Tag Archives: installing floor joist

Thursday 17th December 2009 – "In the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan ….

severe winter 2009 les guis virlet puy de dome france…. earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”
You know, I had no idea that Christina Rossetti lived here in the Combrailles. Last night the temperature outside dropped to -7.1 and in the heat exchanger it plummeted to -10. Consequently in order to get through the ice in my water butts so that I could have some water, I went in search of the pickaxe.

Now that a wind has sprung up blowing the snow everywhere the temperature has warmed up to a balmy -1.5. It might even struggle up above freezing point tomorrow if we are lucky – the first time since Sunday afternoon.

This morning I actually managed to hear the alarm and so I was up and about comparatively early. I went straight into St Eloy to purchase my Christmas present at LIDL and luckily they still had some in stock. Of course I can’t tell you what it is as I don’t open my presents until Christmas morning. On my way to St Eloy that weird golden thing put in an appearance for 10 or 15 minutes and then it was back to the snow again.

From there I went round to Pionsat to speak to the new owners of the “Queue de Milan” where our group meets on the first Monday of every month. It turns out that the previous owners had forgotten to mention us to him.
“Do you eat here then?” he asked
so I explained to him about our group and how, as it happens, he might be able to do something for us for our Christmas meal.
The conversation then turned to other matters and one of the subjects we discussed was the football and how they were discouraged by the previous owners. With the ground being right next to the hotel I reckoned he should do his best to talk to them.
“Will they eat here after the match then?”
Ahhhhh – right. Not a hotelier, not a bar keeper, just a restauranteur.
Pionsat is a typical small Auvergnat town of maybe 1200 people if it’s lucky. It’s true that there’s no other restaurant for a good few miles but then again the place is hardly heaving with people. A place like the “Queue de Milan” should be the focal point of the area with its hotel, its bar, its little salle de fetes and, yes, its restaurant. It should be all of those things. The previous owners tried to run it as just a restaurant, closing down the bar as the football ground turfed out and things like that, but that of course went tits-up. So if the new owners are trying to follow the pattern then it will end in its own logical conclusion.

Which of course reminds me – the “Queue de Milan” being the hotel-restaurant for the area. Many people are now getting into the detailed planning for Christmas and looking for places to eat out over the festive season. Many ex-pats such as myself live in deplorable circumstances in the middle of house renovations and the like. This is the time that family and friends like to be together and if you don’t have the facilities to lodge your guests you stick ’em up in the local hotel.

So it’s no surprise to anyone for me to tell you that the “Queue de Milan” is closing down tomorrow and reopening on the 4th January once the festive season has ended. And they complain that the business isn’t paying. It beggars belief.

After that I went round to Claude’s. He’s finished with my acrows (he’s only had them for 8 years) and he’s also found the rotavator attachment for my brushcutter, the three-wheeled lawnmower and a few other things. So Caliburn and I went round to pick them up. And what a surprise! He’s been tidying up and found in the pigsty his reserve stock of metal window shutters. They are now surplus to requirements and so he heaved them into the back of Caliburn. That was really nice of him!

So having got the morning out of the way this afternoon I fitted the vertical that I was trying to fit in the dark yesterday – it’s amazing just how easy everything is in the daylight when you can see what you are doing. I followed that by cutting and shaping another vertical which I then installed. And that then split up the vertical length by a good foot. Luckily it’s split outward from the joint so that the weight is still being taken by the unsplit part. I drilled and screwed it to keep it together but I’m fed up of this awful crappy wood from Brico Depot. This is the second one that’s split on me. Someone ought to take the quality control manager outside and shoot him.

Tomorrow I’ll be cutting and fitting the three last beams and once they are in position I can do the remainder of the stairs. I also have some floor to fix as well – I narrowed the stairwells as you might remember so the part between the old beam and the new beam needs to be floored over. That has to be done before I fit the second half of the stairs.

And I also have to go to Glastonbury in the very near future. Someone had seriously annoyed me and they and their entourage are going to be on the receiving end of a really good kicking.

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Tuesday 22nd September 2009 – I SPENT MOST OF THE MORNING …

fitting load spreading joists in attic floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… putting these two crossbeams in. This is where the door into the room will be.

You can see that the old beam in centre-pic is pretty well eaten. I can’t rely on that supporting the weight of people continually coming and going, especially when I knock down the wall underneath it in the very near future, and so it needs plenty of reinforcement to spread the load.

fitting new joists attic floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut these beams have to go in exactly right if they are to do any good. Millimetre-perfect is almost essential so you have to cut the lets undersize and the beams oversize and file them down until they fit. That’s what takes the time.

This afternoon I was interrupted by a couple of visitors. Firstly, Terry and Liz turned up, to borrow back their cement mixer. Terry, keen reader of my blog that he is, has suggested that I go with him tomorrow late afternoon to collect a ton of gravel and take it to his house.
“You have to say the magic words” I said.
“Liz is baking” he replied.

After Terry and Liz left I carried on and fitted some more flooring and tried out Rhys’ idea of screwing the plasterboard. Lucky I bought a pile of 4×60 screws. And with the drill on the lowest speed setting and with a low torque setting it drove the screws up nicely. I’ll try some more of this.

But I wasn’t at all in the mood for carrying on working as my second group of visitors brought me some news that has left me numb. Followers of my blog from its previous home will recall that back in early spring I had an “interaction” with a local farmer that got rather out of hand and attracted the attention and involvement of the local gendarmes.

Criminal charges were preferred and a summons was issued, and when the gendarmes went to serve it on the aforementioned farmer, I very much regret to say that they discovered him no longer in a position to receive it.

I’m totally devastated by this as I’m sure everyone else in the locality is. I don’t hate anyone at all so much that I wish them dead. This guy, much as he was a thoroughly obnoxious character, was quite simply a guy living a traditional French peasant lifestyle and caught up in a changing world with which he was in no condition to cope.

I just hope that wherever he has ended up, he is happier there than he clearly was round here.

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Friday 18th September 2009 – MORE HEAVY ENGINEERING.

fitting stud wall attic reinforcing flooring les guis virlet puy de dome franceIf you look at the pic you’ll notice firstly that I’ve added the second floor beam. The gap in between the two new ones is just over 65cms and that’s going to be the width of the stairs.

There’s also a cross-beam added to the floor. This is embedded in the two new beams and the two older beams to the left. The third beam (the first of the old ones) is rather thin, having been devoured by some kind of obnoxious animal And as this beam will be taking the weight of people entering into the room in the attic and the wall that’s holding it up going to be knocked out, there will be a few more cross beams to spread the load.

The second upright is in, and all the cross pieces have been added. It looks rather like Richard Hauptman’s Ladder except that it’s much stronger. It will be to the right of here that I’ll be installing my desk and office (such as it is) and the bathroom will be underneath.

fitting new floor joist stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took me ages to make all of the joints and to cut the wood to size, but you have to do it properly – not like my first attempt – the verandah – where you can walk in through the gaps in the joints.

In this case I cut the wood slightly over-long and the joints slightly under-size and then filed everything down to fit. And it isn’t half impressive – all millimetre-perfect.

After that I mixed some cement and went round and filled in some of the holes in the wall that I missed.

As I have said, you can tell when I’m enjoying myself by the time it is that I knock off. 19:20 today, and I knew it too, but there was no way I was going to stop until I’d finished what I set out to do.

For the music today, I had just one double album on continuous loop – another album that has been on my playlist almost from the day it came out. It’s surprising how many live albums are on my playlist but this is one that beats almost every one – Dire Straits’ best album by a million miles, Alchemy Live.

Besides having the very best Dire Straits track ever, the vastly underrated “Telegraph Road”, it contains in my opinion the definitive versions of “Sultans of Swing” and “Tunnel of Love” – the latter with the line
From Cullercoats to Whitley Bay
reminding me of a trip I made from Cullercoats to Whitley Bay a couple of years ago in the company of someone who is no longer with us.

What I don’t like about the album though is Mel Collins. There is no place in a good rock band for a saxophone as indeed Mark Knopfler admits in “Sultans of Swing”
Don’t give a damn about any trumpet-playing bands
It ain’t what they call “Rock and Roll!
and furthermore I absolutely detest with a fury those bands that bring on “special guest stars” to augment their numbers.

If I go to a concert I expect to see the band performing on its own and to hear the music that they can play. If I wanted to hear Mel Collins and his blasted saxophone (not that I do) I’d go and find a King Crimson concert somewhere.

Tomorrow is shopping day again. Insulation, tongue-and-grooving, varnish, wallpaper, paste, filler and tape (GRRRR at Krys and Rhys) paint tiles, refractory tile cement and a woodstove.

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Thursday 17th September 2009 – I STARTED ON THE HEAVY ENGINEERING TODAY

fitting new joists stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve fitted the first of the new floor beams, and also one of the uprights that will enclose the head of the stairs.

And I’ll tell you now – that Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill that Terry ordered for me from Screwfix is phenomenal. It went right into the stonework of the house – with a bit of effort it has to be said – but nevertheless it drilled the holes for 4 big anchor bolts and it’s held them firmly.

cutting mortice joint into floor joist les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo, what’s the plan?

Well, it all revolves around windows of which there aren’t all that many. The stairs up to the attic rise from bottom-right to top left as you can see and there’s a window at the bottom of the flight.

What I’m doing is to make a U-pattern staircase that will go from the centre of the attic (just where the window is in fact) down to the left and then round back on itself. This will be enclosed by a wall around the upright and a couple more of its friends.

To the right of the upright will be covered over with flooring and that’s the bit that I will be using as my office. It’s 2.1 metres from there to the front wall of the house.

fitting new floor joists attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe stairs are going to be narrower – 65cms instead of 1m so with an allowance for the woodwork the double width of the U shape will be 1.50m.

And where the stairs will stop at the floor below will give me a an empty space of 2.1 m by 1.5m which will have a window in it (the window that is currently at the foot of the existing staircase) and that empty space will eventually become the bathroom (but not any time soon).

Do you understand that?
If so, would you mind explaining it to me?

Mind you, it wasn’t straightforward. I had to open the window-that-will-be-the-bathroom-window to heave a few old chevrons out – but the blasted thing fell to pieces in my hands. I know that it needs to be replaced and indeed it will be but I hoped it would last for another year or two.

So there I was having to patch and screw it back together before I’d even got started. And mauling huge beams up into the attic isn’t my idea of fun either. In the end I ended up cutting that one down to size outside.

After I’d finished and had my well-earned cup of coffee I had to nip into Pionsat and empty the chemical beichstuhl.I hate doing that when there are people around so finding the village square overrun with the fairground attractions rather put me off my stride.

Hence I nipped round to the other publics across the way from the village hall and of course it’s Thursday – dancing lessons night – and half the Anglo-French group were there with Mark standing outside. It was just not my lucky day.

And talking of it not being my lucky day I’ve now run out of vegan chocolate cake. I wonder if Terry needs any more wood moving.

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