Renovating a Gite in Brittany

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.

The staircase guys came this week to fit the stairs. Two men and a lorry arrived with all the bits Wednesday morning and they finished Friday lunchtime.

The photos show the construction process. I didn’t actually see much of process first hand because for the two days we were trapped downstairs we finished off bits of plasterboarding in the kitchen and lounge and had a major tidy up to move all the materials and tools into the garage ready to tile the kitchen floor.

The staircase is made of a hardwood (not sure of the name) but during construction it did look quite yellow, however right at the end it was all sanded down and a light oak tint was applied. That really made quite a difference to the look and brought up the grain.

The guys suggested that I should apply a clear wax coating to stabilise the tint to prevent further darkening over time and also to protect and nourish the wood.

The stairs were quite expensive, but I’m really pleased with the result. They just seem to curve and sweep up the stairwell and walking up and down is really comfortable. Each step is about 30cm wide and the rise is very shallow. Compared to an off-the-peg staircase it’s a world of difference. But then I have to say that to convince myself of the extra expense.

With the floor finished the metal studwork has been built in the lounge, insulated using 100mm glass fibre with a vapour barrier.

The photo was taken a couple of days ago and the room has now been plasterboarded. There is also a wall for the hall that runs across separating the stairs and front door from the lounge. You can just see the edge of the wall as the camera position is in the hallway.

Yesterday I started taping and jointing the stairwell at the end of the hallway because the staircase guys are coming on Wednesday to fit the stairs. If I can get the stairwell prepared and an undercoat painted before then it will make life much easier protecting the stairs from dust and muck.

Once the staircase guys start, we can start work on the kitchen as they reckon it will take a couple of days to fit the staircase.

brittany renovation

It took a little longer than expected but finally the oak floorboards are down ! I'm really happy with the result and very pleased with the look of the boards.

The photo only shows progress half-way across the floor, but you would get the general idea.

After my previous experience of laying pine floorboards I was much more careful about getting every row straight and flush before proceeding with the next row. Every plank was checked for splinters, or muck in the groove and all the tongues swept of dust etc. before the next row was placed. Occasionally a board did not quite seat correctly and needed clamping to pull everything together. This time I used some old sash cramps in reverse to squeeze the boards against each other to ensure I always had a straight edge to work against. Fortunately there were only a couple of instances where I needed the cramps but it does slow up the process. Compared to the pine planks before these were much much better.

One thing that made progress quite slow was the nailing. I did do some research and found that there is a special floorboard nailing gun that fires the nail into the tongue at 45 degrees and punches it home. The perfect tool for the job. However all the hire shops I visited with picture of tool in hand either gave me a shrug of the shoulders or said, 'Yeh, seen one of those on tele, but we just do it by hand'. I did find a local shop that could order and sell me one, but at 500+ euros it seemed a little expensive for a one off job.

Impatience and the cheapskate in me decided to do it by hand. How difficult could it be to bang in a few nails Well it turned out that getting the right nails was a challenge in itself. I wanted lost head nails with serrations (barbs) down the shaft because I was nailing through hardwood into softwood and wanted the extra grip to hold the planks down and stop and squeaking and movement in the future. Again, trips to several DIY stores and builders merchants turned up nothing. Even the builders merchant thick nail and screw catalogue had nothing suitable to order. In the end I settled on a stainless steel nail with serrations, but a rounded head. Therefore every nail had to countersunk, and banged home (with some difficulty) with a punch. My hammering skills have certainly improved over the last few days, however I did catch the edge of some boards with the hammer head, so a few little dents here and there. Oak is tough, but not that tough. Any ideas on how to remove the dents on the edges of the planks would be appreciated.

BTW – If you are wondering about my crazy multi-coloured floor laying plan, the inventory of planks supplied by the sawmill might explain things.

So after four days, 1000 nails, a sore back and forty square meters, we have a floor. No more mud.

brittany renovation

Progress has been fairly good recently. I've been a bit tardy updating the blog because of the long days and general tireness.

Some more of the plumbing has been completed with piping runs to the kitchen area and bathrooms. The hot water tank has also been installed, however not operational yet. Most of the pipework is turned off, isolated at the valves, whilst the bathrooms are being tiled. The only other work upstairs that has been completed is that the floors have been cleaned (with methylated spirits) and varnished.

The majority of the work is being concentrated downstairs at the moment, the reason being is because the staircase is due to be fitted in a couple of weeks and the lounge and corridor was still a mud floor. Also the oak floorboarding we ordered was available for collection. The floorboards have to rest in the room for a couple of weeks before laying to acclimatise, so we had to dig out the mud floor to lay the joists. Each joist is 6m long by 15cm by 5cm. The mud floor was covered with a plastic membrane then each joist laid at 40cm centers on the membrane and packed with concrete 'pads' every meter or so to ge the levels correct. This had to be done before collecting the floorboards, and the floorboards have to be laid before the staircase arrives. Everything has been a bit hectic, with everything, tools, equipment etc. all packed into the kitchen area, which still needs tiling, but there's no floor space, so the floorboards need laying, but… arrggg!!!!

Before laying the floorboards we have had to build the fireplace hearth using an old granite lintel and some other bits of stone, install the stainless steel chimney liner and woodburner (don't want rain and/or soot all over the new oak floor), new front door (the old one was rotten and too small and the rain blew in underneath), run electric cabling in the lounge/corridor for lights, cockets, TV, Telephone, heating etc, varnishing the oak beams, and what seems like dozens of minor jobs that should be finished before the floor and staircase.

Oh, the crazy picture at the top. That's the floorboard laying plan. The floorboards came in a variety of lengths, about 80% of them between 1.3m and 1.7m with some other shorter ones. Hence to avoid wasteage and cutting we have the plan .

I finally got around to starting the plumbing.

Actually this contraption, that looks like the control deck of a submarine, is the 'nerve center' of my plastic plumbing system. I hope I'm using the French equivalent of top quality barrier pipe Steve ?

From now on new runs are going to be dead easy as I just attach the length of pipe to the manifold and run the other end to the appliance, turn on the valve and voila, water. Yep, that thing is now full of water at 5 bar.

The reason there are more cold feeds than hot are because of toilets, dishwasher and washing machine. Also the strange brass things at the end of each manifold is an anti-knock device to prevent water hammer. Not sure it's really needed, but why not.

Almost finished the new window for the downstairs office this afternoon. There is a little stonework inside to do but basically the window is in.

The window frame was made from some oak beams of 10cm by 20cm sections to take a 60cm by 75cm window. That's the internal dimensions of the window. The window is actually about 4cm larger all around as it is fitted to the inside face of the frame. Just for fun and a little authenicity I used oak pegs to made the joints in the frame. Because the joints in the frame might leak on the window sill there are two channels cut into the underside of the sill and a plastic membrane running under the sill and up behind the window. Hopefully this should allow and water to drain away outside, rather than collect in the wall and cause a damp problem inside.

Making the hole in the stone wall is a little scary, as the hole always seems to end up about twice the size that you need it because of errant large stones. From the photo you can see the inside beam at the top of the hole that protudes right into the wall. The new window was deliberately positioned right under this beam so that I only needed to use one acro prop to support all the stone above the window. As you can see quite a lot of stone still falls out which all needs putting back in. Personally I use quite a dry mix of mortar so that there is very little 'cement water' that seeps out to stain the face of the stonework. Any mortar is also raked out at this stage to leave a gap between the stones for pointing later.

The inside of the window is just shuttered with some old planks and concrete used to fill out the inside wall. I used a couple of bits of oak beam to make the internal lintel then infilled with stone above. The internal lintel is not shown in this photo. The internal stonework and concrete has to wait until the external stonework is complete, but not all the external stonework can be done at once. Therefore this whole process has taken several days, by building up several layers of stone outside, backfilling with concrete, then more outside stonework etc. etc.

Personally I pretty pleased with the end result. Things are really starting to move along quite swiftly and the downstairs rooms should start taking shape soon.

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 !