Roof complete.

Our roof is now complete, fully tiled and complete with roof lights. We now have a light airy space in what was once the Grenier and really looks fantastic with the natural stone walls that for 100 years haven't seen the light of day.

We now have some really interesting dynamics going on in the building which has again changed our thoughts on how we progress with the renovation works. It would be a crime not to keep areas of the stonework. So we have decided to re-point the front  and rear walls and to insulate and plasterboard the  gable.

    

 The next stage of the works is to look at the condition of the first floor joists. These are a cause of concern with several of the timbers being in poor condition. The floor is "bouncy" and slopes by around 50mm from one end to the other. So over next few days the builder is going to take a look at things and advise us on things.

Over the next few weeks it is planned to lay the new concrete floor and form the new door and window openings. The new hardwood double glazed doors and windows have been delivered. So it should be all go but this is France so we are not holding our breath!

Roof nearly complete

Our new roof is nearly complete after what seems an age with house exposed to the elements. The joiners have been taking full advantage of the September sunshine and the timber roof structure is finally in place, fully constructed and trimmed out ready to receive the Velux rooflights.

We were given the news last week that the chimney stack was unstable and needed to be re-built. This came of no great surprise given the age of the property and that the mortar bonding the stonework and brickwork together is clay based (ie mud). The plus side of this is that the stack has been reconstructed re-using the bricks. If you look closely at the photographs you can just see the leadwork that has been built into the brickwork that will be dressed over the tiles.

You will also notice that the there are little columns or pillars to the corners of the stack. These will eventually support a concrete or stone capping slab. This is the french way of doing things although they also have clay chimney pots in much the same way as in the UK. There is also an element of making good of the stonework along the gables and at the wallplate position.

With the rooflights having been picked up by our neighbours and safely stored in their garage and with the tiles having arrived last week together with the felt and battens, fingers crossed we shall  have achieved our first construction milestone by the end of the week. At this point we have to thank our friends and neighbours Martin and Angela for taking these photos and keeping us informed on progress and generally "running around" on our behalf ensuring that things dont go wrong - something that often does if you aren't "on site".

Anyone seen my bike?

 During the work to remove the existing roof structure of all things a bike was found in the roof space. This was thrown unceremoniously over the wall only to be caught in the ivy growing on the wall. We are thinking of framing this and sending to the builders. 

                                   

There was a suggestion that we should extend the renovation project to include the bike. Needless to say the bike found its way into the skip.

Now the roof has gone the next job is to level up and strength the existing wall . This is being done by the casting a reinforced concrete ring beam to tie the walls together. The photograph below shows the timber formwork in position ready to receive the reinforcement and concrete. There needs to be a similar beam casting to the front with tie rods connecting them together to form a rigid box. Then the new roof can be put on.

 

Holiday report part 2

During our stay in France, holed up in our little touring caravan waiting for the rain to stop, we had plenty of time to think about how we wanted to renovate the cottage. We decided to discard with the underfloor heating to the ground floor opting instead for a log burning stove kicking out up to 7 KW.

More than enough space heating. We will probably put in a some electric convectors in here and there as background heating for the Winter months when we may not be there.




The biggest decision was to take up the existing clay floor tiles which have been laid directly on the ground and are an original feature of the house. They are 30mm thick so these will be re-bedded onto the new floor construction. They will need a bit of cleaning before they go back down but it will be worth the hard work.

Holiday report part 1

We have just got back from a holiday in  France having spent the best part of two weeks in our Caravan pitched up in the back garden of our house. Our friends opposite had cut the grass down to as far as possible and prepared a nice pitch for the van. The builders had opened up the hedge off the lane so we could drive into the back garden, mains water and electric had been laid on and we have 3000 litre fosse to dispose of our toilet waste.

Everything was perfect except we forgot to order the sun. Ten days of continuous rain, seriously stopped any real work on the house and any chance of topping up our tans  The previous week scaffold had been erected around the house and the front wall re-built up to approximate floor level. The roof tiles had been removed and broken up for hardcore. Our poor house is now open to the elements with only the skeleton of a roof for protection and the rain continued to fall day after day.

Stumped

As planned the work has now commenced on renovating our little cottage. First the front wall came down with the stone being reclaimed for re-use at a later date. Soon however, two days of good progress soon came to a halt by a very stubborn Bay tree that occupied the front corner of the house that just refused to be uprooted.

After much scratching of heads involving a couple of architects, the  builders, a passing farmer in a tractor with a herd of sheep and many of our neighbours it was decided that we needed a man with a large excavator. So we called upon Ian the guy who installed the fosse to save the day. As is the way in France after a long patient wait of two weeks the devis eventually came through which turned out to be far too expensive. After further head scratching a local municipal works contractor was contacted and the stump finally yielded to a JCB and a very skilled driver.

We are now waiting for the scaffold to be erected so we can start on the roof.

It's all go!

At long last we have the news we have been waiting for. We now have the permis de construire  for the renovation work to our little stone cottage. So everything is set for a start on the work this week. 

First we will be digging out for a driveway and also for the courtyard at the back of the house.The topsoil will be stockpiled for future landscaping works and the areas filled with locally sourced crushed stone as hardcore. For the technically minded the stone is graded from dust to 30mm that will compact quite nicely but also lets water percolate through it. The courtyard area will be gravelled to start with but as we start to spend time more time out in France we will probably form some areas of paving here and there. 

 

Also next week I think the front stone wall is being demolished and the offending bay tree dug out. This has been the cause of the wall collapsing and if not removed it will start to give problems with the house foundations We are keeping the stone to use elsewhere, probably to build some ornamental walls in the courtyard area or even used to repair the outhouses.

Fosse Septique - Fin

Yesterday our fosse septique was finally completed after a long week toil by our Contractor. It has been passed by the inspectors and for us its the first construction milestone reached.

However, that's not where it quite ends. It is France you see. When asking for the operating and maintenance manuals and guarantee for the pump I could see all of a sudden I needed to learn a third language as I was clearly not being understood. However, being a stubborn sole and really insisting on these things I have been promised that these will be forthcoming but would first need to be collected from the four corners of the earth, before being sent onto us.

I don't think it was so much my powers of persuasion that brought about this sudden change in helpfulness but more of a sudden realisation on the Contractors part that he was still owed quite alot of money. I am now thinking until I get these bits of paper I will with hold just a tiny amount of money from the job.

So from now on there should be no more hedgehogs having to be rescued from open excavations and the build work can now begin .That reminds me, I must check on the planning permission with the Maries office  - it has gone really quite!!

Fosse Septique Pt 5

Many moons may have past and our fosse is still not finished. But the good news is that we have finally had an inspection from the authories and everything is now sorted out technically speaking. All we have to do is wait for the man to come back with his machine to finish off, He's promised to be back in the next two or three weeks.

This is France so we are not holding my breath. The good thing is that we still owe the Contractor half his money so there's quite some incentive for him to complete as soon as he can. Just maybe the exchange rate will change to our favour by the time we need to pay him  - fat chance of that I think.

Credit Agricole

We have just received a cheque book for the bank account that we opened in France. It has taken a few weeks to arrive but what a surprise when we found that each cheque is printed with a colourful picture. In our case there are various themes connected with the Charente region. For example a building, views of  the countryside and various animals.

I am not sure if these pictures are intended to make the writing of cheques less painful but it is certainly is different. It reminds me of a time in the 1970s when the banks in the UK did a similar thing but the practice soon died out.
 


We found opening an account with Credit Agricole a very easy process with the English speaking staff member on hand  making the whole process a pleasing experience. However, like the banks in the UK they did like pushing there own products such as building and life insurance. On that the French banks are different to those from over here.

For anyone wanting to know how to correctly make out  a french cheque follow this link.

http://www.lost-in-france.com/living-in-france/finance/115-how-to-write-out-a-french-cheque

hedgehogs

Today we received an e-mail from our friends to say that they have been on a wildlife rescue mission. Apparently the large hole that we still have in our garden has been subject to an inspection. Not by the fosse septique inspectors - a fat chance of that at the moment it would seem. No, by two little hedgehogs, how nice.

Unfortunately they hadn't taken simple health and safety precautions and didn't wear restraint harnesses and inevitably toppled into the excavation. Fortunately they were spotted making little muddy footprints in the bottom of the hole. So a ladder was lowered into the excavation and down went our friends to rescue the hedgehogs. Having had a quick check over they were set free none the worse from there little adventure. Thank goodness the hole wasn't flooded.

I have now erected a sign warning of the danger so hopefully these little cuties don't fall into the hole again

Roof problem

Unfortunately numerous Winters and a leaking roof have taken their toll on our poor oak roof trusses. On close inspection we have found that the top ends of the main frame members that have been exposed to the elements have rotted together with the ridge timbers.

 Our builders are a little nervous about touching these, let alone lifting them to their new elevated positions. Looking closely at them last week I have to agree. There are limited options, including taking the trusses down piece by piece, carrying out repairs and refitting. Another being to have new oak trusses manufactured. Both these options whilst being a solution unfortunately add too much cost to the project that has a finite budget.



We are therefore looking at the option of purchasing factory made raised tie trusses. This will possibly end up with a saving in that we won't need to lift the roof. However, we will lose a lot of character, something which is a concern. But needs must.

We will of course save the oak trusses and hope to incorporate them in some way in the work to the property even if it means using them in the scheme of landscaping.

nos nouveaux voisins

Whilst over in France a couple of weeks ago we were  introduced to our French neighbours Dennis and Teresa (Deni and Teres). They own the little cottage next door and use it as a maison secondaire. What a lovely couple whom made us feel very welcome.

They are retired and don't speak a word of English so it was really great to try our French out. Its amazing how much you suddenly remember when you need to. What we didn't know a little bit of hand gesturing got us by. We managed to get across to them that we wanted to erect some scaffolding in their garden to work on the roof and that we were going to lift the roof and put some velux windows in. They were fine about it and then asked us into their house to look how they had done things roof wise. The staircase was so steep you had to go down again backwards and had no handrail.


We then talked about our children and what they were doing . So all in all we were very pleased and our French lessons are starting to pay off.

Fosse Septique Pt 4 - I love France

Last week the Monsieur Maire himself dropped in a form to our Friends house to pass onto us. This was a fairly simple form asking us to give details regarding our new fosse septique which once submitted they would stamp in and send onto the district office.They would then inspect the work and we would get our certificate of compliance.

Therefore as soon as the scanned copy dropped into my inbox I eagerly printed it out  and set off filling it in with my my best friend google translate. Job done, scan and sent via email back to the Marie's office all in the space of an evening. That was nearly a week ago. As is the theme of things at the moment I am now told by the district office that the form I was given is out of date and that I would need to fill the correct one if they are to process the application.

I am getting to love France more and more.

EDF

EDF work in mysterious ways. We have been trying to have the electrics reconnected to the house. Theres an electric pole outside the house with a cable leading from it to the EDF  main fuse and meter. Theres also a existing fused distribution unit.

 

So I rang the English speaking help line and try but I may I couldn't get the guy on the phone to understand that I needed just to meet a man in van at the house to put a main fuse back in.  Instead as he had no records of such a property then it simply didn't exist and disbelieved what was telling him. I needed to ring another number were I needed to speak to the Engineers that would carry out a survey and then give a devis for a connection.

After a few days I decided to ring the help line again. I gave the lady a meter number and every other number that was on the meter but still no records. Just as I thought that I would have to install my own electrical generator as my life seemed to be ebbing away I was asked two questions. What is the name of your nearest neighbour and what is the meter reading? Incredibly this enabled the meter to be found on EDF system and within five minutes I became the newest EDF customer and an appointment with a man in a van that would turn on the electrics. And sure enough we are now energised. I will need to get the connection up graded but for now I am revelling in this small achievement. Now for the water connection!!

Fosse Septique Pt 3

The work has finally started on renovating our little stone cottage with the installation of the fosse septique. All was going well so it seemed until I got a phone call from our friends in France saying there was a pettit problem and would I like to speak to Harry our Contractor that had just installed the tank. Apparently for some reason he had installed it too high in the ground making it impossible to connect drainage into it.

However, he had a solution and said I would need to install a pump to push the waste uphill. I thanked him for his suggestion and politely told him to take it out and put it back into the ground so that I could have a nice gravity connection. If that wasn't enough we also were told that Harry had spent the latter part of one afternoon digging out the main drainage run and then partly filling it back so he could get his van off the site so he could go home that night. And to top the lot Harry has spent the last week talking to the local inspectors asking them to come and inspect the filter bed that he had dug, then finally realising that he hadn't applied for the permit to carry out the work.So work is held up probably until next week. So look for my update next week.

Under Floor Heating

I have been thinking again about under floor heating to the ground floor of the house. This being something that I considered from the start of the project, my thoughts being around heating pipework rather than electric cables. There are lots of products on the market and the cables are pre-spaced and attached to hessian matting.and can be bought is various roll lengths.

Thermostats can be inserted into the floor and coupled with zoning and programmable thermostats enables greater control and economy. In our particular case we have two options with regards to installation, The cables can be buried within the screed and then the floor tiled. Alternatively if thinner cables are used these can be placed on top of the screed then tiled over.


 

 
At the moment I am in favour of cables being directly under the tiles as response times to temperature changes should be much quicker. A little worry being however that the cables could be damaged during the laying of the tiles or by some fixing through the floor.

Putting things into perspective

On good authority I have been informed that it would aid our planning application if we submitted a perspective of the our proposals to the Maries office. So here it is.

After looking around for a bit of free software on the internet I settled for Google SketchUp. Whilst being a bit clumsy and sometimes frustrating it does in fact produce remarkable results and has some nice enhancements that allows you to convert the image to look "hand drawn".

So I hope the nice people in the Maries office like the images and give us permission to build.

Oh and sorry for the pun!

Planning Problem

We have just been informed by the Maries Office that our planning application for permission to carry out the alterations to our maison secondaire has been incorrectly filed. We need to submit a permis de construire so guess that the grenier is not classed as an existing habitable space even though its boarded out, has windows and is accessible.


So back to square one and now we have to wait up to eight weeks for the permission to come through before we can make a start on the building work. Hopefully however, we can still start putting the drainage in and dig out the bay tree to the front of the property and re-build the wall that it is pushing over.

Despite the set back we are still hoping to get the work done this year and think we are about to learn that things in France don't happen as fast as they do in the UK. We can live with that, after all the slower pace is one of the reasons why we love France.

Kitchens

 We were thinking of buying our Kitchen in France. There are lots too choose from including bespoke handmade kitchens, contemporary, traditional manufactured from solid wood,laminate to foil wrapped. Basically anything you can buy in the UK you can buy in France.  

However, we came across a fantastic kitchen specialists called Samuel Neal that  provides modern German, classic English and bespoke handcrafted kitchens. Not quite what we where after but their showroom is amazing and is well worth a visit if you are in the market for a quality kitchen.

Sam will also look at the lower end kitchens if you are working to a really tight budget. Having said that there was a lovely German contemporary style kitchen at very competitive price. 

We are still thinking on that one but cant imagine it fitting into a small stone cottage in France at the minute.We have time on our side so maybe we will change our minds

Sam's website is certainly worth a visit too 

http://www.samuelnealkitchens.co.uk/

Déclaration Préalable

Its a geat sounding name but obtaining planning permission in France for building works of a minor nature is relatively straight forward. Simply you fill in a standard form describing the works and its location together with drawings and the all important Plan Cadastral and send everything to the local Maries office and wait for 28 days.

In our village I have been told the Mayor rides round in his car looks at the building and decides if it causes any issues with the neighbours and whether it looks ok. If you hear nothing then you can proceed. Great system if you have to work within the planning system in the UK where every step of the process can be made very arduous by Council red-tape. In France if you are wanting to work on your house go to your local Marie and tell them and they will advise you what to do next,

As guide a those building works that require a works declaration can be summarised as follows:

• A new building or extension to an existing building, not greater than 20m²;
• Creation of any openings in a building;
• Garage/Workshop not greater than 20m²;
• Conversion works that transform at least 10m² of the gross surface area into net surface area, eg garage, attic, basement;
• Changes to the exterior finish of the property;
• A below ground swimming pool;
• Works to historic listed buildings not requiring planning consent;
• Boundary wall or fence above 2 metres;
• Change of use of a building, even where no works undertaken (although planning consent required if external structure altered or structural work undertaken);
• Installation of temporary caravan.

The  Declaration Prealable can be found
http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/R17501.xhtml

An English translation can be found
http://www.propertytranslations.com/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_details/gid,30/Itemid,42/lang,english/

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Currency Exchange

Being a novice with currency exchange I have found the last few weeks buying Euros the most stressful part of purchasing our property in France. Our Notaire recommended a foreign currency exchange business and sure enough we put our faith in them to give us a fair deal.

The very charming female French advisor assured me that they would give me the very best deal and that I needed to be extremely careful in using other businesses as they might not be bona fide. Very sound advice of course.  However, what I couldn't understand was that  consistently the deal I was being offered was well below the "going" exchange rate. I then found myself trying to exchange money on a falling market.

I started to shop around for quotes including the main stream banks and researching the companies advertising on the Internet. I selected several companies that appeared to be OK, rang them and talked to their agents. They took the time explain to me how the money markets worked and how to read and interpret the rates on the screen.  I even went onto google maps and used street level to ensure their offices actually existed.

It would be wrong for me to say which company we entrusted our Pounds Sterling to Euro exchange with. However having initially laboured over our first major currency exchange and then going  through a very steep learning curve I have emerged much wiser, more informed and when it comes to having to do the same thing again then the transaction I hope will be less painless. Oh and never go with someone a Notaire recommends as in our case I eventually found out that they operated more like a high street currency exchange.