Tag Archives: varnishing shelves

Thursday 9th July 2015 – EVEN THOUGH …

… it was something of a late night last night, I was still up and about long before the alarm went off. Well, in theory anyway, because I wasn’t in a rush to leave my cosy bed.

Mind you, I forget how many times I had had to leave it during the night. It certainly wasn’t just once or twice, that’s for sure. But that’s a sign of old age.

And here’s another thing too – after breakfast I sat down and sorted out the images and text for no less than 24 days of my voyage across Canada’s Maritime Provinces – without even stopping for breath. Out of 40, with a few previously done, it doesn’t leave too many to do now.

But that’s only just the start of it. I have to retype all of the notes from the dictaphone (and it’s a good job that I saved the dictations to a memory stick on my way around last year) and merge them in, and then research and expand them. So that’s not something that is likely to be finished in a short while.

After lunch, and a big pot of coffee (which I richly deserved), first job was to empty the beichstuhl. And it needed it too. But I’ve gone back to the bigger tub, because the liners are a much tighter fit and that works much better. The smaller one is a better fit in the container, but with the liners being too large, they are just pulled into the tub.

For the rest of the day, I’ve been carving out the cable trunking in the lower shelf of the flying shelf unit that I’m building. That needs to be done precisely and it takes ages, with measuring, drilling, chiselling and filing. But it’s done now and had the first coat of varnish at 19:15 and the second at – would you believe – 23:15. Yes, me working at that time is unheard-of. It’ll have the third and final coat tomorrow early morning too.

But there’s also been a subtle change in the design. While I was lying in bed this morning, I thought of another way by which I could improve the design, and so some of what I had done yesterday ended up in the woodpile. But it’s always like that around here. Design evolves continually, especially during the actual work, and I’ve lost count of the number of amendments that I’ve made to the original plan.

And in other news, a big “well-done” to the three Welsh clubs in Europe tonight. Airbus drew 2-2 in Croatia to lose 5-3 on aggregate to much superior opposition. Bala beat Differdange 2-1, but that wasn’t enough to overturn the away score last week – a match that they should have won at a canter, never mind lost. But pride of place must go to Newtown, who beat Valletta 2-1 away from home to progress through to the next round against FC Copenhagen. So with TNS going through to meet Videoton of Hungary after demolishing Torshavn on Tuesday, that’s a 50% success rate for Welsh clubs in Europe – a percentage that matches what Scottish football could manage in Europe this week.

A few heavy defeats tonight in Europe, including an 8-0, but no Welsh team lost this week. What with 10th place in the National rankings, things are looking up for Welsh football.

And not before time. Maybe people will start taking it seriously now.

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Wednesday 8th July 2015 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to leave the comfort and safety of my comfortable bed. 3 alarms went off but it was still something of a struggle to heave myself out of my stinking pit. You wouldn’t ever have thought that last night I was in bed by 23:15 and was in such a deep sleep that the midnight buzzer in the verandah woke me stark upright.

After a rather tired breakfast, I spent some time updating the Radio Anglais stuff – the databases that I keep of what we’ve done and when we’ve done it – and then I updated out Facebook page, and now that’s online too. You can see it here if you like. I hope that you’ll pass by and give us a “like”.

When that was done, I carried on with my own website – I want to bring that up-to-date too but that’s an impossible task, which I fully realise.

However, in between times, I put another coat of varnish on the shelves that I cut yesterday and also on the shelf that will be going over the door. The aim was that they would dry ready for this afternoon.

I forgot that the boulangère is on holiday. That meant that I had to wander off to Pionsat and the Intermarché to buy some bread for lunch. And I wasn’t there five minutes either. It was a baguette today, and I have some speciality bread for tomorrow and Friday.

shelf over shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceFirst job after lunch was to fit the shelf in the shower room.

Space, or lack thereof, is something from which I’ve always suffered and so I’m fitting as many shelves as possible as I carry on with the development. There’s at least two feet (60cms) over the door in the shower room and that’s crying out for a shelf for the washing products and the like until the kitchen is done (whenever that might be). No sense in wasting the space

But the rest of the work isn’t so straightforward. The flying shelf is actually two layers of wood sandwiched together. The idea is that the electrical plugs and the 12-volt LED strip light will fit in the bottom part with the cables sandwiched between, and the top part will go over the top to keep everything covered.

That works fine with a 20mm-thick shelf when your mains plug is 18mm deep, but when your light switch is 25mm you need to think again. Accordingly I spent much of this afternoon making a pattress out of a pine offcut. 18mm deep, this home-made pattress, and that will do the job quite nicely. And it’s also enabled me to have a think about fitting a 12-volt DC socket there too.

And that, dear reader, took me until 20:20 tonight – something of a record for just recently. But today was much cooler, the temperature in the attic never passed beyond 30°C, and it gave me much more of an incentive to work. I even managed to tidy up a little in here too.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

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Tuesday 7th July 2015 – THIS IDEA …

flying shelf shower room les guis virlet puy de dome france… about a flying shelf in the bathroom seems to work okay.

You can see how it’s going to work. There’s a bracket in the false ceiling (the false ceiling will eventually go over it) and from there are two lengths of threaded rod hanging down. At the moment the threaded rod is passing right through the shelves and held up with nuts, but there will be some captive nuts fitted into the shelves and the threaded rod will be cut to size.

The threaded rod will be covered by some nice stainless steel tubing and it will all look quite nice.

This morning we braved the heat and made it to Marcillat to record the radio programmes. Things went according to plan, except that Violette fell asleep and one of our 15-minute shows ran on for almost 19 minutes. She’ll have fun editing that down.

We went for a coffee and a good chat afterwards, and then I came home. I installed myself in the bedroom as 34°C in the attic was rather too much, but that didn’t work as I crashed out for a good hour – and I mean “crashed out”. And seeing as how I was in bed last night for 22:30, that was rather astonishing.

fitting bolt shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I’ve fitted the bolt on the bathroom door (not that we need it but still, you never know) and then I attacked the shelving. That’s all cut to shape and drilled out where necessary (it’s having a cable run through it to power things like shavers and hair clippers) and now varnished, as is the shelf that I made the other day.

And surprise surprise, I was actually working at 22:30 this evening. I put the first coat on before knocking off at 19:30, but when I went out to take the stats, the first coat was dry so I put a second coat on.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish the shelving (I hope), plasterboard everything in, and then carry on with the ceiling.

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Thursday 26th March 2015 – ONE MORE COAT …

… of varnish on the floor and the varnishing will be finished. Every vertical surface has already had two coats of varnish, and every horizontal surface three, except of course the floor. And that will be done first thing tomorrow morning.

That new varnish from Mr Bricolage seems to be okay- it needs a really good mixing but then it spreads quite nicely. I’ll have to remember that varnish next time I’ll be varnishing.

That really is all that I’ve done today – as if that isn’t enough. You’ve absolutely no idea of just how much bare wood there was in that bedroom and it took ages to do. But it all looks so nice now and so it was well-worth the effort.

Tomorrow, once the varnish has dried, I’ll be fitting the skirtung board and then trying to install the glass over the door without dropping it. Putting the hanging rails in the wardrobe will be the final job and that bedroom will finally be finished. I can then move all of the clothes and the chests of drawers down there, and my attic will be so much emptier.

That’s not quite true. I need to sort out the lights in there. At the moment there are just some LED lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling and I’m not sure what I can do to make that look pretty. I have one or two ideas and I’ll have to see how they pan out.

I had yet another small fire in here tonight seeing as the temperature was just 14.9°C. That’s 2°C higher than my threshold temperature, but I made a huge pepper and chickpea curry tonight and that cooks nicely in the oven, so why not light the fire and be comfortable while i’m doing it? And it took the leftover wood from yesterday, a floorboard offcut and half a log. Talk about cheap cooking and heating.

Yes, this little wood fire with tiny oven is the best thing that i’ve ever purchased for here.

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Tuesday 24th March 2015 – SO WHAT …

… have I done today then?

First thing was to trim off a corner of the door that is catching on the floor. And having done that, it was then catching somewhere else. It seems that I have a warped floorboard and that is what is causing the door to catch.

The solution was therefore obvious – out came the big new belt sander and that soon dealt with that issue. There was a lot of vacuuming to do with the new vacuum cleaner, but that’s impressive too. There is however a design fault – a 90° bend in the pipe inside the machine that leads into the dust bag. That could easily be eliminated and so it should be, because it blocks up quite easily.

Next job was to fit the beading around the window and the framework for the sheet of glass that will be fitted above the door.

I had to sort out the issue of the flooring in the far corner. The walls are of course nothing like straight and there’s a gap that varies from about 15mm to 3mm. I tried to carve a piece to fit but gave up after half an hour. Instead I went into the barn and found a 4.5m length of 20mm x100mm left over from when we did the barn roof. I trimmed that down to 70mm using the desktop saw, and that will do to pad out the skirting board so that the gap is covered.

I then spent the rest of the morning vacuuming and cleaning up.

After lunch I masked off by the window and then started to varnish. I’ve done the window sill and insets and also the interior of the wardrobe and that took until all of 19:00. And I’ve had a bit of a shock in that I’m not going to have anything like enough varnish to do it all. A trip to Montlucon is therefore on the cards, well before my planned trip on Saturday.

I had a fire in here tonight. It wasn’t that it was that cold, but it was cold enough and it meant that I could cook my meal in comfort. It was left-over hot-pot from Sunday night – Liz gave me a doggy-bag. Not enough for a meal but with a handful or two of pasta thrown in, it made a lovely meal.

And now I’m off to bed – a nice early night.

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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.

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Wednesday 28th January 2015 – THIS LANDING DEFINITELY …

… won’t be finished by the weekend now, that’s for sure.

I didn’t realise this at the time, but now I do, that the “drop-in” hinges that are quite common here and that I like to use are “handed”. I need three right-handed ones for the bedroom door and three right-handed ones for the shower room door, but I seem to have acquired six left-handed hinges.

I can’t believe this, because I’ve fitted three doors here, some right-handed and some left-handed, and I’ve always managed to find the xorrect hinges without even knowing about it. Talk about beginners’ luck. But now I’ll have to wait until I can go either to Montlucon or Commentry.

This morning though, I fitted the ceiling in the landing and cut out the hole for the recessed light that I’ll be fitting. All of this took a while but it’s finished now and doesn’t look too bad at all.

We had a flash of sunlight too for half an hour, so I sanded down and vacuumed the shelves over the stairs, and then put the first coat of varnish on them and also on the landing celling. That all took me until 14:20 – a good 20 minutes after my normal lunchtime pause,but I’m less interested in pausing than I am in doing the work on the place.

After lunch I went into the barn to find the doors for the bedroom and the shower room and then cut down one of the planks that I’ll be using for an end-piece for the stud wall. And it was here that I discovered the issue with the hinges.

Never mind though, there’s still plenty to do. I ended up finishing off the routing for the wiring on the first floor (although I’ve since remembered two things that I’ve missed) and then put the second coat of varnish on the shelves and ceiling.

Tomorrow I have to nip to Marcillat and record the Radio Tartasse radio sessions, and when I come back I’ll be putting the third coat of varnish on the shelves and fitting the recessed light on the landing.

And until I can sort out some hinges for the doors, I’ll be fitting as many end pieces as I can and then starting on the bedroom. No reason to stop working just because I’ve messed up these hinges.

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Thursday 8th November 2012 – I’M BACK!

And I bet that you didn’t know that I’ve even been away.

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago a small group of us went round to Nan’s for some kind of soirée – well tonight, we all went round to chez Gilles.

6 of us there were – Nan, Cécile, Zoë, Gilles, Yours Truly, and Isabel. We wined and dined and then played a board game.

It’s quite rare this – me socialising, isn’t it? But I think that I really ought to get out more, and that’s an opinion which everyone else shares.

This morning I didn’t have my usual go on the website.

In a change to the advertised programme, straight after breakfast I attacked the shelf unit and varnished it all. This would give it much more time to dry, of course.

And then I had a problem.

When I went to take off the lid of the varnish tin, I discovered that it had rusted on and so I had to chisel it off. And what I had to do to it to make it come off meant that it was clearly in no fit state to go back on afterwards.

It was a large tin – and expensive too – and so I had to find a few more paint tins, throw away the content, clean out the tins and pour the varnish into that.

Such is life.

Once the varnish had dried I fitted it all into the cupboard – not without having to do a few little alterations, it has to be said, butnow it fits beautifully – exactly as it should.

7 shelves there are, and soon there will be 8.

The metal shelf unit that I had brought upstairs and put in the shower room to store some of the bits and pieces that were loitering around – what was on there didn’t even take up one shelf on the new unit.

Yes, it’s a monster and quite right too.

Actually I’m impressed – it goes quite well in there and fits the little cupboard quite nicely.

And it’s amazing – with that I’ve already managed to put on there, there’s already so much more room to move around in the bedroom and work

When I’m organised – whenever that might be – and the house is well-advanced, there will be tons of room in there to store all kinds of stuff – you can’t have too much storage room.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off rounding things up and stacking them on the shelves. and once it’s all done I might even have enough room to start cutting plasterboard again.

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