Monthly Archives: April 2008

Staircase

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The last major shopping decision is the staircase. I've been toying with the idea of buying an off-the-shelf hardwood staircase and fitting that. The only problem is a standard height staircase is about one step higher than I need. I could cut off the bottom step and adjust the banister etc. to fit, but it's not something I relish.

Now that the oak flooring has been ordered I thought I might as well go the whole hog and order a made-to-measure staircase and have it professionally fitted. I've decided to use a local guy because I've used him before to fit two staircases into some gites, and he did a good job.

Again, the cost is an issue and it's going to be an extra 1500 euros compared to an off the peg solution, but the staircase will be hardwood, with a oak tint applied. It's also a job I can just forget about and I think worth the extra because you can see the quality of a hand-made staircase and it should add a little more of the wow factor (and hopefully value) to the house.

I'm glad the shooping week is over !

Oak and tile flooring

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Now that the renovation has moved downstairs I had to face up to one of the worst jobs. Shopping.

The lounge is going to be floorboarded and the kitchen area tiled, so to proceed much further floorboards and tiles need to be bought and a staircase chosen.

I used pine floorboards upstairs but really wanted oak or chestnut downstairs. It's much tougher, looks better and is more in keeping with an old cottage. Looking around the DIY shops, oak and chestnut floorboards came in at about 80 euros/m2. For a 40m2 space that really starts to get expensive. Fortunately someone recommended going direct to a sawmill to save money. This turned out to be a really good idea. We visited two sawmills, one in Combourg and another near St. Brieuc and had a surf on the 'net. It was really nice to see trees going in one end and finished flooring etc. coming out the other end. Kind of felt more satisfying to buy than from a DIY store.

The choice at the sawmills was a bit daunting, various widths, lengths and knottyness (quality) to choose from, but eventually we settled on some 15cm wide oak tongue and groove planks with lengths varying from 1m to 2m. There is a 3 week delay and then we should leave the wood to aclimatise in the room for another 2 weeks, but at least that was one job done and for 50 euro/m2. Well worth shopping around.

Floor and wall tiles next. I don't find making decisions on colour combinations that easy, and choosing the wrong colour floor tiles can really affect the style and limit later choices for wall and kitchen colours. Anyway, after much head scratching and umming and arhing we chose light terracotta style floor tiles and, a bit boring, white bathroom tiles. We did get some coloured border tiles to brighten things up a little.

All the tiles, grout, adhesive etc. was brought from a large DIY store in St. Brieuc. Normally it about a 40 minute drive. However with the trailer and car full of tiles we were seriously overloaded. I reckon the trailer was several hundred kilos overweight on it's own. Just to get the tyres back to a roughly round shape took a while with the air hose.

Driving back was certainly a bit of a hairy experience. Any faster than 70kmh (40 mph) caused snaking and bouncing and something not to be recommended. It's a bit scary going that slow on main roads. The journey back took 30 minutes longer than normal and it was a relief to get back in one piece.

It's very easy to under-estimate the weight of tiles.

Lime Rendering

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Apart from a couple of small bits of in-fill around the dormer windows all the plasterboarding upstairs is now finished. I didn't have any scrap pieces large enough and I didn't want to use up a whole board just for a small bit. Once I start plasterboarding downstairs I can use any larger off-cuts to finish upstairs.

The last couple of days have been spent lime rendering an internal cob and stone wall. I could have just stuck plasterboard over it but I thought it would look a little more authentic and rustic with a traditional lime render.

The lime render is made up of just lime (Chaux blanche hydraulique naturelle), sand and water. The instructions on the bag said one sack of lime (35kg), 11 buckets of sand (10L buckets) and two buckets of water. However after chucking the water, lime and half the sand in the mixer we realised the mixer was too small and had to spend along time juggling the contents of the mixer and two wheelbarrows taking half out, adding sand, removing some, adding back etc. etc. Not a good start.

Lime renderNever having plastered before it was a real steep learning curve and through trial and error we finally got all the render on the wall. At first it was a real problem getting it to stick. I had brushed all the loose dust off, but just pushing it on with the float didn't really work very well. The mix was quite creamy, but gritty with the sand. Wetting the wall with a water spray helped alot but the technique that really worked was to throw the render onto the wall, flicking it quite hard, then spread it out with a float.

The hardest part was keeping a wet edge as you worked. If the edge dried out at all it was really tough to blend in the adjacent new render without leaving a line or bump.

With hindsight, I think we should had wetted the wall much more, and thrown the lime render much harder at the wall. As it dried out it did crack in quite a few places and a couple of spots sounded a little hollow where it had not stuck quite right. It certainly looks rustic tho'

Overall we covered about 30 square meters of wall in a day and a half and used around 6 bags of lime. Really hard work and not something I want to do again in a hurry.

Plasterboarding, and more plasterboarding

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Plastic plumbingThe blog has been a bit quiet recently because I've just been plasterboarding everyday for the last month and there isn't much to see apart from grey rooms.

Almost all the upstairs has been boarded out. Three bedrooms, corridor, landing and two bathrooms finished. The photo shows the plumbing for one of the bathrooms from about a week or so ago. This bathroom also has a suspended toilet and shows the hot and cold water pipes in place before boarding. Each water supply is a single point-to-point feed supplied from a downstairs manifold next to the boiler. The advantage is that there are no joints behind walls etc. and the only connections required are at the end of each run on the tap/appliance. Connections are made with a simple compression fixing onto the plastic pipe. Two sizes of pipework are in place, 12mm for sinks and toilets; 16mm for showers and baths.

All the electrical cabling is also now in place for the sockets, heaters and lighting. I've also cabled up every room with a TV/Satellite/Radio co-ax connection and two RJ45 sockets with Cat 5e cable. Again all the TV and Internet cabling goes back to a central point to a patch board for connection to the router, TV distribution and telephone. The telephones can be plugged into the RJ45 sockets. Hopefully the system should be flexible enough to cater for most eventuallities. I might even be able to run network booted thin clients connect to a cental media server for video/music etc. in each room.

Hopefully by the end of next week all the plasterboarding upstairs should be finished and I'll have some photos of the rooms.