Tag Archives: making staircase

Tuesday 30th December 2014 – WELL, THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME.

Remember yesterday when I was busy putting that piece of wood in to fill that unexplained gap in the woodwork and ended up falling down the stairs?

This morning I started to fit the plasterboard into position, and after a good hour or so at the cutting, measuring and fitting, and also fitting in some bracing which was unaccountably absent, the light suddenly went on in my head. Yes, where is the insulation in the wall?

Off came all of the plasterboard that I had cut and shaped, and off came the bracing that I had fitted, and on went 40mm of polystyrene insulation. And now I can see why there was that unexplained gap – it was for passing the insulation through and out behind the stairs. Still, it’s too late to do much about that now.

Before I had started on the plasterboard, I had taken the masking off the floor under the stairs on the landing, and put the first coating of varnish on there. I’d put the second coat on and fitted the stairs too. So that’s another job out of the way.

I’ve even had a bit of good luck too. Aeons ago, when I lived in Brussels, I bought a pack of 100mm wide 25mm thick planed wood planks to make some shelves, but I never used it. I discovered two of the planks and tried them as end-stops for the plasterboard stud walls. They seem to be perfect for this job and so tomorrow I’ll have a go at fitting tham.

I’ve also rerouted a pile of wiring so that it will run under the false ceiling on the landing and then down with all of the other wiring between the stud wall that has the shower room on one side and the head of the stairs on the other side, and I can’t think why I didn’t do this ages ago.

As for the water issues, the front tap thawed out slightly today and the leak isn’t anything like serious. It’s losing about half a litre every hour, but more when the tap is open. The rear tap is still frozen up so I can’t isolate the front tank.

Mind you, the frozen tap is doing that so it’s the same thing really, and as for the leak, the front tank needs to be emptied anyway so that I can change the tap so it’s neither here nor there. I’ve emptied 40 litres out of it today into various containers and I’ll keep on doing that for now until the weather warms up and I can isolate the front tank.

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Tuesday 23rd December 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

stairs up to attic les guis virlet puy de dome france … the stairs up to the attic.

Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t really. All of the wood has been cut and shaped, that’s for sure, but they haven’t been nailed into place. This is because the filler that I used on the screw holes took quite a while to dry. I wanted it to dry before I nailed down the stair treads, because access is so much easier to sand down the filler, paste the wallpaper and paint everywhere when the treads aren’t in place.

Not only that, I can put the varnish on the stair treads and risers before I nail them down too, and that will be another task completed. I’ll have two lovely shelves when they are finished and I can start to stack away the china and so on.

I had plenty of fun cutting the treads though. Two of them had to be cut by trial and error because taking measurements on the slant was not very easy. And much to my surprise, it all fitted where it ought to do.

We also had another Alpine day today and I had almost 60 amps of surplus solar energy today, with the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump loa reaching 33°C, which is the highest that it’s been for a considerable time.

In other news, you can imagine that with the events of the couple of nights over the weekend, about which I talked at the relevant moment, I’ve been on something of a nostalgia trip, spending a lot of time musing on events that happened, didn’t happen, could have happened, might have happened and what I would have liked to have happened at a certain moment in my life. This wasn’t helped today because the *.mp3 player reached the point where five particular albums suddenly presented themselves, one after the other,

These five albums, Benefit, Aqualung, A Passion Play and Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull and Nicely Out Of Tune by Lindisfarne, were five albums that were being played non-stop by a certain few of us during this particular 18-month period and it must be something more than just coincidence that they suddenly appeared, one ofter the other, at the time when I have all of this nonsense going on in my head.

It’s all becoming quite eerie.

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Monday 22nd December 2014 – NO WONDER …

blocked chimney les guis virlet puy de dome france … that the fire wasn’t working properly last night. Just have a look at this little lot!

Yes, the chimney was totally blocked and the smoke had no possible way of reaching the outside, except via the door and the air vents of the stove.

I consequently dismantled all of the tubing and spent over an hour cleaning everything out. And it certainly needed it too. In places it was solidly blocked.

The upshot of this all is that the small fire that I had this evening was burnt up in half an hour and the temperature had risen from 14.2°C to … errr … 34°C, and all in half an hour too. The food tonight was cooked in seconds instead of the usual couple of hours.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile exercise, cleaning the chimney. And I’m glad that I did too, because during the night we had a severe frost, the first of the year and the temperature had dropped to minus 2°C outside (lucky that I had plenty of residual heat in here). That also meant that we had one of these Alpine winter days today – not a single cloud in the sky all day. The first day like this for ages and the batteries are now fully charged at last.

fitting stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceI spent the rest of the working day on the floor. Not horizontally of course, although I did have my moments. I recut some of the horizontals for the stairs on the lower part of the staircase so that they are flush with the uprights of the stud walls. And I am well-impressed with the Ryobi plus one percussion screwdriver. That drove the big long screws home in no time – much better that with the normal screwdriver.

For lunch, I made some hummus again. This time with olives and tomatoes, and a bit more water and oil so that it was a little more damp than before. And it did taste good too.

After that, I fitted the riser for the lowest stair on the staircase, and then fitted the second layer of flooring behind it. Finally, I fitted the two pieces of plasterboard that go there.

Tomorrow, I’ll fill the screwheads in the plasterboards that I fitted today, sand them off and then fit the treads for the stairs. Once they are done, I can varnish the flooring in there and then I’ll have a couple of shelves for storage.

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Wednesday 23rd December 2009 – I thought that I would post …

stairs staircase first floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… a pic of the completed stairs on the ground floor. It’ll take my mind off the gruesome weather.

I woke up this morning to that weird golden thing in the sky and not a cloud in sight. So I quickly shinned up onto the roof and onto the roof of the old Luton Transit to brush the snow off the solar panels to take advantage of everything.

But I needn’t have bothered for 10 minutes later the wind changed, a whole heap of cloud came over and blocked the sky. We had 10mm of rain!

And as I type I have the long-range weather forecast up and every day for the next week is totally overcast with rain forecast. Monday and Tuesday we are promised 15 and 16 degrees. They say Centigrade but I bet it’ll be more like Fahrenheit.

stairs staircase ground floor first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo I stayed in and shovelled up tons of rubbish and piled it up elsewhere and I now have a path through the rubble to the stairs. it’s impressive. I also tidied up a few things and sorted out the wood. You can see the door that I bought in the Brico Depot sale. That’s for the front – lots of glass to let in the light. Light is at a premium around here.

At lunchtime Francois came round, with a woman in tow. He was amazed at the progress since he last visited here in September. This woman is renovating and she is interested in recycled materials and Francois had told her about my reccycled plastic slates. She was well-impressed.

This afternoon I started to tidy up the verandah which I use as a kitchen. But my heart wasn’t in it “No surprise there – it’s a cleaning job” … ed – and at 17:00 I called it a day. And then crashed out up here for an hour. All this work has been taking its toll of me.

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Tuesday 22nd December 2009 – This weather is getting on my wick

I Woke up this morning to a minor heatwave – in fact it reached 11 degrees outside at one point – there was no snow anywhere and that weird golden thing was in the sky. Of course it didn’t hang about for all that long and it clouded over again.

stairs staircase ground floor first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile I cracked on and in wow! whoopie! mode, I’ve finished all of the stairs. I fitted the rails for the final step at the top angle of the stairs down to the ground floor and then scrounged some wood to make the treads. After that it was a mega-clear-up and then I cut down the stringers for this builders’ staircase that I’m going to fit down to the ground.

I’d got it on my temporary workbench to assemble and I quickly learnt to throw away the instructions. It’s all very well following them if there are two of you but when you are on your own you need to think again. I drilled some screw holes in the sides where the treads would be, then laid one stringer flat on the workbench. I “invented” a small trestle of about the stairs’ width and put that over the top and put the other stringer on top. After that I inserted the treads, tacking them in with screws as I was going along, and when I reached the end, clamped it all together with my two large speed clamps.

By now it was dark but I was on a roll so I rigged up a light using the Ryobi flourescent light, and then turned the stair assembly over onto the other side, made sure the treads were correctly positioned, and then screwed them from that side. I turned it back over, tightened up the screws that I’d tacked in place, released the speed clamps, and that was that.

It took just 15 minutes, a spirit level, the drill with the drill bit, the drill with the screwdriver bit, a handful of screws and some packing pieces, and the stairs were installed.

And now I’ve knocked off work for the festive season.

It was pouring down with rain this evening but at about 21:00 it all went quiet. When I went downstairs for tea I discovered the reason. The temperature had dropped to 2 degrees and it was snowing like hell!

And talking of snowing, I’ve ordered Caliburn’s Christmas present and I’m spending more money on him that I spent on me! One new road-going tyre and two Michelin Alpine snow tyres. I’ll need them in this weather. I just hope that the weather holds off enough for me to get to Montlucon to have them fitted.

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