Tag Archives: stairs

Wednesday 4th September 2024 – THERE HAVE BEEN …

… raised voices in this apartment today. And how!

The tension between the nurse and me has been simmering away for a short while now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and today it finally overflowed.

And it was going to be such a good day too. I was actually in bed before 23:00, for once in my life, and as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep quite quickly.

And there I lay, flat out until about 06:15 too – one of the best sleeps that I have had just recently too. Over 7 hours-worth of uninterrupted sleep is a luxury these days.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep, but I soon hauled myself out of bed and went off for a good wash and scrub up ready for my trip out.

Yesterday I’d told the nurse that I was going out at 08:15 and so after much moaning and complaining he’d agreed to be here at 08:05 at the latest. He’d told me that at 08:00 I had to be sitting in the chair in the kitchen where he does his stuff.

So there I was at 08:00, sitting in the chair, and at 08:15 with him still not having turned up, the taxi came and we set off for Avranches.

We were some way down the road near the Granville ring road when the phone rang. It was 08:30. “Where are you?” asked a voice which I recognised.

“Where am I? Halfway towards Avranches. It’s now 08:30, not 08:05”. I replied

“OK. Call me when you’re back”.

We reached Avranches and the clinic at 08:55 for my 09:00 appointment – the first one in. And so it was logical I suppose that I wasn’t seen until 09:30.

Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there which was a shame and I had to see the nurse. She asked me all kinds of probing questions although with no doctor or consultant there and no news about a follow-up, I couldn’t see the point.

And it looks as if this might be escalating. Now that they’ve talked the plaster off my arm so that my port is there in view in glorious technicolour if I choose to look at it (which I haven’t done as yet) they now want me to run an antiseptic cream on it and wrap it in clingfilm before I come for dialysis.

So that tells me two things. Firstly, that I have to come for dialysis and secondly, I am going to become more and more involved in the mechanics of this procedure.

In fact, she was there pushing a few boundaries, telling me a little bit more and a little bit more of things that I really don’t want to know.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when this process starts we shall have the panic attack to end all panic attacks. I am living my worst nightmare with all of these tubes and pipes. I’m really sure that many people, people who have never been through any of this, just can’t understand what I’m feeling.

While I was there she weighed me, and my weight is stable, although it’s 7kg too much and even 12kg more than I used to like it. She said that my blood is stable too, so I told her that I would be much happier if the Creatinine was stable at 270 where it used to be instead of this 450.

With running late, everything else was running late. The taxi had arrived at 10:00 for me but I was nowhere near ready so the driver had gone off to pick up another passenger and then come back for me, and we reached the door of the building at the same time.

Back here at the apartment, these last two days have seen a stunning development – I’ve managed to climb back up the stairs all on my own, the first time since February.

It’s not very aesthetic, I have to say. I have to Put my right hand behind my left knee, raise my left foot onto the step and then push up my right side with the aid of my crutches.

God knows what anyone else might think if they were to see me, but twice now I’ve tried it, and twice now it has worked. If I carry on like this, Friday morning shopping might be back on the agenda.

This is the first time in quite some time that I can say that there has been an underlying improvement.

Back here I put on the coffee, put the porridge in the microwave and the toast in the toaster when the phone rang

“Where are you? asked a voice which I recognised.

‘I’ve just got back” I replied

“I told you to ring me when you came back”.

“Did you not hear the word ‘just’?” I asked

“I’ll be right round” so I switched off the breakfast to wait for his imminent arrival.

25 minutes later he finally turned up. By now my porridge was cold, my coffee was cold and my toast was soggy. And so I exploded.

And apparently it was all my fault for not being up earlier in plenty of time to have my breakfast earlier. And so that was that and the atmosphere became extremely unpleasant.

After he’d cleared off I could finally rescue the ruins of my breakfast. However I was in no mood to read my book. In any case the steam was obscuring my vision and my breath would have melted the computer screen.

Our Welsh Summer School cracked on today and I’m impressed about how much I know or have remembered. I wish that it was like this all the time. We had some interesting chats too which was nice

After the lesson was over I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Unfortunately neither Zero nor Castor nor TOTGA came to visit me, which was a disappointment after the other night. I was back at Shavington, Vine Tree Avenue, and we had a couple of guys, friends of my father’s, around. I’d been asked to try to collect worms for some project or other that was going on so I was collecting what I could find and dropping them down a tube, but I wasn’t doing very well. One of my father’s friends was talking to me about it. In the meantime someone else turned up at the house and asked my father if he had any leaf mould to spare. On the back lawn were several enormous piles of rotting leaves so this guy and I were joking about my father sucking his teeth and saying to this guy that he hadn’t any, and how difficult it was to get hold of. As it happened my father turned him away anyway and went back to weeding his garden but it was a very lethargic, disinterested weeding so we were wondering what was going through his head at the time

And my father weeding? If we had a nice garden (which we didn’t) when we were kids it would have been due to my mother. She was the only one who ever voluntarily did any weeding. We as kids formed a reluctant press-gang but you wouldn’t have found my father anywhere at all near a herbaceous border. But after Zero the other night, it’s my family again and isn’t that awful?

A little later I’d gone to a football ground. There, I’d been involved in helping tidy up and was collecting things for the shower room. I thought that I’d collected quite a few but people kept on pointing out things that I’d missed that I’d have to pick up and keep until I could get into the showers. They were discussing the games taking place this weekend, thinking that maybe Celtic would win because all the players will want to go out there and impress their new manager. Someone came round with a plate of sandwiches. One or two of the players helped themselves. I thought that that was really not a good idea because they’d be starting a game in a few minutes and the last thing that they’ll want to do is to have to run around with a full stomach like that. They’ll end up with stitch or cramp or something

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back a long time ago I used to travel with and occasionally run (or walk, in my case) the line for Pionsat’s 3rd XI and despite (or maybe because of) my coaching they were always near the bottom of the lowest division in Puy-de-Dome football. One day they arrived at the wrong time at an away ground and had a two-hour wait so they all went out for kebabs. And knowing all about running around on a full stomach and what it can produce, I feared the worst. And so they went out and won decisively 5-2 and I shut up after that.

While we’re talking about football, we had football later. TNS playing Aberystwyth in one of the catch-up games after several of their matches have been postponed due to TNS’ European involvement.

TNS fielded a weakened team that included Doris the tea lady, Stan the car-park attendant and Tiddles the stadium cat so Aberystwyth packed their defence and refused to advance over the half-way line. If they were ever going to do any good against TNS today would be the day.

It was ugly to watch but it was effective up to a point. It took TNS a good while to break them down and the score of 2-0 to TNS can be seen as a triumph for Aberystwyth.

That’s because it’s going to be packed down at the bottom as Llansawel, Y Fflint and Aberystwyth are miles off the pace. LLansawel are down already after only 5 matches but the other two will slug it out and take the odd point here and there when they can. Goal difference might be crucial so a goal difference of minus 2 for Aberystwyth is as good as 3 points when compared with Y Fflint’s goal difference against TNS of -3 (a 4-1 defeat the other week).

Tea was a delicious leftover curry with naan, and so right now I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight with the nurse tomorrow as I don’t think that we’ve heard the last of this.

Can you not just picture the scene? You can imagine him roaring "we itinerant nurses are the cream of the crop"
"Yes" I’ll reply. "And it looks as if I have the clot"

0

Tuesday 7th April 2015 – THE WIND FINALLY DROPPED THIS EVENING.

That made quite a change as we’ve had non-stop wind for the last three days or so.

All kinds of records have been broken too with the wind. For example, of all the wind energy created by the big AIR 403 wibd turbine since I reset the meter in December, 40% of it came today. And with the small wind turbine, today has doubled the previous record of wind generated.

It really was impressive but now it’s blown out and we are all quiet.

This morning, I took decisive action and ripped out all of the masking and protection on the stairs and on the landing downstairs. I gave the stairs and landing a thorough clean, sanded all of the imperfections, vacuumed it thoroughly and then gave it all a really good coat of varnish.

That took about an hour and a half in total, and so for the rest of the morning I went outside. First job was to sort out a huge pile of old cardboard that I had put on one side when I tidied the barn out the other day.

cardboard cover raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith all of that, I went down to the raised beds in the garden where I grow my crops of vegetables. Nothing is going to be done there this year, so I’ve covered over all of the beds with cardboard. I did 6 this morning, and then this afternoon I dismantled the bean frames and did the rest.

I’ve only weeded two of them, the rest can take their chance. BUt it’s not going to be a problem for as soon as it rains and the cardboard becomes waterlogged, it’ll fold down flat onto the soil in the raised beds, suffocate the weeds and then slowly disintegrate into the soil over the period of the coming year.

Immediately after lunch, I put the second coat of varnish on, and I’ll do the third coat first thing in the morning.

For tea tonight I made a mega-mushroom and potato curry. Mushrooms were cheap at the weekend and I had some potatoes left over from winter.

And there was so much surplus energy today that the water in the dump load (the home-made 12-volt immersion heater) went off the scale – ie over 70°C. I had some lovely hot wahing-up water this evening.

-1

Saturday 31st January 2015 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING.

Something else that’s totally unheard-of too. At about 16:00 today I went downstairs and spent an hour working on my walls in the landing!

Mind you, what was astonishing about this was the weather. When I awoke this morning (early yet again) it was snowing – and quite heavily too. And it kept that up for most of the day.

After breakfast I wrote yet another series of radio programmes, in my quest to keep well in front of targets, and then, in other astonishing news, I started to empty the attic. A lot of the foodstuffs – those in glass continers – went outside onto one of the shelves and that made much more space on my table in here. And the shelf – the smaller of the two – isn’t even half-full.

I’ll find some more cardboard to put on the upper shelf tomorrow and move all of the cookery stuff, saucepans and the like, out there. At this rate, i’ll be able to move around in here.

Whatever next?

Well, next was 16:00 and, quite dramatically, the sky cleared and the sun came out. Never one to miss an opportunity, and not knowing when the next time will be that we will have decent weather as the weather forecast for the next few days is dire, I nipped downstairs, switched on the inverter, found the power sander and attacked the filler that I had put on the landing walls last night.

15 minutes had that all smoothed off and, in for a penny, in for a Pound, I filled in where the filler was low.

That’s now drying off and thennext time that we have half an hour of sun, even if it’s tomorrow, I’ll sand it off. I’m already two days behind where I want to be with this bedroom and I can’t afford to lose any more time. Wallpapering the landing on Monday, painting on Wednesday, that’s the next plan. And in between, I’ll empty out the bedroom ready for a work-in.

-3

Thursday 29th January 2015 – THIS DOOR HINGE ISSUE …

… still isn’t resolved, despite my best efforts this morning.

This morning, I was up quite early and I’d finished my breakfast by 08:30. Se seeing as I had to be in Marcillat for 10:30, a sudden idea entered into my head given the time available, and I shot straight off to Commentry and Bricomarche.

There are indeed right-handed and left-handed hinges, and all of the hinges were totally muddled up. I very carefully sorted out three right-handed hinges (as well as a hosepipe connection for the overflow on the water tank). However, the boxes were more mixed up than I thought, and I’ve ended up with 2 x 110×55 and 1 x 90×45.

Ahh well.

But at least I have the shape to use to cut the lets into the door and the doorframe.

At the radio, we recorded our Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse and then went for a coffee and a chat.

varnished shelf stairwell attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceBack here, first job that I did even before I took off my coat was to put the third and final coat of varnish onto the shelves in the stairwell up to the attic.

These shelves are now finished and that is really the first completed task of this phase of the work. These shelves mean that I can now start to empty the attic of all of the cooking stuff, the pots and pans and so on, and put them on the shelves outside, as soon as the varnish had hardened off.

This is definitely progress.

suspended false ceiling recessed light plasterboard landing les guis virlet puy de dome franceSecond job that I did, likewise before taking off my coat, was to fit the crown onto the LED light bulb and recess it into the hole in the false ceiling on the landing.

You can see the varnished ceiling and the plasterboard on both the walls but the light hasn’t come out well enough. I’ll take another photo of the ceiling when we have some daylight, but that wasn’t going to be today as so far we’ve had 35mm of rain and it’s still teeming down.

I’ve also cut the three lets into the hinge side of the doorframe so that I can fit the recessed hinges in due course and I’ve also cut down a floorboard to make the latch side of the doorframe.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off cutting down the floorboards for the rest of the door frame and for the head of the stairs, and if I’m lucky, I might even be able to put the first coat of filler on the screwheads and joins in the plasterboard.

-3

Friday 23rd January 2015 – WE NOW HAVE …

beading around window and doors stairwell les guis virlet puy de dome france… some nice and pretty beading around the window and the doorways on the stairs up to the attic. Yes, I’m going all suburban and pretentious, aren’t I? Whatever next?

The Ryobi mastic gun did the business here, along with a tube of contact adhesive. Cut the beading to length (remember to cut the bevels the correct way round – GRRRR!), stick some glue in the angle, press into place and then tack down with a couple of 25mm lost-head nails, and there we are.

And doesn’t it look pretty too? It’s not like me, is it?

plasterboard on wall on landing les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn other startling news, we have also turned the corner. at least, as far as the plasterboard goes. I’ve put the first pieces on the stud wall for the stairs that go down to the ground floor.

This is quite symbolic progress. All that’s now needed is one more piece of plasterboard on the reverse side of the stud wall to the bedroom, three end-pieces, some filling and sanding down, and then I can wallpaper the walls on the landing and that will be finished too and I can start on the bedroom. I shan’t know myself.

I know that I said that I would be sanding down the stairs and vacuuming them ready to varnish them this weekend, but several things have conspired together to put an end to that idea.

Firstly, I’m not going out tomorrow. Cécile is having a visitor to her house in the morning tomorrow so I have to go round there early. That means that I won’t have time to varnish it before I go out.

Secondly, Mondays radio recording sessions have been cancelled due to illness at Radio Tartasse, so the third consecutive day that I need for varnishing isn’t going to happen either.

Thirdly, we’ve had a hanging cloud over the mountain all day today and I’ve received precisely nothing in the way of solar energy. There’s plenty of power in the batteries of course, but not enough to run a power sander for a couple of hours and a vacuum cleaner afterwards.

Fourthly, the temperature didn’t rise above freezing all day today and the next few days are likely to be the same. The temperature downstairs is just 4°C and the varnish won’t ever stick in that kind of temperature. It’ll just sit on top of the wood and freeze, and then break off when it’s knocked.

Accordingly, I left the varnishing for another time. Never mind. There’s plenty of other things to be going on with.

I was invited out this evening. It’s the annual dinner for FCPSH – the Football Club Pionsat St Hilaire, and I was invited to go along. I didn’t stay to eat because you can’t expect them to cater for my diet, but I was there chatting for a couple of hours.

And it really was freezing when I returned. I had a hard job to keep my feet on the concrete. And in my room the temperature had fallen to 9.8°C – the coldest for quite a while, but a roaring wood fire soon had that back up to normal again.

I’m glad that I bought this woodstove.

-1

Friday 16th January 2015 – AFTER ALL THAT I SAID LAST NIGHT …

… about having loads of sun so that I could sand down the floor of the shower room, then I woke up this morning to a hanging cloud. I suppose that that was odds-on, wasn’t it?

So having put the kybosh on the sanding, first thing this morning was to put the second coat of wood treatment on the old exposed beams. That didn’t take too long, From there, I attacked the floor on the landing on the first floor.

And cutting the first floorboard took almost all of the morning. It needed three lets cut in it so that it could fit around the verticals, and they had to be cut pretty precisely. Once that had been done, I had to cut a couple of countersinks into it so that the hinges that fit into it will be flush with the surface.

go on table saw bricomarche commentry les guis virlet puy de dome franceI needed to cut some floorboarding planks into 50mm lengths to make a framework for the trapdoor, and so despite the absence of electricity I decided to put the new table saw to use.

As I suspected, it is a cheap rubbishy thing (as I suspected) but it did the job well enough once I’d worked out how to fit the guide rail. But in news that will surprise most people, but not the more cynical amongst us, the built-in measure is reading 4mm short. Good job I measure up after I cut the first one, isn’t it?

After lunch, I filed down the offcuts that I had cut so that they made a neat line, and then went off to look at the painting. My masking isn’t up to much, it seems, as I have plenty of white spaces where the masking tpe prevented the wallpaper from reching, and also some of the wood treatment on the old beams has filtered down behind the tape. I’ll have some touching up to do on Monday.

Last job tonight was to cut the second “long” plant to size. That needed trimming off and a couple of lets cut into it to fit around the verticals. That’s now done and so on Monday, another thing that I can be doing is to cut out the trap door in the lower layer of floorboards. Whnen that’s done, I can fit the last two sheets of plasterboard on the studding on the landing, and then cut out the trap on the upper layer of floorboards.

-2

Thursday 15th January 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the painting of the walls in the stairwell today. And I’m glad that I put a second coat of paint on the walls as they certainly needed it – when it was dry, the first coat didn’t look as well as it had looked when I was doing it.

As the colour dried out, it went darker. Consequently I tipped another litre of white paint into the 3 litres of blue paint that was left over and the paint mixer attachment that I fit into the Ryobi Plus One drill mixed it all up quite a treat. I shall be doing a little more of this paint mixing now that I know that it works.

This afternoon I started to strip off the superfluous masking and I must admit that it looks quite nice, especially the contrast between the blue paint and the wooden ceiling and window surrounds. Mind you, the removal of the masking took longer tha I expected.

Once I’d done that, I had to remask around the roof beams that are visible, and I put the first coat of dark brown wood treatment on there. The second coat will go on tomorrow morning first thing.

Finally, I cut down to size the piece of wood that I’ll be using as the end stop of the shower room floor that fits under the door. That is now fitted into place now, ready for me to start tomorrow on fitting the floor on the landing (unless we have plenty of sun in which wase I’ll be sanding down the shower room floor ready for varnishing.

0

Wednesday 14th January 2015 – WELL, HERE YOU ARE THEN.

painted stairwell attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe stairwell, all painted a nice blue.

It wasn’t going to be as nice as this though, because the paint was a lot darker than indicated on the tin and I didn’t fancy that idea too much. So into the can went a litre of white paint and that lightened it up a little.

And it was a good job that I did that too, because there wouldn’t otherwise be enough to do a second coat, which is what I’m going to be doing tomorrow. And it needs it too because I’ve been doing it with a brush and it doesn’t go on particularly thoroughly.

painted stairwell attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took ages to do too, and it was long after 14:00 when I knocked off for lunch – more like 15:00 in fact, but I wasn’t going to stop work until I had finished the painting.

After my very late lunch I tidied up again and then carried on with the floor in the shower room. That is now all down and fitted in position, apart from the end block which will go under where the door will be.

For tea, I found an old tin of curried mixed beans and so I fried some onions, garlic and potatoes in olive oil and spices, and then added the tin of curried beans and a large tin of vegetables. Now there’s enough there for a good few days and that suits me fine.

For tomorrow after the second coat of paint, I’ll be cleaning up the exposed woodwork of the beams and rafters and painting it in the dark brown wood preservative. Once that is done, I’m going to go for it and start on fitting the door for the shower room. At least if I can do the door frame that will be a great advance.

I’ve worked out that I need three clear days to varnish the stairs and leave each coat to dry before I walk on it. If I go to the shops in Montlucon a week on Saturday, we’re rehearsing the radio programmes on the Sunday and then recording on Monday, then it looks like I have almost a week and a half to do as much of the flooring and woodwork that I can and sand everything down ready to start the varnishing on the Saturday before I head off to Montlucon.

That sounds like a good plan.

-1

Tuesday 13th January 2015 – D’OHHHH!

It’s mystified me for quite a while – the subject of the wind turbine on the side of the house.

You may recall that just before I went to Canada in August I was up on the scaffolding at the front of the house tidying up all of the wiring and one of the things that I tidied up was the wiring to the Wind Turbine. I also fitted a charge controller, a timer and a data panel.

Returning from Canada after 7 weeks away, I was expecting to see a significant reading on the data panel and the timer, and no-one was more astonished than I was to see not a thing. That really confused me greatly.

I didn’t give it much thought after that, being preoccupied with other things, but I did notice while I was up on the scaffolding getting some tools the other day that there were two wires danging down from underneath the junction box. The thought immediately went through my mind that I must have forgotten to connect them up, and that was the explanation for nothing happening.

Today, with 20 minutes to spare before lunch and having promised to deal with a few odd jobs today, and especially with the I went up onto the scaffolding to connect up the wires.

Prising off the top of the junction box, I noticed that these two loose wites were supposed to be loose – they are the wires that will be connecting the third bank of solar panels in due course, and the wires connecting the wind turbine were properly connected up. At least, that’s what I thought at first, but closer inspection revealed nothing of the kind.

Don’t ask me what goes through my mind at certain moments, or whatever I must have been doing at the time, but somehow, despite the clearest indications and a great deal of effort being put into colour coding and all that kind of thing, I somehow managed to connect up the positive lead to the negative feed, and vice versa.

I stood and stared at this for about 10 minutes open-mouthed, and then disconnected everything and reconnected everything correctly. And almost immediately, the green power light that I had fixed into the junction box came on. Since then, I’ve had the old familiar sound of the wind turbine murmuring away in the background.

I really don’t understand what goes on in my mind sometimes, but it’s worrying.

During the night I’d been on my travels around the Holmes Chapel area of Cheshire, in XCL, my red Ford Cortina Mark 5 estate that lives in a lock-up in Montaigut, and I was up comparatively early this morning.

After breakfast I came across another “d’ohhhh!” moment too. It seems that I was premature in declaring that the wallpapering had finished. I’d missed a bit and so I had to deal with that first. Once that was done I had to vacuum up the dust on the stairs (I’m enjoying this soot sucker that I’ve converted into a vacuum cleaner) and then mask everywhere off. That took most of the rest of the morning.

After lunch I collected up a pile of wood, did some tidying up and tool collecting, and then in the last hour or so started work on the shower room floor. THat’s now all cut to size and ready for nailing down, sanding off and varnishing now.

Remember what I said yesterday about knocking off? Well, here I was at 18:00 with the floor only half-done, but regardless, I carried on working until it was finished off.

And in the water butt, following on the fractured tap there, the front water butt is now empty and ready for cleaning and a new tap fitting. But of course I don’t have a new tap (I should have bought one on Saturday, shouldn’t I?) so it’s a good job that I drew off those couple of buckets of water for a reserve supply

-1

Monday 12th January 2015 – WOO HOOOO!

Yes, I’ve finished the wallpaper in the stairwell this afternoon. It doesn’t look particularly pretty but at least it’s all on and it will be staying on now, and that is that.

I had something of a little lie-in this morning so it was about 10:30 when I started work. First job was to vacuum up the dust with the soot-sucker. It didn’t half clog up the filter, but I’ve had experience of this in the past and it didn’t take very long to sort it out.

And in news that will startle almost everyone, I didn’t knock off for lunch until 14:30 – 30 minutes after my usual time. Working later than the normal knocking-off time (18:00 in winter, 19:00 in summer) is not an unusual event, but to work on past the lunchtime break is absolutely unheard-of.

However today, it was 13:45, too early to knock off and a piece of blank wall looked so inviting. As I was on a roll, I threw caution to the winds and pushed on. And I’m glad that I did too, because after lunch and I cracked on, I was done by 17:30 and that was that.

I spent the remaining time doing a few odd jobs, including changing over the plug on the new table saw (I use British plugs and sockets here as you know, because the plugs are fused. By 18:15 I was done and dusted, and that was that.

I can’t paint the wallpaper for a day or two as the paste needs to dry thoroughly. It looks like Wednesday to make a start on that. Tomorrow therefore I’ll push on and do all of the masking-off and catch up with a couple of other jobs that need to be sorted out

0

Friday 9th January 2015 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

… will be astonished by this, but believe it or not, I’ve started to wallpaper the stairwell.

Despite the lack of electricity today (it was another grey, miserable day today) I cracked on with the sanding down with the electric sander, stopping for half an hour for the boulangère and tidying up in the barn while I was waiting.

stairwell sanded down les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt didn’t take as long as I was expecting to sand everything down with the electric sander. In fact, by lunchtime everything was done and I had even put another layer of filler where it was needed.

after lunch though, the second layer hadn’t dried fully so I couldn’t sand it down, so I cleaned up as best as I could at the moment. This was when I noticed that there were a couple of areas had turned out pretty well. As there was still an hour or so before I knocked off, I decided to bite the bullet and start the wallpapering.

I hate wallpapering, I really do. I’m not much good at it, and working in a confined space in a stairwell is not my idea of a good job. But no-one else will do it if I don’t, and so I prepared everything.

And turning back to a few days ago, I found out why that wallpaper wouldn’t stick – the xallpaper that I put on the little shelving space under the stairs. It was in fact clear varnish that I must have put at one time into an empty paste tub. I wish I had labelled everything because it’s not the first time that this has happened.

The second piece of wallpaper that I fitted was quite straightforward, but the rist was a nightmare. All of the dimensoions were different and I was there for half an hour trying to position it, fit it and cut it to shape. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I got it to fit something like, a fact that peased me greatly, and I was quite pleased with it by the time that I has finished.

So that was one of the two most difficult pieces in, and on Friday afternoon too. i’m getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I? I went down to do my shopping this evening at the Pionsat Intermarche with a spring in my step.

But I do hate wallpapering. i’ve always said that whoever invented decorating wants f*****g. Although Nerina seemed to be of the opinion that on our honeymoon all those years ago I said “whoever invented f*****g wants decorating”.

But I dunno.

0

Thursday 8th January 2015 – IT WAS HARD …

… to get out of bed this morning. Being up and about at 04:00 might have something to do with it.

But it was a good job that I did get up though, because Terry came round to borrow a tool. And no-one was more surprised than me that I was able to put my hands straight on them.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was surprising. You may remember that I’ve been looking for the electric sander for the last couple of days? I had a flash of inspiration and went over to where it was supposed to be (although it’s been a long time since any other tool has been there) and, sure enough, there it was. However did that happen?

stairwell plasterboard filling les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo after all of that, I started work. with the aid of Caliburn’s ladder, I reached into the corners of the stairwell, masked off everywhere and attacked the gaps in the plasterboard and the screwheads with the filler. The, I made a very wet mix of filler and went around everywhere putting a second coat on the low spots, of which there were quite a few.

After lunch, I started to attack the filler with the electric sander. It looks like a snowstorm out there at the moment, even though I was only able to give about 30 or 40 minutes’ worth of sanding as the weather changed dramatically and I lost the sun behind a huge black cloud.

home made wiring clamp les guis virlet puy de dome franceLooking for something to do for the last hour or so before knocking off, I started on the wiring again. When I had straightened it out a few days ago, everything was in a real tangle so I didn’t make much progress. But with the hour or so that I had, I untangled everything, routed it properly and tidily, nd then made two wire clapms out of old wood battens and some 4×60 screws and clamped all of the wires to the ceiling beams.

Yes, we are definitely making major progress here and if I can finish the sanding tomorrow, providing that I can have 12amps of current, I’ll be ready for wallpapering next week.

I shan’t know myself then.

0

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;

0

Tuesday 6th January 2015 – ANOTHER MILESTONE …

… has been reached today.

Remember in the Spring when I bought that 500-watt ash sucker that I reckoned that I could convert quite easily into a vacuum cleaner? Well, without any conversion at all, I used it today to vacuum all of the dust that had collected on the stairs over the last year or so. And I was ever so impressed with this, almost as much as I wam with my galvanised steel dustbin. Even though it’s only 500 watts, it did a terrific job – much better than I was expecting. Once that had been done, I set to and masked off everywhere in the stairwell that I could reach.

The small ladder that I used when I fitted out the stairwell is now being used in the inspection pit and so I had to spend most of the day being an acrobat trying to reach the far-flung corners, and it wasn’t until I’d knocked off that I asked myself how come I hadn’t thought about the small ladder on the roof of Caliburn.

It took ages to mask off the stairwell and so that left me only about an hour or so to start to fill in the screw heads and the plasterboard joints. It’s going to take much more than that to do all that needs doing, and so I’ll be spending most of the day on Caliburn’s ladder, assuming that I remember to fetch it.

WHat else I’ll be doing is to try to hang the door for the cupboard at the back of the stairs. I put the final coat of varnish on that this morning and so tomorrow morning I can fit the hinges on the door and measure up to fit the hinges on the doorframe.

0

Wednesday 31st December 2014 – NOW HERE’S A THING.

While I was having (a rather late) breakfast this morning, I started to empty out the woodstove and clean the glass window. But much to my surprise, the big log that I put in there last think last night was still smouldering away.

It didn’t fire up however when I opened the foor, but it was still something of note to see it.

After breakfast, Iwent out to look at this idea of fitting the wood to the ends of the runs of plasterboard as I mentioned yesterday. However, I was thwarted right at the start, because it was one of these jobs where you needed to do several other things before I could start.

I had to fit a few lengths of tongue and grroving as a false ceiling, but before that I had to fit the plasterboard onto part of the stud walling. And before I could do that, I had to move some wiring around.

Anyway, you get the picture.

However, we have made a little bit of history because we now have, for the first time, plasterboard on both sides of part of the stud walling. That’s history in the making of course, and it means that whatever is between the two layers of plasterboard is there for good now, in exactly the same place as it’s going to be.

tongue and groove ceiling wooden plasterboard ends les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s 5 lengths of tongue and grooving in the ceiling as well, enough to clear the stairway.

And while I was doing all of this, I had another idea. I don’t have too much of this wood that I was talking about yesterday, so seeing that it’s good, heavy stuff I’m going to save it for where I’m putting the hinges for the doors. For the rest, I’ve been experimenting with floorboarding. I cut one to size, trimmed off the tongue and then with the circular saw I cut the width to size.

I had to file and sandpaper the edge where I cut the width to size, and it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I was fearing. A power plane or a belt sander would finish them off quite nicely but I don’t have them so I’ll have to do without.

So while it might not look as if I’ve done much today, it is in fact an enormous amount of progress both physically and psychologically too. Just one piece of wood to be fitted and then I can start to fill and then sand down the stairwell ready for wallpapering and painting

-1