Paving

I am thinking of laying various types of exposed aggregate finished hard landscaped areas around the outside areas of the house, These can be easily achieved with a bit of experimenting, first on small areas that can be easily removed before embarking on large areas. Careful batching of materials in a hand mixer is the key to ensure consistency of colour and texture. The concrete must be placed into  form work and tamped to level and finished with a wood float and then allowed a set. The time taken to achieve this will be anything up to an hour depending on the air temperature. The surface of the concrete then needs to be sprayed with a concrete retarding agent. After a further six hours gently power wash the surface to expose the aggregate and then leave to cure. By using combinations of different natural sands and aggregates various interesting colours and textures can be achieved.

The building sand in the Charente is light grey in colour and mixing this with 5mm-10mm sized white sharp aggregate, again which is common to the area should produce a good look for a patio area to the front of the house. There's not too much you can do about the colour of the cement as this varies between different manufacturers i.e. between dark grey and light grey, but it has to be taken into consideration when you are trying to come up with a desired colour and texture.

 I am reliably informed by Philip Voice who runs a landscaping network and lives in France that the local materials I have seen is sharp sand (sablé batir) and castine (white limestone scaplings). Phil's site is well worth a visit by the way http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/ .

A another good source of information is the Lafarge website.  Lafarge is a major player in cements and aggregates and are leaders in engineered concrete paving solutions. They have a site that illustrates in more detail the spectacular effects that can be achieved with concrete when creating hard landscaped areas. http://www.lafarge.co.uk/wps/portal/uk/3_D-Construction_Solutions  If you have any technical issues or need advice I know they will be only to pleased help

Under floor heating and electric boiler

Back in February 2011 I posted a blog about underfloor heating something that we have decided to use in our bathrooms but of the electric type. Also in an October 2010 blog I wrote about an electric boiler which could be used to in conjunction with a piped hot water UFH system. Now I can report on project that incorporates both.

Even better this current project that I am working on. It has a piped UFH system and the Contractor has cleverly incorporated a temporary heating rig utilising an electric boiler to help dry out the floor screed. The rig is connected directly into the header pipework and can be moved around the building as required to other headers so over a period of time the screed is helped to dry out slowly. The building is not yet watertight and is waiting for the windows to be fitted which will over the next week. The temperature through the screed has to be carefully controlled to prevent the screed from drying out to fast and cracking.

Below are are a couple of photographs showing the floor before screeding together with the temporary boiler arrangement. Hopefully you can work from the photographs how the rig works without explanation. However, if you need more information please leave a comment and I will get back to you

Stonework preservation

A common mistake many people make when renovating a stone built property is to use cement based renders and mortars. Raking out the lime mortar and re-pointing with sand/cement mortar or even worse rendering the stone with a sand/cement render will literally prevent the stonework from breathing. Likewise rendering the internal surfaces of the external walls with cement based renders and plaster will cause decay of the stonework. Literally the walls will weaken, crumble eventually collapse.

The tradesman of the past knew a thing or two when building stone properties. Stonework needs to breath otherwise trapped moisture together with the extremes of weather in the form of freezing and thawing will permanently weaken the stone. Lime based mortars and renders allow the passage of moisture through the wall construction. and allow the surface to dry out. Poor choice of materials including vinyl based emulsion paints result in the formation of salt stains and paint flaking on internal surfaces.

So use lime mortars and renders if you want to preserve stonework. Lime based paints must be used on the walls. You may get the odd damp patch here and there in the winter months but these usually dry out with minimal damage to the decorated surface. At worst patch painting of the wall with spare lime based paint is all that will be required. Better this than rebuilding the entire wall.

A really good site that goes into greater detail and should be consulted in all matters stone wall damp issues is http://www.heritage-house.org/damp.html

Latest Photos

Our builders have been motoring on with the work to the first floor and the rooms are now formed with almost all of the first floor first fixes complete. The ceilings are fully boarded together with at least one side of the metal stud wall. We have decided to insulate certain walls to cut down the sound between rooms and adjacent to Bathrooms.

 

Much of the telephone conversations with Tony and Steve over the last week has been about plumbing. All the hot and cold supply pipework and drainage connections are being hidden behind stud walls and then terminated at the right position for the appliances that have yet to be purchased. I think we have just about eliminated all of the surface fixed pipework which we would have had to boxed in.

 One thing that needed us to compromise on is the shower tray which has to be built up off the floor by 100mm as we have an exposed beam ceiling. This is to enable fitting of a trap and the waste and to achieve the correct fall into the main drain pipe and soil stack. In short we don't want to see pipework hanging through the ceiling when we are sat in the lounge.

The weather is much warmer in France at the moment so we are hoping that work on installing the new windows and doors can re-start.  This will be just about the last major work item to be completed and will transform the ground floor and give a view out the back of the house onto the garden.

 We are heading out to take a look at the work next month staying at our friends house literally a stones throw away. It will then have been seven months since we saw our petite maison at a time when it didn't even have a roof so we are getting really excited.

Progress Indeed

Here's the latest photos sent over from France kindly taken by our builder Tony. They were taken a week or so ago and show the first floor bedrooms and bathroom spaces taking shape together with the first fix electrics. All the walls are being formed in the metal studwork that was the subject of one of my first blogs.

 
The sloping parts of the ceiling have been insulated and plasterboard fixed to these areas. I noticed something in the photographs that appeared to look like a trestle but after a bit more of looking at I worked out that it was a piece of equipment that is used to load a sheet of plasterboard on then it is mechanically raised to the ceiling for fixing. This certainly takes the back breaking work out of the operation. These can be purchased or hired and the link below will take you to a typical site.
http://www.brandontoolhire.co.uk/lifting-hire/prodview.asp?idproduct=142

I am hoping for some more photographs to be sent this week so will do another post soon. If you missed my blog on the studwall you can find it on the listing on the right for Saturday, 27 November 2010

Stair Crazy

The builders have asked for the details of the staircase. We have always said that we wanted something unusual, simple and chunky looking that will be hidden completely behind a wall. The French seem experts in producing creaky staircases and given our exacting requirements this would need to be of a bespoke design and hand made. These are the details that we quickly drawn up.

  Together with the drawings the builders were also sent a photograph of a similar staircase that was found on the Internet. If ours turns out like this one we shall be really pleased.

The baluster at the landing level was something else that was a thought about hard and long.First of all we were thinking of glass then developed into something a bit more simple in the form of stainless steel posts and wire. It moved onto wrought iron and is always the case back to our original idea of glass.

For more details on stairs in oak and glass that can be purchased in kit form here are a few links.

 http://www.tradestairs.com/acatalog/Vision_Oak_Grooved_Handrails.html

http://www.stairplan.com/townsend-oak-staircase.html

One last thing is that we had a bit of surprise with the discarded floor joists in that they are of oak and have enough to make the treads and risers. Cutting the timbers down to the right dimensions and building up the staircase is going to be a really nice job for the joiners right now particularly as the temperature in France is around about -9 degrees during the day. The inside of the house is bitterly cold especially when the wind gets up and we think on more than one occasion Tony and Steve had to head back home early to get warm.

Build update

The internal block support wall running up alongside stairway opening is now complete. The new first floor joists all in oak has been installed and trimmed back over the stairwell.

As the floor joists are to be exposed I suggested to the builder that we lay the plasterboard on top of the floor joists before laying the floor board. This would save time later plaster boarding from underneath. This has worked out brilliantly well and all that needs to be done is to carry out plaster skim work and we are done. I had thoughts about the plasterboard crushing under the weight of furniture loading but decided that the floor board would distribute the load sufficiently not be an issue.

We have issued an electrical layout to the builders giving switching positions/arrangements as well as power outlet positions and tv outlets. So we had to carefully think out were we wanted beds and furniture to be put. There has been a change in programme and with the freezing weather setting in any stonework operations is out of question.The builders efforts over the coming are now concentrating on the first floor works,first fixes, insulating and boarding the ceiling.

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!

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.