Tag Archives: lime mortar

Friday 1st August 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

rear of house lime morttr cement pointing les guis virlet puy de dome france … the rear of the house this afternoon. I put in two big buckets full of lime mortar before lunch, and then two-and-a-half buckets full went in this afternoon.

Not only have I finished the pointing that I wanted to do, I managed to cut down a pile of brambles embedded in the wall between the field and the public highway on the other side so that I could get to part of the wall of the lean-to that badly needed doing, and I’ve done that as well.

While I was cleaning off all of the tools and so on, the 19:00 time signal went off and so it was 19:10 when I knocked off. Later, I crashed out once again while watching Carry on Columbus
. Many people think that that is probably the best thing to do while watching the film – it had some dreadful reviews – but I personally think that it’s a film that is rather underrated and deserves more credit than it ever received.

I’d been on my travels again during the night.

I ended up playing in goal for Pionsat’s football club through the night.It was an indoor match in some kind of Sports Centre. And I was total rubbish. I must have let about 5 or 6 goals in in a space of about 5 minutes but luckily no-one noticed 3 or 4 of them that had squirmed out of my grasp or under my body. I do remember Pionsat’s regular goalkeeper (no-one I knew) having a shot at goal that bounced off the sidewalls five or six times before finding the opposition net

From there I went into a little gift shop to look at the Teddy Bears. There was nothing that I particularly fancied but I do remember that I was carrying so much stuff with me that it took me four trips to get out of the shop. There were several cars parked outside and a few of them had left their lights on so I wrote some notes to stick underthe windscreen wipers of the cars. One though, a big white American muscle car thing, had a few kids playing in it and so I gave the note to them to give to their dad.

While I was working on the website I was interrupted firstly by the boulangère, and then Rosemary telephoned me for a chat. So one day I might even finish what I’m working on if I’m lucky.

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Thursday 31st July 2014 – THE WEATHER …

… didn’t improve too much today, but at least it didn’t rain and there was plenty of blue sky. I even have some hot water in the 12-volt immersion heater that uses the excess solar charge.

The day started as it meant to go on, with me dropping my breakfast all over the floor downstairs. That was rather a shame.

And I didn’t go outside until after lunch either. I was working on the website as usual and then became sidetracked in some research that I had been doing and which ended up with me having to rewrite a pile of stuff that I had just written.

Back outside, I finished off digging all of the roots out of the back wall of the house and it looks pretty good there, although it took ages to do that. Next task was to start to chisel off a pile of loose cement from the rear wall, and that wasn’t a job of five minutes either.

By 17:00 I was ready and so I mixed up a pile of lime mortar. Two big buckets went into the wall where I’d chiseled off the cement and pulled out the roots. I’m about one third of the way along. Three or four more big buckets might do the trick next time that I’m out there.

And I finished bang on 19:00 too. That was good timing.

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Wednesday 30th July 2014 – THIS MORNING WAS THE FOURTH TIME THIS SUMMER …

… that I’ve disconnected the fridge as there has been insufficient power this last 24 hours for it to function adequately. I recall having done that twice in summers in the past since the current set-up was established in August 2009, but four times from May to the end of July (and this is before we talk about August and September) is verging on the absurd.

Last night too I closed all the windows in the attic and I was sitting up there in a sweater. That’s the second time that this has happened this summer. All in all, it just shows you how depressing this summer has been so far

There was a similar summer to this once when I was living in Brussels. Everyone who went away in July came back drowned, many of them long before their holidays were over. Together with the wet, mild winter that we had, this is probably one of the worst years that I can remember so far.

Going downstairs to make breakfast there was a big hanging cloud everywhere again and we were totally stuck in it – hence the decision to unplug the fridge.

However as the morning went on this strange orange thing in the sky did put in an appearance and by the time I made it outside there were even some bits of blue sky visible. That was the cue to put a great big bucket-load of lime mortar into the cracks in the wall on the lean-to. That took me until 14:25 when I knocked off for a rather late lunch.

After lunch I dismantled the scaffolding as I no longer need it. Everything else that needs doing I can reach from the floor. It’s not as easy as you might think dismantling a scaffolding on your own and I nearly dropped part of it on my head.

I spent the rest of the afternoon digging roots out of the main wall of the house. The stinging nettle and thistle roots came out fairly easily but the bramble roots are proving to be difficult and the two big tree trunks that represent the base of the ivy
are proving to be almost impossible. I’ve made some progress, but only with the help of an axe, a couple of masonry chisels and a large crowbar.

If the weather is fine, I’ll carry on chiseling out the tree roots. Then I can fill in the gaps with a load of lime mortar. Hopefully whatever tree roots still in the wall would be killed off by the lime mortar and I shan’t be troubled by ivy again.

But with the blue sky and the sun that came out, I plugged the fridge back in. Now I can unplug it again next time we have a spell of a couple of days of hanging cloud

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Tuesday 15th July 2014 – BACK AT WORK TODAY.

This morning I was up and about fairly early and after breakfast I had the usual couple of hours on the website.

When I went outside I started to rebuild the 12-volt immersion heater. I had a couple of attempts at fitting the element before I was satisfied, and then I made up some electric cables out of a jump lead (the red one) and a starter cable (the black one). Once I’d done that, i added another pile of insulation to it and sealed it all in. It’s now all fitted, wired in and working properly.

As an added attraction, I’ve removed the warning light and that’s now fitted into the fascia panel of the socket that’s wired into the excess charge circuit.

This afternoon I was up on the scaffolding ripping off the ivy from the back wall of the house, and it’s all gone now, which is just as well as there was quite a lot and it was stuck fast.

I cleaned off under the eaves too and then spent a pleasant hour looking for tools. Once I had found everything that I was seeking, I charged up the cement mixer with some sand and lime mortar, enough to make two buckets full.

Up on the scaffolding, I started to spread this about over the rubble with which we had infilled between the chevrons. There were some enormous gaps in there which are all infilled now – at least, most of them because I ran out of mortar. Mind you, it was 19:20 and so I’ll mix up another bucket or two and finish it off tomorrow.

This evening I made one of my kidney bean and aubergine whatsits – enough to last me three or four days. I don’t want to spend the rest of the week cooking.

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Tuesday 14th August 2012 – I’VE HEAVED …

… 6 buckets of lime mortar into this wall today – with the 5 from yesterday that makes 11 and yet it’s hardly making any difference.

collapsed lean-to repointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see near the top of the lean-to wall the light white mortar – that was the 5 buckets from yesterday.

If you look underneath, over the top and down both sides, you’ll just about be able to make out today’s mortar. It’s the sandy coloured stuff because of course it hasn’t dried yet.

The join between the house and the lean-to takes tons of mortar to fill it. I’ve been stuffing into the gap the old bits of cement that I’m pulling off the wall and then going over all of that with a very wet mortar mix, pushed well inside.

I’m hoping that that will help seal the gap and maybe bind it together.

But you can see where I’ll be having the real trouble – just in from the left-hand edge lower down. That’s bursting out a little and the cement binding that someone has put in at one time has long since fallen out.

Some of the stones are loose and others are missing. It’s going to be quite a job to fit that all together.

It’s a good job that the wall is double-skinned and that the inner skin is holding, otherwise that all would have been down long ago.

But it won’t be done tomorrow – it’s a bank holiday here and I’m technicianing for Marianne in the morning;

And then in the afternoon there’s a walk around Pionsat and Durat – where the Dark Age fort used to be – so I’m going off on that.   

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Saturday 28th July 2012 – WHAT A WIMP!

Yes, I’ve been spending my money again today.

And it’s this really hot weather that has made me do it – I mean, it was so hot this morning that I saw a midget buy an ice-cream in LIDL – and then sit in it.

At Brico Depot today they were selling small desktop fans, 40-watt ones, for all of €14:99. And having roasted to death up here for a week, I have to do something about it for the 12-volt lorry fan that I use just isn’t doing the business in this kind of weather.

So what a change it was tonight, actually being cool

.

I did make it to Montlucon as expected, and didn’t really buy anything exciting until I got to Brico Depot. Apart from the fan, they also had 850-watt SDS drills with rotostop.

The 1200-watt one that I have here is too heavy and powerful – it’s aching my shoulders out and at times stalling the 1200-watt inverter. It probably sounds silly but with a smaller, less-powerful drill I might well finish this hole in the wall quicker, as I won’t have to make so many pauses.

But I also went there for a pile of bricks to do the next window (I’m having two in that wall, if for no other purpose than making the wall lighter and for using less stone) and so having bought a pile of lime mortar, they had no common bricks. In fact, they have stopped selling them.

I’ll have to go elsewhere for them, and I wish I hadn’t loaded up the chalk now.

Back home, I watched an old black-and-white cowboy film Santa Fe Trail – notable for its complete rewriting of history and its treatment of the slave-liberators as … errr … the baddies.

It was enjoyable from an entertainment point of view though, but irony of ironies, the film’s most famous line is the one “we are soldiers – we aren’t politicians. We’re supposed to just obey orders”.

It’s spoken by A certain Captain Custer (we’re talking long before Little Big Horn here), the co-star, played by a certain Ronald Reagan.

What a small and strange world this is!

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Friday 22nd June I DIDN’T HAVE …

… such a good day today.

I was up and about by 08:00 and that’s not something that happens too often as you know. And by 09:00 I was busy on the laptop writing up my notes from Canada.

Anyway, I became somewhat side-tracked, like you do …”like YOU do” – ed … with an exciting little story that I managed to piece together and which shows just how much of a role coincidence seems to play in people’s lives.

There are two neighbouring villages, St Sulpice and Lavaltrie, on the north shore of the St Lawrence.

In Lavaltrie is a man named Riel who has 14 children and as his farm is far too small to support them all as they grow up, the younger children disperse westward to where Canada is expanding.

Meanwhile, in St Sulpice is another family, the Lacombes, who also have too many children and the younger ones likewise disperse, one of them becoming a missionary to the Blackfoot Indians in Saskatchewan.

In 1885 a rebellion breaks out in Saskatchewan and the Missionary Lacombe is sent to persuade the Blackfoot not to join in the fighting. When he arrives he finds that the leader of the rebellion is busy trying to incite them to join in and butcher the Government forces.

And the name of the leader of the rebellion? Yes, he’s Louis Riel from Lavaltrie.

What a small world!

Of course the story is far more complicated than that, but I only have a small amount of space to write it. Anyway, you can see why I’ve been side-tracked for most of the morning.

This afternoon, when I finally did manage to go outside, I checked on the beans and peas. The peas are slowly coming to life but now there are about 20 baby bean plants busy battling their way out of the soil.

I definitely need some more climbing frames for them and so I’ll have to see about some wire netting tomorrow.

After that, it was up on the roof and put the second layer of lime mortar on the roof joint. Hopefully that won’t need any more attention. It should be watertight anyway as there’s plastic membrane there anyway and there is an overhang off the house roof that will shade it.

I used the rest of the mortar to fill in part of the gap in the rendering. There’s still quite a bit of that to do as well.

After that  did some tidying up in the lean-to and noticed that I had some cucumber, courgette and gherkin seeds that are okay to plant in the beginning of June. As we are still a few weeks behind with the weather right now I hoed and raked an few empty bits of a couple of the beds and planted a variety of seeds there.

They have two chances now, whereas in the packet nothing would ever be likely to happen.

I also made up a few pots with lettuce in. I’ll see what happens to that lot.

When I was down checking over the beans and peas I happened to look up the slope across all of the other beds that I had set out, and with all of the plants happily growing away in them I really did have a moment of pride.

With the drastic weeding since I’ve been back, I have to say that my vegetable garden looks the best that it ever has. The new climbing frames for the beans really do set it off.

Tomorrow it’s Commentry shopping, seeing what I can find for wire netting, and then maybe I’ll go for a swim at Neris-les-Bains. I must look my best for the village fête and evening walk tomorrow night in Virlet.

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Monday 18th June 2012 – I WAS POINTING …

… this afternoon. And I’ll be pointing it out to you in a series pf photographs so you will be able to see my point.

pointing jointing plastic recycled states les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, it’s either pointing or jointing, one or the other, whichever takes your fancy.

Now that I have some sand here I was able to mix up some lime mortar and so I spent much of the afternoon on the roof of the lean-to filling the joint between the new lean-to roof and the stone wall of the side of the house.

There were a few big gaps too, but I put some plastic sheeting down – the type with nylon reinforcement – and filled over that.

Tomorrow I’ll need to put a second coat on there, as well as putting some rubberised paint over one or two of the galvanised nail-heads that are exposed. And that will be the roof finished.

And so will I be too!

pointing jointing lean to wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceFor the rest of the afternoon I cemented up the joint in the outside wall.

The rendering on that wall went, of course, up to the old wooden chevrons that fell off a long time ago. I’ve put stronger timbers on the roof and so the chevrons are higher up the wall, if you know what I mean.

I infilled the gap with a load of brick ends, stones and so on but the rendering still needed to be brought up by about 30 cms, as well as a few cracks making good, and that’s what I was doing until I noticed the time.

Yes, 19:10. 10 minutes after knocking-off time. You can tell how much I was enjoying myself.

This will also need finishing off tomorrow and when it’s all dry I can treat all the new woodwork.
… “what to?” – ed.

Once that’s been attended to I can push on and build up the side wall to the roof beam, leaving of course a space for a window (if I remember – not like I did for the roof).

The aim from there on is to put a balcony there at the front, so that I can enjoy whatever view I might have. But that’s something of a longer-term project.

This morning though, I was working on a few web pages of my voyage to Canada just now. There are three days’ worth, namely

You may not think too much of the content, especially Day Two, because what with me being in an airport terminal or three I let loose some pretty good and pretty explosive rants. You ought to know just how stressed out I become in airport terminals.

It’s a good job that I always travel alone.

You might think that when I calm down and review everything that I write, I would moderate many of my comments (I dictate the events of my voyages onto a dictaphone as they are happening or immediately thereafter) but I won’t ever do that.

The whole point of what I do with the rubbish that I churn out is to capture the excitement of the moment. The stress and tension is all part of the excitement and there wouldn’t be any point in churning out anything that has been edited.

tansy les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou might also remember me a year ago posting a photo of a plant and asking if anyone could identify it.

It’s back again this year. And back in spades too, and when Liz was here the other day she took away a cutting to show around her friends to see whether any of them could identify it.

Clotilde seems to think that it’s a plant called tansy. And if it is, then that’s a surprise because I don’t ever recall buying any.

She reckons that it’s useful as a companion plant as it has a high success rate in repelling Colorado beetle, and as an ant, mosquito and tick repellant.

Another use for tansy was to rub meat with the tansy leaves to repel worms and to prevent the meat from spoiling.

And it seems that the first president of Harvard was buried in a coffin packed with tansy leaves, and when his coffin was opened 200 years later everything inside – the tansy leaves as well as his own corpse – was in an excellent state of preservation.

Another, less publicised, use is to dispel the occurrence of flatulence prevalent in vegans although it is highly toxic when eaten to excess. 

It seems that this tansy, if that is indeed what it is, is going to be a very useful plant.

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