Renovating a Gite in Brittany

Phew made it.

The ‘house warming’ party went off with a swing. It was almost exactly 1 year after I bought the house. It’s been a long and hard road, especially the last few months. Time for a rest and a little self-indulgence.

In preparation for the party in a few days and as a bit of a moral boost we got 7 tonnes of gravel delivered to smarten up the front of the house. A few hours with a rake and shovel makes all the difference - it also stops us treading in mud and muck. Most local houses round here have a dark grey granite gravel, but we chose a lighter colour to help bounce some extra light into the house, especially in the winter months. The other consideration was the size of the gravel. Too small and it gets trodden in between the treads of your shoes and too large is awkward to walk on. This size is known as 10/14 - which I believe means pieces between 10mm and 14mm.

The concrete mixer and trailer is tucked away in the long grass at the back. I guess I’m going to have to get the strimmer and blitz the garden; if summer ever arrives.

It’s certainly a huge improvement over this builders yard

Stinky

With the bathrooms operational and having been moved in for nearly a week there has been quite a strong smell coming from the septic tank back up into the house. The septic tank does have a ventilation pipe running from the output side of the tank and before the filter bed that vents up through the roof. However first impressions seem to be that this is not working correctly and the smelly gases are somehow coming back through the input side and the gas escaping through a trap. Fortunately the trap the gas has chosen is the washing machine trap in the laundry cupboard. Keeping the door to the laundry room shut helps, but it’s still seeping into the house.

As a temporary measure we’ve fitted a small fan to the tumble drier pipe to suck out the gas and relegated the tumbler to the garage. Blocking the washing machine trap might well shift the gas escape to a more sensitive part of the house !

Speaking to some friends they said that their new septic system also smelt a bit at first but settled down quickly. It does seem a bit stange to me that the gas isn’t taking the easy route via the vent.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Yesterday evening we decided to clear out the lounge and treat the oak flooring with an oil. How long could slapping a bit of oil on a floor take ?

Well it took a good deal longer than expected. Firstly I had to rub down the floorboards with a fine glasspaper because the grain of the wood had lifted slightly from the previous application of a woodworm treatment. The tin of oil (Huile Naturelle pour Parquets, incolore mat) said to apply liberally with a brush then wipe of the excess after an hour. Well of course I knew better and decided not to wipe off the excess and leave it overnight to soak in. Anyway it was getting to 2′o’clock in the morning and bed was calling.

So this morning we find that most of the oil had soaked in but it was still very wet and like an ice skating rink. Maybe if we leave it a bit longer it will disappear. Well it didn’t. So we both had to remove our shoes and socks and paddle in armed with piles of old cloths and towels to mop up the excess. This actually took quite a while because the oil had now started to go sticky and was pretty difficult to remove.

Fortunately it all turned out OK, as once the excess had been removed the floor dried properly (as it said it would on the tin) and the finish looked fantastic. The oil really brought out the grain and gave the oak planks a nice warm colour. The photo shows the difference between the pre-treated oak and the oiled oak.

In case you are wonder why I didn’t just use a varnish, it’s because I find that a varnish (even a matt finish) leaves a slightly ‘plastic’ sheen on the wood and I believe the oil shows a more natural finish and lets the wood ‘breath’ . The oil finish is slightly higher maintenance as it needs to be re-applied occasionally, but I think worth it.

We moved in to the new place today. Hurrah.

We’ve got a basic kitchen (thank you to my plumber friend Ian who connected up the propane gas bottles outside) and a fully functioning downstairs bathroom. I finally got round to buying a sink and everything is connected up. We are still waiting for the built-in fridge delivery but we have got a temporary free standing fridge in the kitchen until it arrives.

The place is still a bit of a mess with everything from the rental property in boxes or carrier bags, but at least we are in. Moving out from the old place took ages and quite a few trips back and forth with the trailer, but apart from the final clean everything is out.

At the moment we are sleeping in the office downstairs as our bedroom upstairs has turned into a storage space, so there is still quite a bit to do. The main jobs in the next few days before the kids come to stay for the weekend are :-

• Clear lounge and oil floorboards
• Connect water and waste to kids bathroom sinks
• Fit shower mixer and shower door to kids bathroom
• Hook up the satellite for the TV - Kids need TV and I want to watch the Hungarian Forumla One Grand Prix

Then next week we have our one year on party and the following week my Mum and three nieces are coming to stay!

I wish the days were a bit longer, but on the plus side we don’t have to travel 30 minutes each way to and from the rental place.

Even with lots of unfinished jobs, there is one plus side, the France Telecom man came the other day and connected the Telephone and ADSL, so at least I have a 4meg broadband connection, not that I’ve got much time for surfing.

Whilst I have been battling with the plumbing last week Debbie has been pressing on with finishing the painting and getting the kitchen area cleaned up and painted ready to fit the units. We also somewhere found the time to plasterboard and insulate between the beams in the kitchen and dining room area. It was a job I was going to leave until later, but it makes such and mess it was worth spending an extra couple of days now to get it out of the way and avoid spoiling the new kitchen with plasterboard dust, filler and paint.

The kitchen went in today, and some of yesterday. It all went together remarkably easily and I have to say the quality of the IKEA stuff was very good. There wasn’t a single screw, nail or fixing missing. Everything just slotted together perfectly.

The cooker is in but not connected to the gas yet. I’m waiting for a plumber friend to come and sort that out. The other minor change, which required an extra shopping trip to IKEA in Nantes, was to replace our free standing fridge/freezer with a built-in unit. This meant an additional 60cm wide tall unit and the purchase of a new built-in fridge/freezer. The new fridge/freezer is going to be delivered in a couple of days and should just slot straight into the corner cabinet.

So, kitchen in but not quite functional yet. It is also missing handles, plinthes under the units, the splashback and extractor for the cooker and some tiling behind the sink. I guess we’ll have to live without these for a short time.

No photos as yet, I’ve just not had the time (a bit of a lame excuse) but at the moment it’s basically wake-up, work, sleep.

To save time and aggravation the downstairs bathroom has got one of those plastic corner shower units installed now. The idea being that it should be easier than building a cubicle myself out of plasterboard and then having to fit a shower tray, tile and grout and connect up various pipes etc.

As it turned out it wasn’t quite as quick as hoped. Assembling all the various bits and pieces and getting the curved shower doors to fit and run smoothly took most of the day. The water connection was very simple, just two screw fittings, but the waste proved a little more tricky.

They provided a flexible waste outlet from the shower tray, but it was very difficult to get your hands in to connect the waste and push the unit back into the corner without kinking the pipe. After quite a bit of fiddling about and some cross words the whole unit slipped into place and the water seems to run away without a problem. I’ve no idea if there is a leak on the waste as you just can’t see properly.

With hindsight it might have been possible to jack the whole unit up in the air 30 cms then make the connections and lower it into place, but when you are up against a deadline and very tired the obvious or alternative solutions don’t always come to you.

In the last week we have also managed to get quite a lot of the other sanitary ware installed. The kids bathroom is basically finished. The painting is finished and it has a toilet, sinks and shower. It’s just waiting for the hot and cold water to be connected to the sinks and shower. The downstairs bathroom is also almost complete with it’s undercoat, toilet and shower. It’s just waiting on a corner sink to be fitted. It’s not much use moving in and not being able to wash and go to the toilet. The kitchen and lounge will have to wait until the last minute.

Nine days to go before we are homeless.

It’s been a busy but really productive week. We’ve chosen a kitchen from IKEA and went to pick it up the other day. It’s all in boxes in the lounge at the moment. When we went to choose the kitchen we actually made a few minor changes which altered the dimensions of the space required. Fortunately I hadn’t built the walls for the kitchen at the time so after purchasing the kitchen I knew exactly how it was going to fit together. That meant I could build the required wall to fit exactly.

As you can see the walls are now up, and with a first coat of filler for the taping and jointing. It’s a L-Shaped kitchen with the classic triangle of fridge in the corner, sink and cooker opposite.

Whilst the filler was out we have also finished the taping and jointing of the two kids rooms upstairs and they have had a undercoat on the plasterboard.

The kids rooms have taken priority over our bedroom as they come to stay with me at the weekends and I don’t really want them living in a complete shambles.

The lounge is still a storage room and all the bathrooms are as yet unfinished, although the upstairs bathroom has been painted. It just hasn’t got a toilet, sinks or shower yet!

It’s going to be very tight to move in on time

Two months ago we committed to leaving our rental at the end of July, which seemed like a good idea at the time. However with less than a month to go it’s all looking very dodgy.

There is still a mountain of stuff to finish before moving in, and just to make matters even more pressured we have arranged a one year anniversary party at the house (end of July) and four of my relatives are coming over to stay at the beginning of August.

There are no kitchen walls, let alone a kitchen, no bathrooms (not even a toilet fitted yet), limited electrics - just one socket for everything, plasterboard needs taping and jointing plsu, plus, plus…

Time is very tight just to do the jobs to get it habitable, not counting the time required to buy kitchens, furniture etc.

I think the next three weeks are going to be hectic with some very long days (and nights).

Work has finally started on the kitchen area now.

Because the kitchen, downstairs office and bathroom are going to be tiled, I decided to add some underfloor heating to take the chill off the tiles in the winter. Because I already had a floor with a screed installed at the correct level my options were limited. I could have dug out the whole concrete floor and laid wet heating, but it’s an awful lot of work. In the end I have used electric underfloor heating mats and then tiled on top. It’s not the most efficient heating, but they are only low power units (160 watts/m2) and it fairly inexpensive and quick to install.

The mats are simply rolled out into the areas required, avoiding large furniture, kitchen cabinets etc, and fixed with the self adhesive backing. The mat wires are only 3mm thick, so a very thin screed was poured over the mats to give a ‘level’ base for tiling. I only had about 10mm clearance under the door, so it was a bit touch and go with my levels.

Once the screen had set the tiles were laid. To cater for the slight bumps and level changes a thin layer of tile adhesive was trowelled onto the floor and then the back of each tile had the adhesive applied with the ‘comb’ applicator.

I sure hope the mats work, cos now the tiles are down there is no way to fix any problems.