Renovating a Gite in Brittany

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.

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

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.

My goal this week was to get the metal ceiling channels installed on the new rafters ready for the plasterboard. However before putting up the metalwork I had to lay the floorboards to ensure I had the correct floor to ceiling height and to give myself a level/flat datum to work from.

The existing floor was old pine floorboards but unfortunately they have suffered over the years with woodworm (now treated) and a fair bit of damage in places. They were also a little springy and had dips in places where the oak beams below have settled and sagged over time.

I did consider running a sander over the whole floor but a small test area didn't come up well and all the boards have been fixed by nailing through the boards with large headed nails making sanding almost impossible.

The replacement boards are 15cm wide tongue and groove maritime pine. As you can see from the photo I've laided them perpendicular to the existing boards. This seems to have helped stiffen the whole floor and mostly taken out the lumps and bumps. There is a little packing in places which I just slipped in as I went along. I wasn't aiming for the perfect flat floor as it is a 500 year old building.

The first row of boards across the space was crucial to get right and took quite a bit of fiddling around with tape measures and pythagoraus to make sure the whole lot was square. The first row was placed with the groove against the wall and nailed in place into the floor leaving the tongues on the working edge towards me. Working from left to right across the room each new row was fitted and tapped home with a piece of scrap board slotted over the tongue to protect it from the hammer. I used 50mm lost head nails hammered at a angle through the tongue into the old boards below. The nail heads were then punched below the surface with a nail punch. The waste from the board cut to length on the right hand side was used to start the new row on the left hand side giving a staggered finish across the floor.

The whole exercise was relatively easy except when there was a bowed board in the pack. It took a few banana shaped boards to realise what was making it difficult to make all the floorboards fit snuggly together. Once a small gap creeps in the error just compounds itself making the job harder and harder. I ended up leaving out the bowed boards as I didn't have any way of clamping the boards together. I've since found out that I could have used those speed cramps and turned the cramping end around so it expands and pushes against a temporary batten. Also the Readers Digest website showed a technique using a baten and a wedge to push bowed boards together. I know for the next time.

Anyway, floor in, and now I can move on to the ceiling.

brittany renovation

This week we have mostly been digging out the mud floors.

Hiring the digger was something I've been putting off because the whole operation seemed a bit daunting and I've never driven a mini-digger before. I was also a bit concerned about digging down too much and undermining the foundations. After clearing the two areas of the building of stored materials and rubbish, each around 35 square meters, and shopping for various bits of pipework etc, to go under the floor on Monday and Tuesday, the digger arrived on Wednesday. The day of reckoning. Along with the digger we also ordered two conveyor belts to remove the spoil.

The preparatory work involved marking a line around the walls one meter above the finished floor height so we could dig down a further 40cm. Thats for the tiles (1cm), concrete floor + iron grill (10cm), insulation (4cm), waterproof membrane + sand (5 cm) and hardcore (approx 20cm) in that order. 100mm soil pipes are buried within the hardcore at the correct fall.

The delivery guy arrived in the morning with the digger and gave me about 30 seconds instruction on how to use it, half of which was pointing out the key, where to fill up with diesel and a reminder that we only had eight engine hours per day on the counter. He was gone and I was on my own with more levers to push and pull that I knew what to do with. It took about an hour and a half to get even moderately proficient at the controls. It reminded me of learning to fly my model helicopter as a kid. Coordinating all the levers simulanteously in three dimensions was not easy.

We had only planned on hiring the equipment for one day, but with the learning curve and problems with the conveyor belts only the first section was anywhere complete. We had not even started the second room. The conveyor belts seemed like a really good idea but I'm not sure they were worth the trouble (and cost). Firstly they were very very heavy and difficult to move, so generally we made do. Secondly the mechanism around the rollers kept jamming with small stones and mud, halting progress infuriatingly often. Thirdly the spoil at the far end had to be constantly raked clear to avoid the heap building up around the end of the belt and fouling the belt. If we could have positioned the far end of the conveyor 10m up in the air it would have been great, but, see reason one. With hindsight it would have been just as good to have two or three willing volunteers with wheelbarrows.

Anyway, perseverance and a late night on Thursday got 80% of the job done and the hire shop was due to collect Friday. We had only used 14 of our 16 engine hours but crawling around on your hands and knees dismantling the jammed conveyor belt by torch light was enough for the day.

With luck the hire shop didn't turn up until after lunch on Friday so I got to use the 2 remaining engine hours and clear most of the mud from the second room and tidy up the site.

Something that was a little strange, and slowed down progress, was that one room was just compacted mud for the full 40cm, but the other room was piles and piles of stone. It looked like sometime in the past one, or possibly two, chimneys had been dismantled and all the stone buried in the floor. Digging out tonnes and tonnes of blackened stone proved really tough going and really needed a bigger mini-digger.

I haven't got the bill yet, but it's going to be about 900 euros for two days hire, so if a professional digger driver offers to do the same job for around the same money I'd take it every time. Even better if they take all the waste off-site. I've no idea what I'm going to do with 25 cubic meters (25 tonnes?) of rock and mud.

Here are a couple of movies or the mini-digger in action and the conveyor belts.

brittany renovation