Tag Archives: moving kitchen

Tuesday 18th November 2014 – I DON’T KNOW QUITE WHAT HAPPENED …

… last night, but it wasn’t until 06:00 until I was tired enough to go to bed. The only thing that I can thinkof is the cup of coffee that I has with Liz yesterday morning at Marcillat. But surely that can’t be right. Nevertheless, something went wrong yesterday.

Even more surprisingly, I was up at 08:30 – not that I felt much like it. But anyway, there I was.

After breakfast, I set to on the battery box. All of the old breeze blocks that were in the way have now been moved, and the new breeze blocks are cemented in in the correct position. A couple of them needed to be cut and one of the joys of having these new batteries is that even in a dark, gloomy, overcast day like today, the angle grinder whizzed around them with not even a hiccup.

While I was cementing in the breeze blocks, Terry came round. He was looking for a 12mm Allen Key socket for the sump plug on his FIAT. I had to have a good search around but eventually found what I was looking for. We also spent some time having a good chat and he had a look around at the progress that i’ve been making;

I had been struggling for breeze blocks. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of 20mm breeze blocks but I had to have a good scavenge around for some 10mm ones. In the end I had to demolish the raised step into the house and so this afternoon after lunch I built a proper one out of the old stair treads from the stairs that I demolished all those years ago. The circular saw came in handy too, and once again, the new batteries earned their corn.

And tonight, I’ve finally succumbed and lit the fire in here. The temperature dropped to 12.8°C and anyway I had to cook my mega-meal for the coming week. Thsi involved moving the kitchen up here before I knocked off this evening. And I’ve also moved the camping gas stove up here too. I’ve decided that my morning coffee will be much better made up here in the warmth as the winter approaches. It’s supposed to be a bad winter this year, so they say.

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Saturday 15th December 2012 – I DIDN’T BLOG …

… last night before going to bed, and I bet that you were all disappointed.

But no matter, I’ll serve it up this morning for you.

Actually, I was far too busy, working on the radio programmes and it was 02:30 before I went to bed. “If you have the inspiration, keep on at it”, as the actress once famously said to the bishop.

But at least it’s all finished today, all …errr … 60kbs of it. That’s the equivalent of almost 2 hours of discussion.

And then you have to add the ad-libs in too and then of course the music that we’ll be playing in between – so that should be enough for the next three years.

At least, I hope so. As I said yesterday, it’ll all come in handy.

And so, apart from writing the radio programme, that was that

The weather warmed up dramatically this morning and it was 17°C in my room when I woke up. That makes a nice change, and at least I was comfortable without the fire when I was doing the radio programme

Shopping was next on the agenda and so a run out to St Eloy-les-Mines was called for.

But there’s been a change of plan as far as the diet goes. Pasta doesn’t work in the oven, and rice is a bit samey day after day and so I’ve bought a big bag of potatoes. Baked spuds should be just about fine for the rest of the winter I think.

But while I’m on the subject of changes, I’ve changed the room around a little.

I’ve moved a bookcase or two and shuffled the pair of chests of drawers around a little, and now the end wall underneath the little window at the side of the oven became miraculously free.

Remember the table that I brought up here a while ago? That’s gone nicely just there and I now actually have a kind of kitchen in that corner. Won’t that be really handy for the winter.

And I’ve finally heard from Bill.

I set Marianne a task viz to contact the hospital. Marianne is not easily brushed aside and managed to find out where he was. So she came up with a number and so I rang him.

He’s out of danger but he’s not himself yet. Time will tell but I’m so relieved.

I was really worried.

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Wednesday 15th February 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… might have solved itself.

And for several different reasons too.

frozen water drainpipe les guis virlet puy de dome francef you see that icicle in the photo here that I took a week or so ago (the weather was nothing like that today of course) it started to melt today. And so I simply stuck a bucket underneath it.

Meantime, I took one of those plastic drinks bottles, the type with a very long pointed neck, and cut the bottom off. Then I stuffed a load of fine fibreglass mesh up the neck.

Each time a bucket was filled, I poured it through my home-made filter into one of these proprietary jug filters and let it filter through there, and then I decanted it into my water container.

I managed to capture about 40 litres over the course of the afternoon and that’s eased the situation considerably.

However like most things, solutions don’t come on their own. Like London buses, after you’ve been waiting for hours, three turn up all at once.

And so it is with this. By the end of the afternoon the water butt had started to unfreeze itself.

Not that that’s a quick solution, because I looked inside the rear tank and that’s a frozen mass of ice, but I still managed 5 litres out of there as well.

And the third solution? Well, after all the freezing weather that we’ve had just recently, it’s p155ing down outside. All the snow will be gone by tomorrow if it carries on like this, and then we will be in the floods again. Then we’ll be having a different kind of water problem.

Despite a constant stream of interruptions today, I’ve now started on the final row of the tongue-and-grooving in the bedroom.

That involved finishing off the previous row, moving piles of stuff around the room, and then mixing some polyfilla to fill in the joins between the wood and the insulation that is already in the ceiling.

Maybe if I have a decent day tomorrow I can crack on with this. It would be nice to have it finished for the weekend.

One thing that has helped is that this row is by far the narrowest of them. When I’ve been doing the other rows and cutting down lengths of tongue-and-grooving, I’ve always been left with leftover bits that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

I’ve been labelling them with the size, and these are all fitting into the row that I’m doing now. This will save me a load of time cutting up full-size lengths.

For tea tonight I had ratatouille, green beans and baked potatoes. This time the potatoes were done properly and it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had for ages. It was definitely a good plan to move the kitchen up here for the duration.

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Tuesday 14th February 2012 – IT WAS A PLEASURE …

… to wake up this morning with a temperature of 13.5°C up here in the room. It’s been a while since I’ve had a temperature like that.

Mind you, what wasn’t a pleasure was being woken up by a phone call at some ungodly hour of the morning. However, it did concern work so I can’t complain too much I suppose, even if it did get me off on the wrong foot.

heavy snow 2012 LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceAfter all of that, I went to beat the bounds of the property. As you know, we had a right caning of snow through the night and I wanted to see what the weather had done to the place.

The answer is, as you might expect, that I’m properly snowed in and I shan’t be going anywhere for a bit. Luckily I had the foresight to leave Caliburn up at he top of the bank

As an aside, you can see the Sankey trailer and the Minerva, and also the old orange central heating tank that Simon gave me to use to store biofuels in.

And while I was checking up on the house, I had a brainwave, And it’s so simple that I’ve no idea why I never thought of it before – and I’m kicking myself for having suffered like this these last couple of weeks.

And so I dashed off for a rummage in the barn.

In the apartment in Brussels I had a small white kitchen table with two drop leaves and I remember bringing it down here. That had to be around somewhere and eventually I found all of the pieces.

I brought it up into the attic and assembled it in the room, and laid all of the kitchen stuff on it. It’s now making quite a useful kitchen worktop up here and I wished that I had remembered it earlier.

This afternoon I didn’t manage to do very much as I had a whole series of phone calls one after the other, and so it was pretty much a wasted day. Still, there will be other days.

Tea was baked potatoes and spicy beans, cooked in the oven. This was an excellent buy, this new woodstove.

But the temperature outside just now is astonishing – minus 1.6°C. That’s over 10°C improvement from last night. If that kind of temperature transforms itself into a decent daytime temperature, I might even have some water tomorrow.

And not before time either – I’m now reduced to melting buckets of snow.

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