Tag Archives: hanging door

Wednesday 1st July 2015 – NOW, HERE’S A THING

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a solar shower. It’s an old enamel shower base with a wooden frame built around it and infilled with corrugated plastic roofing sheets. On top of it is a black plastic box filled with water and connected to a shower standpipe and covered with an old caravan window.

It all sits outside absorbing the heat from the sun and a couple of times a week I can have a shower. Some times though, I have to put a few litres of hot water into it to bring up the water to a comfortable temperature.

Today, though, this was the first time, so my records tell me, that I have EVER had to put cold water into it in order to cool it down to a comfortable temperature. It’s thoroughly crazy, this temperature. And even with the cold water in there, it was still flamin’ ‘ot.

Mind you, it wasn’t like that this morning. It was all overcast and cloudy. Not good weather at all, even though it was hot. And I’d left the electricity on all night and had the fan going in the bedroom to cool me down while I slept.

I was on my travels too. back at school, school uniform and all. Properly back at school although, strangely enough, I didn’t recognise any of my fellow pupils. One person who was there though was Zero whom I mentioned the other day. What’s she doing at my school?

This morning after breakfast I cracked on with the radio programmes – doing the additional notes for the Radio Arverne sessions. The first lot is half-done and I’ll finish off the rest tomorrow. Then I can start on the second show.

And ironically, by pure and utter coincidence, a major topic has appeared right out of nowhere and landed on my laptop as it were. Something very important and very topical. “A sign from the Gods” I said, and stashed it away ready for use in a week or so.

I was interrupted by the postie who brought me my circular saw. “What happened yesterday?” I asked her, and she gave me a blank look. It seems that although La Poste promises to deliver on a certain date, it receives the parcels at the central tri, in my case at St Eloy, but they don’t come out to the Post Office at Pionsat until the following day. Meantime, to cover their tracks with Amazon, they pretend to have delivered the products the previous day.

Thoroughly dishonest.

After lunch, I attacked the bathroom door. It’s now sanded down so that it fits, a washer stuck in between the top and bottom halves of the hinges so that it doesn’t scrape the floor, and the mortise latch for the door is now fitted and the handles are attached.

Even more so, the closer in the door frame has been chiseled out and the closer frame fitted, so we now have a door that opens and closes properly. This really is progress.

Tomorrow I have to drill out the bottom of the door for the air vent and cut down a floorboard or two to make all of the door jambs. When that’s all done, I can mask everywhere off and varnish all of the wood.

But it is so impressive, this door. I’m well-pleased with that.

Then I had my shower, and went off to Marcillat. It seems that I’ve been co-opted onto the management committee of Radio Tartasse and I’m not sure why. Clearly something’s afoot, and I’m not talking about that thing on the end of my leg either.

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Saturday 27th June 2015 – OOOHHHH!

fitting shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, this is rather unexpected isn’t it?

It’s not very often that you catch me working on the house on a Saturday, but here you are. We now have a shower room door in place.

It needs sanding down in a couple of places and lifting a little on the hinges but otherwise it’s not too bad a fit. Not the best that I have done, especially after all of the effort that I have put into it, but it will fit, and close too.

I’ll finish it off on Tuesday and then give it first (of three) coats of varnish.

Apart from that, I had a real struggle this morning. I was up early this morning but then crashed out in my armchair until 11:28 when someone phoned me. Had the phone not rung, I’d probably be there now still. I put it down to my voyages during the night. It was a huge forest and someone wandering about there came across the body of a man who had disappeared three years ago. The body was in a dreadful state and it quite upset the person who found it.

Next to disappear was me. I was burnt to ashes but part of my kidney survived and was posted back to me with a label attached (you can forget about all kinds of logic in these voyages)

Finally, a young girl with whom I worked 30-odd years ago -she was the next to disappear and we had to rescue her before she was murdered too.

It’s strange really. The first part of all of this relates to a case in the media yesterday where, in an apartment in caring, sharing Britain, the body of an old man was discovered. He’d been dead in there for three years, and it shows you how much his family, friends and neighbours cared about himthat even in a block of flats, no-one took any notice or interest about him and the seemingly-abandoned apartment.

The second part of course is a reference to Jack the Ripper. He sent to the police part of a kidney believed to come from one of his victims, with a label attached with the aim of taunting the police.

The third part, though – what’s this all about? I haven’t wasted one second thinking about this girl since the day that I moved on from that employment. How come she appeared?

At least, I managed to attend to the door before lunch and that really was my aim.

This afternoon, I attacked the website and began to sort out the images and the text from my Canada 2014 journey. High time I did that, as it seems that whatever I did earlier won’t ever surface off the disk of the old laptop. That looks like it’s irrevocably gone unfortunately.

Apart from that, I’ve had a good chat with Rosemary and Cécile this afternoon. It’s nice to talk to friends.

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Friday 26th June 2015 – DUNNO …

rotten sills nissan 4x4 st eloy les mines puy de dome france… who does the controle techniques around here but I hope it’s not the guy who does the controle techniques on Caliburn.

I’m the first to admit that I used to have cars with sills like this, but that was 25 years ago in another life and things were so much different in those days. I didn’t think that you would go very far with a car like this these days.

I’ve been out and about doing my shopping this evening. I know that I said that I would go to Montlucon tomorrow but I’ve ordered my circular saw by post and I don’t really need the tiles next week as I still haven’t finished the door, and then I have the ceiling to do, and I had forgotten about that.

What with having Monday off to go a-radioing, which means that I’ll have to do about 150 miles with a quarter of a tonnes of tiles in the back of Caliburn and before I go to Montlucon to buy the tiles, to empty Caliburn of all of the stuff that’s still in there.

For all of those reasons, I’ve postponed my trip to Montlucon until next weekend.

This morning, I was up early yet again and after breakfast, carried on with my website for a couple of hours. And it made me realise that I seem to have slipped rather unconsciously back into how I used to be when I lived in Belgium – doing the writing stuff in the morning before getting on with the heavy work in the afternoon. Especially as, these last few days, I’ve had the coffee machine bubbling away through the morning, such has been the amount of solar energy that I’ve received.

I’ve fitted all of the hinges to the door now and had a go at hanging it. It’s certainly the most difficult door that I have ever hung, even though I’ve taken more time over this than I have over any other door that I’ve hung.

The door wasn’t quite right – or to be more accurate, the floor isn’t quite right and the door is fouling.

using aluminium guide to cut bottom off shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve had to cut off 4mm from the foot of the door and that’s not easy without a circular saw. I’ve done it by hand with the rough-cut saw and you can see how I’ve done it.

I use a length of aluminium in “L” section as a guide, clamped to the surface and then I saw along the guide. It’s not too bad actually although it takes quite a while to do it.

I’ve not re-tried the door yet. I’ve drilled and chiselled it out for the mortice closer. I had to hunt around for one of those because there were none in the house. In the end I found three in the barn, one of which didn’t have a lock so I’m using that. Instead, I’ll fit a little bolt on the inside of the door. I mean, there’s only me who lives here so it doesn’t really make much difference.

I could have finished the door if I had had another hour or so to work, but I was distracted.

I ended up on the phone to Canada for ages. I need to register Strider (my Ford Ranger) in Canada and for that I need an insurance policy and an address. This meant hassling Service New Brunswick – it’s been four years since I first applied for a street address for my parcel of land at Mars Hill Road. Anyway, after much binding in the marsh, I now have an address and I can progress.

At the insurance company, they were rather bewildered. They haven’t had a request like mine before – a person with a foreign driving licence wishing to insure a Canadian vehicle in Canada. They eventually decided to go away and discuss things with their Head Office and see what happens. I have to phone them back on Tuesday.

And then, with going shopping, I checked the temperature in the solar shower. 37.5°C with no added hot water and that was perfect. At 17:45 then I had a glorious hot shower and it was lovely. And then I could wander off into St Eloy and the shops.

So you see what I mean about being distracted, as well as needing an extra hour to finish off.

I might even have a go at it tomorrow.

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Tuesday 17th March 2015 – THIS IS PROGRESS

hanging door bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceHere we have a door, now hanging nicely in the doorframe of the bedroom.

This morning I removed all of the masking tape and then wired up all of the electrical sockets in the bedroom (and that was something that took much longer than I anticipated too).

No bread at lunchtime, so I went into Pionsat to see the boulangère but it seems that they are exceptionally closed for the week. So that was that – I ended up having to go to the Intermarché.

And so after lunch, I attacked the door. I had to cut off about 20mm off one side to make it fit, and then I cut the lets in for the hinges. Much to my surprise, the door fotted perfectly for most of its length and width, but it was catching in places where the frame on the wall seems to be bowed.

And that was where the new belt sander fitted in. It earned its keep here, that’s for sure, sanding off where the door was tight. And in position too – it’s not that easy taking he door off, lying it flat on a surface, marking it off and then cutting off the excess. The belt sander did it in seconds.

fitting lock in bedroom door les guis virlet puy de dome franceI still had enough time to start on fitting the door lock. That’s 10mm wide and 60mm deep and so with the aid of an auger, I drilled into the door jamb as necessary. Tomorrow, I’l chisel it out to fit the lock and then drill through for the handle and key.

I’ll also fit the lock plate on the door frame, and then fit the battens to stop the door pushing through.

When that’s done, I can start to empty the room ready to do the flooring.

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Thursday 26th February 2015 – I WAS UP …

… early this morning. However this was not due to any urgent desire to get to work. I knew that I shouldn’t have finished off that bottle of pop before I went to bed.

That gave me an hour or so before starting work and so I made a start on the next month’s issue of radio programmes. I might as well put this time to good use. I made quite a bit of progress too but like anything else, there’s never enough time to do anything.

I had a good day at work today. First job was to take that sheet of floorboarding that I had made up yesterday and cut off one of the doors for the wardrobe.

Once that had been done, it needed the diagonal bracing and the door handle fitting, and then I had to organise the hinges on the door and on the frame. With that done, I could hang the door. And while it needs a little sanding where it’s tight on the frame , it’s quite a good fit.

Next task was to cut down the remaider of the sheet of floorboarding to make the second door. And then to repeat all of the above procedure as on the first door and hang that.

That was a good fit too except once more, a little tight on the frame (but sanding will take care of that of course).

However, the width was about 2mm out but I was able to deal with that by undoing the bracing, using a large sash clamp to pull the floor boards closer together and then te-attaching the bracing. That way, I recovered the 2mm that I needed and the widths are perfect, which is certainly impressing me.

two pairs of doors on wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce the bolt had been fitted on one of the door and the lock and magnetic catch fitted to the second door, then we now have two pairs of doors on the wardrobe and this is starting to look serious.

Knocking off for lunch 15 minutes late and knocking off for the evening 45 minutes late – you can see just how much time and effort that I’m putting into this bedroom. I don’t understand why it’s not progressing much quicker than it is. That’s something of a complete mystery to me.

Tomorrow, I’ll be fitting the shelving brackets and then cutting the shelves to fit. That is, provided that we have some sun. Today, we were bathed in a hanging cloud all day, solar energy was nominal and the batteries didn’t half creak when I was running the circular saw. We need a good day pretty soon.

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Wednesday 7th January 2015 – NOW THIS IS REAL PROGRESS.

door cupboard behind stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou’ll notice that the cupboard at the back of the stairs has now grown a door. It’s amazing justwhat you can do with four floorboard planks, a handful of screws, two hinges and a tin of clear varnish.

And I do have to say that I am so impressed with this door -almost as much as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

It’s not perfect – for a start the hinges are not perfectly vertical so the door opens under its own weight when the bolt is undone, but bearing in mind that I knew nothing about carpentry before I started on this house

It took me all morning to hang the door, mainly beczuse I had to chisel out the lets in the doorframe in order to fit the hinges. I had also to go rooting around in the barn to find some laths to use as backing on the doorframe, and to cut down the panel over the door, so I’m not surprised about the time that it took;

After lunch I cracked on woth filling in the plasterboard. There was still a great deal that I could reach without the ladder, but tomorrow I’ll definitely be needing to use that. I’ll have to remember to unbolt it from Caliburn’s roof;

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Tuesday 24th January 2012 – WE WERE RECORDING …

… again this morning. This time in Marcillat for Radio Tartasse.

We finished the “winter driving” features and started on a new topic, which is the “talking rubbish” bit – may as well try to keep the programmes in sync.

But in a startling piece of news, I’ve been asked by Radio Tartasse if I would present a Sunday-night rock music show. Now, that’s something interesting and I’ll have a go at working something out for this. It’s always been an ambition of mine to do something like this.

Back here I decided in view of the miserable and depressing weather that I would stay in and make headway on my Trans-Labrador Highway presentation.

But first I repaired the doorway into the attic room. The top hinge has pulled out of the door frame (which isn’t all that surprising because it’s only a 10mm piece of hardboard) and the door has been falling off.

But while I’ve been tidying up in the barn I found some 400mm strap hinges and so I screwed one of those to the top of the door – having first wedged it into position. Now it opens and closes perfectly.

Second task was when I went to clean the glass door to the stove, I noticed that part of the sealing gasket had fallen out. No wonder it’s not drawing properly and the room is filling slowly with smoke.

Luckily I have some fireproof mastic and so I sealed it with that, and it worked so much better after that.

I didn’t get much done at my presentation though, as I crashed out for a few hours. I’m getting over-tired again.

I did manage to wake up in time to cook tea, and I made myself a spicy aubergine and kidney bean casserole that will keep me going for three days. And it’s the best I’ve ever made, it really is.

But I’m off to have an early night. If anything, crashing out has made me even more tired.

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Thursday 17th November 2011 – HAVE A CLOSE …

gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… look at this photo and see if you can spot where the Gorge de la Sioule might be.

It’s one thing I like about going out to Liz and Terry’s early in the morning – the fact that they live right on the edge of the gorge. And because the gorge is so deep and so steep the sun can’t shine into it until it has well-risen.

That means that the surrounding ground is quite warm whereas at the bottom of the gorge the air is quite cold and damp. And when the sun is high enough to enter the gorge it dramatically heats the cold damp air and you have clouds of condensation rising up from the gorge quite spectacularly.

Liz had to do some kind of newspaper interview the other week, in which she described the Combrailles as “The Land That Time Forgot”, and you can see clearly exactly what she means by that.

mont dore puy de sancy puy de dome franceBut it’s not just that view from here (in case you haven’t guessed, we’re at the bird-watching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne again) that is spectacular. There’s a spectacular view across to the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore away over there.

All swathed in a hanging cloud or two too.

And if I’m not mistaken, I reckon that I can see some snow up there too. Winter is definitely icumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

It’s a litle-known fact that when the system of départements was created, what is today the départements of the Puy-de-Dome was to be called the départements of Mont-Dore – which is after all the most significant feature of the region. However, the locals objected, saying that it sounded too much like the mont d’or – a mountain made of gold – and would give the impression that this was an extremely wealthy region.

And so today Terry and I bricked up one of the doorways (their house is two small cottages knocked into one) and fitted the window in the upper half, and then fitted the new door in the other doorway.

And it wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think either. The old doors had been made-to-measure for the doorways and of course, as we discovered as we were trying to fit everything, the door openings were not built straight. That was a complication we didn’t need.

Fitting the door was exciting though. We spent 10 minutes trying to make it seat on the hinge pins,and you’ve no idea how easily it fitted when we took out the wedge that was trapped underneath it.

And we also spent half an hour trying everything that we could to make the door close and you’ve no idea how well it closed when we took the packing strip out of the aluminium closing tray.

Ahhh well. You live and learn, I suppose.

Anyway,tomorrow I’ll be fitting the wind turbine if the weather holds, and now that I have my diamond core drills, I’ll be drilling from the house through into the lean-to and running cables there.

If I’m not careful,I might even have light and power in there tomorrow night.

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Tuesday 20th October 2009 – And so, to make up for last night …

attic door hanging stud wall… you can have two images this evening.

The first image is of the door, which is now hanging where it is supposed to be.

And not without some effort either. Don’t look too closely at it as it’s a bit of a mess.

I told you that the door was too large for the opening that I made, and I cut the bottom of the door so that the height was perfect. One of the edges needed to be trimmed and as the doorframe is out of perpendicular (how on earth did that happen?) it needed to be cut in a slight diagonal. And I was halfway through the cut when I realised I was cutting it upside down so the diagonal was going the wrong way. So now we have an an inverted arrowhead-shaped door, a padded doorframe on the bottom half of one side and on the other side the hinges on the top have had to be shimmed with washers.

In fact, it’s quite a shambles from that point of view.

But on the other hand, I mortised the door latch and lock into the frame and I’m quite impressed with how that has come out. I’ve also chiselled out the door so that the hinges will sit flush to the surface, and that’s turned out quite well. It closes absolutely perfectly so all in all, with that part of it it’s turned out quite well.

wall tiling floor tiling concrete base attic wood stoveThat was the morning and some of the afternoon taken care of, and for the rest of the afternoon I tiled the concrete pad that I had laid on Saturday. That’s turned out quite well too, and when it’s finished off it will look quite nice. I’m going to get some small bricks and build a raised edge to it, to stop ashes and the like falling onto the floor. I was planning to get those on Monday in Montlucon but those people who wanted to talk to me about fitting solar panels – they never got back to me. A pity that, as I would have gone into Montlucon on Saturday instead of going to St Eloy.

Mond you, going to St Eloy on Saturday had two noteworthy items that were so noteworthy that I forgot to mention them.
Firstly, LIDL now has the Christmas goodies in, so I bought a couple of bars of marzipan. They also do some nice soggy gingerbread biscuity things covered in plain chocolate, and that’s this weekend’s Christmas purchase.
Secondly, I saw an Opel Ascona (Vauxhall Cavalier to the Brits reading this) on the Carrefour car park, and it had rotten sills. Now when was the last time you saw a car with rotten sills? Back in the 70s and 80s I was welding sills onto cars all of the time but how often do you see a rotten car now? When I had my taxis I was buying 8 year-old cars and having to weld them up. You don’t ever do that now. In fact the last time I had my welding stuff out was to patch the Passat exhaust and I was still living with Laurence and Roxanne, so that’s at least 10 years ago.

Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on the varnishing of the tongue and grooving. That’s what I call progress.

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Monday 19th October 2009 – No photo today, folks.

I was too busy.

I started off this morning with the door to the room. Now you may remember that I carefully measured the door, worked out exactly how large the door opening needed to be, and I constructed it perfectly. And badger me if the door, the contrary item that it is, hasn’t grown 1cm in height and 2cms in width since I measured it and constructed the opening!

Luckily the circular saw rose to the task and dealt with the bottom and just as I was getting ready to do the side, Dave stuck his head around the door. So we spent the rest of the morning discussing the plumbing arrangements for the house. He reckons he can get something sorted out for me and he’ll teach me how to do plumbing next spring when he’s over again.

That reminds me – listening to 2 advertising executives talking about a colleague
“I taught him all he knows”
“All he knows?”
“Yes, all he knows. Not all I know – just all HE knows”

In the afternoon Dave helped me get my bed up into the attic and then we discussed the old office desk I have in the barn. I used it as a workbench but seeing as I made a new workbench last year it’s been redundant. So why don’t we get it into the attic?

Famous last words, those. I don’t know if anyone remembers Bernard Cribbins and “Right Said Fred“? That’s how we were up all the stairs. But it dismantles much more than you might think when you look closely at it, especially when you have it stuck halfway up a ladder and you can neither take it up nor down. So after much exertion and a great deal of bad language I now have a desk up there.

In February he’s thinking of going down to Southern Spain for some sun. I saw a photo of Gibraltar harbour the other day and I must admit that it did look quite enticing, especially with Africa looming just across the straits. I might be tempted to tag along if I can find some dosh.

And talking of voyages, Danielle was talking at the Anglo-French group tonight about going to the USA when she retires, but she doesn’t want to go alone. Perhaps I ought to look into this kind of thing as some kind of alternative career – professional holidaymaker-cum-companion-cum-guide-cum-bodyguard
“That’s a lot of …..”
“You said that the other day!”

But I dunno about an alternative career, whether I might have time for one, for following on to my posting last night I have been asked by the local correspondent for the local rag if I might accompany her to the Potato Fair (we don’t half have some fun events round here) at La Cellette on Sunday. Now that’s an invitation I find very hard to turn down, and for more reasons than just one!

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Monday 21st September 2009 – I WAS QUITE HAPPILY …

… working away upstairs when I happened to glance it the time.

Blimmin’ ‘eck – 18:40. And I have to be in St Eloy all dressed up and looking pretty by 19;30.

Of course, as you know already if you have been following my blog, the days when superheroes such as myself could whizz into a telephone box in our day clothes, do a quick twirl and whizz out again dressed as our alter egoes have long gone thanks to the technological revolution that has seen the rise of the portable telephone and the consequent fall of the public telephone box.

Hence we have to get washed, shaved and dressed like you mere mortals and that takes time. Better get my skates on.

wall insulation counter battens attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo what had I been doing that had taken all of the time?

First thing was to bring a whole pile of battens upstairs into the attic. The way I’m progressing I won’t any longer be able to bring 4-metre lengths of wood upstairs via the stairs. That took a while too.

Then I put battens on the wall where my desk is going to be, and xylophened them. I’m making it a kind of policy to xylophene any wood that is coming into contact with any of the wood that is already up there.

That took me to lunchtime.

After lunch I fitted the insulation and then fitted the three floor panels in that corner. I’ll be needing an offcut too to fill a small width.

fitting door into stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceFrom here it starts to get exciting – I brought the door upstairs.

A cheap British B&Q glass door that I bought in a sale ages ago. You can see where it’s going to fit when it’s installed (it’s just leaning against the post right now). The stairs are going to turn away from the door at 90 degrees, go halfway down and then do a U turn. To the right of the door is where my desk and office stuff will be, and underneath the office space is where the shower room will be.

Once I had put the door into the position where I want it, I measured up the floor so that I know where the left-hand upright will go, and then measured the floor so I know where to fit the two traverse beams that will support the floor that people will walk on as they enter the room via the door.

And it was doing that when I happened to notice the time.

At St Eloy we were 8, if I remember correctly, and our task for this evening was to look at faces and write down what we imagined were the lifestyles of the people depicted. And then we had a very congenial session in the bar afterwards.

Participating in the Anglo-French group is as much about socialising with congenial people as it is practising and improving our “second” language.

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