm round the waist) of a girl who, over the past two or three weeks, has appeared out of nowhere to accompany me on several of my nocturnal adventures. I’ve absolutely no idea at all what has prompted the strange inclusion of this unexpected companion, no matter how sweet many of the people in the park described the pair of us last night.

After breakfast I used up the rest of the cheap varnish on the window and the shelves in the wardrobe, and then I varnished the floor with the first coat. After that, I went off to Montlucon as I predicted.

First stop was Pionsat to sort out the boulangère. Sophie, the regular Friday livreuse, is off sick and so they’ve been taking on anyone that they can get. That explains all of the confusion about the delivery of Friday’s bread, and I hope that we’ve managed to sort it out.

At the LIDL I witnessed a very disagreeable incident of a young guy verbally abusing the young female cashier over the price of an article (but he cleared off before I could have a word in his shell-like) and then at the Auchan I stocked up with the next month’s major supply of food.

At Brico-Depot I managed to forget the floor-join and the brush for the bedroom door but I managed to fix myself up with some tackle to make a couple of Heath-Robinson hanging rails for the wardrobe, as well as a couple more 4-watt LED light bulbs. I also bumped into Pete Marsh and his friend, who were stocking up on supplies for their next contract.

I was disappointed though – the cheap but good varnish is no longer carried. It seems that the supplier has closed down. So to be on the safe side, I bought another large tin of the expensive stuff just in case. If I don’t use it, it’ll come in handy for the ground floor.

Problem solved though over the road at mr Bricolage. They had big tins of cheap clear varnish on offer so I bought one,as well as the glass that I need to do the window over the door. I’ve managed to bring that home in one piece – it’ll be interesting to see if I can manage to get it into the doorframe without dropping it.

NOZ came up with nothing so I came home, crashed out for an hour and then made myself a Heath-Robinson meal of a handful of pasta, sone peas, carrots and green beans, and some olive oil and mustard sauce. Cooked on the oven because I’ve had the fire on again tonight. The left-over wood from last night-s fire and a floorboard offcut and that was sufficient. It’s amazing what you can do with a good fire.

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Saturday 1st September 2012 – IT’S HARD …

… to believe that not so long ago, I was up here in my attic melting away to nothing, totally unable to move with the heat.

This evening, not two weeks later, there were about 150 of us shivering to death on the terraces of the football ground in Pionsat.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The footy has restarted.

veterans teams fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football puy de dome france We had a little competition between a few of the local sides followed by a friendly match between two veterans’ XIs – one of which represented the old team of Pionsat and the other the old team of St Hilaire before the fusion.

And believe me, some of these veterans cut still mutt the custard in the lower leagues of the Puy-de-Dome District Football League.

The final match of the night was the final friendly of the season (if any match with the Miners can be called “a friendly”) between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and Nord-Combraille.

mattthieu malnar wins the cup fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceFC Pionsat St Hilaire won that encounter at something of a canter thanks to a blistering 3-minute spell midway through the second half when they stuck three into the Miners’ net.

What was even more interesting was that FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no recognised striker on the field. Cedric wasn’t there, and it appears that Jérome (who is probably the best player I have seen in Division One) and Thomas (who on his day is as good as anyone) have left the club.

But there were two players out there new to the team, one of whom I’ve seen playing at AS Marcillat last season, who took the Miners apart.

There was another guy called Rene, who I saw play once last season and who looked thoroughly unfit back then, who seems to have been working hard in close-season and ran the opposition ragged throughout the game.

les guis energies renouvelables fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceWhat is even more interesting from my point of view is that my signboard is up, as you can see on the perimeter fencing.

I’m something of a sponsor of the club, not in a big way of course, and that gives me the right to have a signboard.

I don’t expect that too much will come of it, but it’s advertising all the same and no advertising is ever wasted.

Furthermore, it shows solidarity with the local community and that is also very important in my opinion. Participating in the community means that you are no longer an outsider and in my opinion, all ex-pats should make some kind of active participation in the community.

As for the weather, I closed all of the windows on Thursday evening which is just as well as the temperature has taken a dramatic plunge. Last night it bottomed out at 5.5°C, a far cry from nights that didn’t drop below 30°C just 12 or so days ago.

What is even harder to believe is that despite it being Saturday, I’ve been working outside – on the lean-to in case you haven’t guessed.

This morning I wrote up the additional notes for the October radio programmes (I intend to be well ahead in the future) and then I went into St Eloy-les-Mines to do the shopping.

I spent absolutely nothing extra although I did go into Cheze, the DiY place, and buy the glass that I needed (€4:80 – made me wonder why I bought that sheet of perspex in the week).

I managed to bring the glass back without breaking it and then trying to find a safe place to put it until Monday, I reckoned in the end after much reflection that the safest place to put it was into the window frame.

And hence the work on a Saturday.

till, it’s in now. One less thing to worry about and one less job to do on Monday and I can have an extra 15 minutes in bed to compensate.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my first Sunday off for ages. And I’m going to have a lie-in and then do nothing all day.

Just you watch someone ring me up at 10:00 and spoil it!

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Thursday 30th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I was going to do today.

I was up early and spent a few hours on the computer as usual, but it was after that that it all started to go wrong

Finding a fully-charged battery for the Hitachi SDS drill was the first issue that I had, and once I’d managed that, then drilling the brick pillars has caused some of the bricks to split. That’s annoying to say the least.

But anyway the window frames are fitted and that’s something. Next plan was to fit the fascia boards to the end of the chevrons on the lean-to,

However, in an astounding achievement the type of which surely only I can be capable, it seems that having cut the wood to the right length, I somehow have managed to discard the piece that I want and I’ve painted the off-cut instead.

As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”

I didn’t get much done after lunch as the phone rang. The handbrake on Marianne’s son’s car has ceased to function and so could I look at it.

He brought it round and I dismantled the rear end (brake drums held on by the wheel bearings, how I hate that!) to find that the auto adjusters aren’t working. So no surprise as the handbrake needs 12 clicks to work.

I reset the adjusters but that didn’t do much so crawling underneath the car, it turns out that the cable adjuster (there’s one of them too) has slipped out of position. I reset that and now the brakes will stop that little Twingo on a sixpence.

But that cable is totally weird. Most cars have one single cable and there’s a slider at the centre of tha cable that’s attached to the handbrake arm so that the brakes pull evenly, and when you work the manual adjuster, the adjuster works on both brakes.

But not the Twingo.

There’s no slider at all but just a single fitting on the end of the handbrake arm, and two cables, one for each rear brake on each side.

Consequently although moving the manual adjuster will tighten up the cable, it doesn’t equalise the brakes. If one side is lack, then tightening up the cable adjuster will over-tighten the good side.

It took us ages therefore to adjust the brakes correctly, setting up the automatic adjusters individually by trial and error until they were equal, and then tightening up the cable adjuster.

And then of course we had the issue of refitting the hubs and bearings, and torquing up the nuts. That’s something I really hate doing.

Back on the lean-to afterwards (just as well I finished the car as we had a torrential storm straight afterwards), I’ve fitted one window pane (one of them survived having a ladder thrown on it) and the second one is ready to cut.

But by this time, it was 19:00 and I was well fed up, so I called it a day.

And tea tonight? Courgette and lentil curry. You can see that things are going berserk in the garden right now.

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Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

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Saturday 11th August 2012 – Damn Damn Damn Damn!!!!

I went into Commentry this afternoon to do my shopping. I didn’t buy anything too exciting but I spent up at the Bricomarché.

And it was there that I had a disaster.

No glass there – all sold out. But the guy there did have a rummage around and managed to find some offcuts of glass that would do to make the windows for the lean-to.

So he cut them to size and I put them carefully on the floor in the back of Caliburn.

I then took the ladder off the roof of Caliburn so that I could put all the guttering up there. No room on the roof rack to put the ladder back and so without thinking, I simply threw the ladder into the back of Caliburn as I would normally do.

The crash and tinkle told its own story. Nick Lowe might love the sound of breaking glass, but I didn’t.

This morning I was going to work and I managed to select the music for one of the four rock programmes that I need to do, but then I was sidetracked and didn’t do very much after that.

And back home after the shopping I crashed out until 19:30 and if someone hadn’t ‘phoned me up I would still be asleep now.

Dunno what’s the matter with me just now. I’m going to have to put more effort into concentrating on what I ought to be doing.

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Thursday 9th August 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

And I’m not just talking about the weather either, although that was certainly superb.

This morning was an early start and that found me in Montaigut-en-Combraille with Terry and Rob where we spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting a semi-derelict building in the town.

We have big plans for this – well, actually we don’t, but the whole purpose of being there this morning was to measure it up and then draw up big plans for it.
Never mind a cunning plan, we will have several cunning plans for this place.

While Terry and Rob went off to chat amongst themselves I went off to the mairie to have a chat with the mayor of Montaigut-en-Combraille about what our intentions are.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, because times are changing in France when there is a question of foreign money being invested in these small semi-abandoned rural towns) she was quite co-operative and gave me loads of help, even introducing me to her deputy who was the kind of person who would really take an interest in this kind of project.

Back home, I started to turf out of the lean-to all of the accumulated breeze blocks, large stones and so on that I won’t be using again up there so that there would be plenty of space for me to move around.

But then the weather intervened – in the sense that by 13:00 the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up.

With all of this surplus energy around, out came the big drill and YESSSSSSSSSSS I finally pushed the core drill right through the wall and into the house.

I’ve even managed to feed the plastic pipe through the wall and so now, next time that it’s too wet to work, I’ll be running three sets of cables through the tube – a 230-volt power line, a 12-volt power line and a 12-volt light line, and then starting to wire everything up

This afternoon I was round at Liz and Terry’s doing the rear brakes on her car. Pretty straightforward of course but I was having issues with fitting the springs what with a lime burn on my thumb – how I managed that on Monday after all this time without one is another one of those total mysteries.

So tomorrow I’ll be fitting the woodwork for the windows and painting it all (I still have tons of this excellent LIDL wood treatment stuff), and then sorting out some wood to make a fascia panel across the exposed ends of the roof chevrons to keep the weather out of the ends of the chevrons.

That wood will be painted too.

I’ll measure up for the glass fit what guttering that I have lying around, and then on Saturday I’ll go into Commentry to buy the glass and the rest of the guttering.

Coming on in leaps and bounds now!

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