Floors

The beginning of December saw an insulated solid concrete floor being laid in the house. This is a vast improvement on the brick tile floor laid directly on the ground. We have salvaged the tiles and hope to eventually lay them back down as a floor finish.

The last few weeks leading up to Christmas has seen focus switching to the first floor structure. With the chestnut floor boarding removed the builders have been able to inspect the ends of the timber joists that are embedded in the walls.

We were prepared to replace the odd timber or two and also support the joists from the underside with a timber frame to provide additional support and to take some of the deflection out of the floor, re-using some of the old oak roof timbers for the support frame. However, as ever, things have not worked as planned. 

The majority of the floor joists are rotten and there is a dip in the floor of about 50mm from one of the building to the other. Weighing up all the options we decided to renew the floor joists in oak. These have worked out to be 200x80 at 450 centres for a span of 5.4m.

So we go into the New Year hoping that the new windows and doors will go in over the next few weeks followed by plastering of ground floor walls. But this is France so who knows!