Mr Lemur's French Folly

Some progress at last

2012-01-10T00:06:00.002+01:00

Having spent the last 6 months working in the UK there has not really been much or any progress, but Christmas has given me a few days to at least start the Girls bedrooms...

Stud work and ceilings go in

I've used a metal frame system to provide a level support for the plasterboard (cheap and very easy to use. The metal brackets just clip to the rails. Rails are every 50 cm and the plasterboard goes length ways so lines up with the 2.5m sheets they use in France.

Close up of the bracket / ties clipped to a length of rail.

Walls are a mixture of wooding studs and the metal wall rail system very popular in France. Wall studs are on 60cm centres to match the width of the plasterboard sheets which are 1.2m wide. Ceiling heights are 2.5m + a bit so no unnecessary cutting of the sheets. For info there are two types of rail, horizontal and vertical. if you set the top and bottom rails (which are a simple U section) first then the stronger vertical rails just clip into them and are screwed in place. The screws used are little round head self tappers. All the rail system complete with screws and fixing I used are made by Lafarge. The vertical rails are back to back to insulation can slide between and be held in place by the rails. The insulation I used is isover. It has one side with a paper vaper barrier which is placed facing inside to the room so the paper is against the plasterboard. (I mention these small details because if you have never done this before its these little details that sometimes take a bit of working out)

A little something

2012-01-09T23:33:00.002+01:00

Here is a little something I've been working on in my spare time....

My prototype watch. Solid Silver, Swiss Movement, all hand made .

as is the back and crown..

Hand wound, mechanical ETA 2804.2 Swiss movement

Not too big, but with a nice quality feel..

From Grand Designs 2011

2011-12-03T19:23:00.001+01:00

A few interesting bits and bobs from Grand designs this year:

Nice door, made by a very talented craftsman. I like this because it will fit a standard door hole; Great idea...Lookout for this on the doors for the kids bedroom.

All sand cast in bronze and then polished by hand with an angle grinder. Apparently it takes about two weeks to polish..I can believe it! A very interesting twist on the old grandfather clock.

New VELUX roof window opens up into balcony..Brilliant.

Freek the neighbours out with this baby.

And one for Claire and Andy

Victoriana

2011-11-27T15:21:00.001+01:00

Here is a little piece I made for a lovely lady who wanted a period Victorian bracelet to go with her costume;

Central Amethyst with rose cut white topaz and rose pearls in a silver mount.

I love these quiet little moments

2011-10-28T01:20:00.000+02:00

Grand Designs 2011

2011-09-15T01:38:00.000+02:00

If you have read my blog before you will know I'm a bit of a fan of Grand Designs. I went a couple of years ago and it's where I found my beloved Esse Ironheart. This year its back and so are ESSE. When you are engaged in a project that you feel very passionate about you probably have a very clear idea about the overall feel of what you want to achieve. What you don't have is a list of all the things you need to achieve it and more importantly an infinite budget to buy them all. That I think is where shows like this are really useful in that they give you a chance to really touch and feel some of the things you think you want. You can then work out what's really important to you and your home and where your budget is best spent. The other useful thing about trade shows is that its an opportunity for motivation and inspiration. This past few months I've been working full time in the UK to help the project along and its good to keep sight of that vision.

Where does the time go!

2011-09-02T00:35:00.001+02:00

In the blink of an eye and its September again. To be fair I've been pretty much working full time which doesn't help. In between working and travelling back and forth I have managed to do a bit of work at the house in the shape of the ceiling over what will be the Girls bed rooms. Sounds easy but given the span of the room involves some fairly chunky timber joists although I have to confess that I did cheat a bit by way of having a little help. This time my lovely sister and her family came over all the way from Blighty with some friends of theirs. The result is a big and heavy job made a lot easier than if would have been alone. Thanks.

In bloom

2011-07-02T13:55:00.000+02:00

Its been a while since my last post. This month I've been teaching English at a business school in Caen. I have to say its been interesting and quiet good fun, only 5 sessions for their summer school so relatively light weight. Over the month its been middling weather wise but at least we have had some rain, and the potagere is starting to bear fruit, plenty of spinach and cabbage to go at. The house is starting to come together as well all be it slowly. Anyway summer is here and everything is pretty rosy so I thought I'd just take a quick few pictures of the house in summer. When it starts to get cold I can remind myself of what summer is like!

Started to get a bit of furniture for the kitchen, this was off www.leboncoin.fr. This site is where all the bargains are to be had. Everybody else in the world uses ebay, well the French use leboncoin. unlike ebay its all small announcements so no bidding and because you select the department your in you generally go a look at stuff before you buy it. Why would you buy something you have never seen? Bof?

Oh yes and I've finished the plaster board in the kitchen. Just need to find some thistle multi finish! There are French ways to do it but old habits die hard!

Cheeky Lemur's latest ring

2011-06-09T00:54:00.000+02:00

950 Hallmarked Platinum

Rare Petrol Blue Natural Spinel

With handmade mount made from individual Platinum wires welded together to produce a unique one-off piece. See this in our new shop @ CheekyLemur on Artfire

Archibald Knox Inspired belt

2011-05-16T23:07:00.000+02:00

Solid Silver in the Art Nouveau Style set with Amethyst Quartz.

New belts hot off the forge

2011-04-28T23:08:00.000+02:00

Check out my latest stuff

Both have solid silver hallmarked buckles and the finest leather straps money can buy. You can check them out at our etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CheekyLemur

Scooter

2011-03-27T14:07:00.002+02:00

Two very excited girls with our new (to us) scooter

Libby reading the "how to" scooter book. Note she has already added a few girly features like the hoody rest and box of tissues back box!

Me I've been experimenting with more stylish pimping! Mmmm Nice!

Breaking New Ground

2011-03-22T21:51:00.004+01:00

Well its that time of year again; digging the potager. The bit we did last year was easy whereas this years extension into new ground was (is) hard, very hard. I recon its going to take about two days to properly dig an area 20 meters square. The first six inches is ok, then you hit compacted rock and clay (or concrete as the Romans called it) and from then on its all up hill. In fact if I can draw an analogy (and I think I can) its a bit like French bureaucracy; The first time you speak to them to try and get anything done its like digging new ground (hard). After repeated attempts it gets easier but really its a war of attrition!

There are always consolations of course, and despite the hard work and bureaucracy its still a lovely place to live!

On the plus side to Julia has landed some work hairdressing in a salon down the road so well done Julia. As long as we can, eventually, sort the paperwork out we will soon have an additional income stream to our bow (I do love my mixed metaphors, my personal fave being "I'll stick a stake in the water and a toe in the ground...")!

And you have to love a school system that gives kids Wednesdays off so they can wander round fields generally enjoying themselves; well you wouldn't want to work too hard now would you!

Bon chance!

Japanese tsunami

2011-03-13T21:41:00.001+01:00

I am deeply saddened by the loss of life following the earthquake in Japan. It is not without reason that the word for tsunami comes from the Japanese. The earth is and always has been a living and constantly changing place and no mater how technologically advanced we become we will always be subject to her whims and at her mercy! As we have seen this week there is no greater "superpower" than the power of nature. My the souls of the dead rest in peace.

P.S. Please note that I have not used the word victim, because the word implies malice and the planet is neither malicious or benevolent it just is. We on the other hand are simply passengers.

Holiday

2011-03-13T20:33:00.004+01:00

For my part I have just been on a small vacation to good old blighty. A few matters to attend to including taking the Fiat to Gray's of Warwick to have a look at the Doblo. Fiat in Milan will then decide if they wish to "help" with the cost of the replacement ECU. I'm hoping after 3 new Fiats and a lifetime of Fiat ownership they will. Don't get me wrong I do understand cars go wrong and would normally cough up without a fight. This time however a big lump of bosch electronics should last longer than 3years and 3 months. If they do i'll be happy as Larry, if not? That said despite the outcome Grays have been great; helpful and supportive, even though I now live in France. If you really fancy that Fiat 500 in white with the Italian flag up the side you could do a lot worse than give them a visit; top guys! Thanks!

We didn't really have much time, other than to visit my and Julia's parents and then go to the jewellery quarter in Birmingham for supplies. This of course was not helped by the fact that we were travelling back on a Friday; Each time I visit I am astounded by the volume of traffic on British roads and to my mind something radical has to happen: I reckon if you looked at the time cost and fuel cost not to mention stress etc caused by the overcrowding on British roads it would not make pretty reading.

The other sad thing I noticed was that after decades of trying the government have finally managed to kill off the English country pub. In the last year 7 out of the 9 pubs closest to my mums house have closed! These are pubs that are upwards of 100 years old now all but closed. To be fair they probably did well to last as long as they did; Cheap supermarket alcohol, drink driving legislation, the smoking ban, petrol prices have all played there part, but killed them they have. When I was young we used to take an evening drive out and meet up with a few friends for a drink and social (someone used to volunteer to not drink). Now kids to day stock-up at Tesco's with enough beer to sink a ship and go round to someone's house to "hang". It's cheaper and they can chat and talk crap on Facebook at the same time. That's progress I guess and I'm sure it has its pros and cons. The thing I think is a shame is that country (not town) pubs were really the heart of the community, they were the place where people gathered to be a community. In France it was never like that, pubs have never really existed, but the village hall has and to this day that is where the heart of the community resides alive and well. People meet, socialise, sing, dance and get a bit pissed from children (no they don't drink even in France) to pensioners all together, and I think for a community that's healthy. By contrast I don't know where the heart of the English country community is and I'm pretty sure that's not healthy. I do know there is the country fete (a French word) once a year and these are probably the closest, but that's ONCE a year. Is that enough to give people a sense of community? I did however note that my mum now receives a "Staffordshire Magazine" full of articles about fine upstanding people all over Staffordshire designed to make her feel like she is part of a community, pity she will never meet any of them! Go on bring back into use the village hall!!!!!

Well were back in France and working on the next stage of our plan for world domination. I'll let you know how it pans out!

Freedom

2011-03-06T22:35:00.000+01:00

Today I was contemplating the nature of freedom. On the one hand we feel it is the ability to do what we want because we are able. On the other hand I would suggest that true freedom is the courage to do what we want despite any physical restraints.

Moving Pictures

2011-03-01T11:16:00.003+01:00

Well its been 14 months and Libby decided she would like to spend her Christmas money on a TV. Now to begin with I'm really glad the Girls have had a year without the telly, they have read more books than you can imagine for a start! Also they have played like proper children, like I used to and my parents used to. Space to play and be proper children, without us worrying if they are safe or not. But life goes on and since its French television it will help them with their French. So Yes I've relented and last week Libby when out and bought herself a nice little 15" flat screen job. All the other stuff to set the telly up you get when you take out an internet and phone subscription with orange (whether you like it or not). So last week me and MrG spent a quiet morning setting up the satellite disk on the side of the shed. There were a few small glitches like the dish had no bracket but this was soon remedied with a little impromptu fabrication using some bits of metal I had lying around. Other than that it all went very smoothly, it helped of course having MrSat1995-2011 on board and guiding the installation. Now not only do we have "the nicest shed in Basse-Normandy" but we also have "the only shed in Basse-Normandy with its own satellite downlink!" Check it out!

Check out the super strong bracketry. Billet aluminium and galvanised steel no less....Nice

So there we are dragged kicking back into the 20th century, but only in the shed. The house on the other hand is still very much unspoiled 18th century retro chic, as it should be.

Ps. The first time Libby watched her new telly all she could do was sit transfixed with her mouth wide open, occasionally muttering the odd "Oooh" or " Arrrrr"....Bless.

PPs. A but like she did when she saw a flushing toilet for the first time in 8 months!

Medici: Poison Ring

2011-02-28T23:05:00.001+01:00

Medici: Poison Ring, my latest creation. Labradorite and silver with a spring catch. This is proper medieval stuff. At home in any of the great houses of Europe in the middle age to renaissance period.

As per normal available at our cheekylemur shop on Etsy

Complexity

2011-02-19T23:48:00.001+01:00

One of the reasons we moved to France was to escape some of the complexity of modern life. By a large extent this has worked, we live a very simple life; Get up in a morning, take kids to school, chop wood for fire, light fire, make jewellery, cook dinner, etc. etc. But nevertheless I'm still amazed at just how complicated it can be made..... Take my car for example its packed full of electronics. Each function of the car is controlled by its own computer system and each one requires its own bit of software to access it. In the old days I could take a car apart with a reasonably basic tool kit and put it back together, now its altogether different. Its a brilliant example of how technology can be abused. Take the service light for example, on the last model of my car the service light came on to remind you that you need a service and could easily be reset, my car oh no...Now- only the main dealer can reset it! Its up-selling in all its glory, Fiat know that the closer they can lock you in to the main dealer, the more money they make! Now to my mind its my car, I should be able to maintain the car if I so wish, Fiat on the other hand know its more beneficial for them to tie me in to a lifetime of main dealer servicing. My farther (who never went near a garage in his life) would turn in his grave, and I don't like it one bit either! But I'm afraid this is the way the world is going; cars, software, any where you look companies are adding in complexity as a means to lock you into their way of life. Microsoft .....software as a service, another good example. "don't you worry about putting up your own servers, its really hard, just give us all your money and we'll make it all go away..there.. there...that's better. That said if you look at all the really successful applications in recent years they are not the Microsoft way of life type applications. No not windows X or sharepoint way of life 3 but actually the simple stand alone innovative ones. Blogs, facebook, google, twitter, flickr etc. Now the one thing all these apps have in common it that they are all single purpose and they all have a really simple interface. You don't need a three day training course to drive twitter, nor should you need to (Microsoft.. look and learn).

And of course there is hope on the horizon, never thought id say it but god bless those hard working Chinese. If you look at the products coming out of China at the moment you will see 40year old perfectly good simple designs for scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles. Air cooled, carbs etc etc. When those boys get their head around car production god help Fiat! A nice simple car, robust, economical, no electronics and 2/3 the price of a Fiat..... All with the same standard engine so you can buy bits of any street corner. It will happen but its still 5 years away. When it does there will of course be the most almighty repercussions for jobs and the likes of Fiat, Renault, Peugeot etc. If the car manufacturers were smart of course they join forces and head this off at the pass... Common engines between manufacturers standard open interfaces to electronics etc but unfortunately they are too wrapped up in their own self interest to do so. Think about it; I could go out and buy one of 10 different cars with a 1.9TD engine that does around 45-50mpg and gives out around 100+BHP. Each car would have a different engine; WHY! When the Chinese make a scooter there is one engine with two variations that is used in 30 different scooters by a bunch of different manufacturers, brilliant!

So the world is changing, but as a good friend of mine say's; "May all that you wish for be what you really want".

Thank God it's February

2011-02-10T23:31:00.003+01:00

January is always one of my least favourite months. It's long cold and dark, and I'm more of a summer kind of guy. This year has been no exception. Added to this the fiat broke down on the 3rd of Jan and was in the garage for 6 weeks!! Thankfully we have some very good friends who lent us one of their cars; after cheekylemur lost the keys to the loan car from the garage, but the less said about that the better.

The house has taken a bit of a back seat as I've been mostly chopping wood for the fire and making jewellery. Somehow while its been sooooo cold its seemed a lot more productive to get some jewellery done!

As ever with jewellery its a matter of personal taste but hey if at the end of the day you make what you would like than chances are other people will too!

Next on the house front is to do the floor in the kitchen and finish off the electrics and lights and stuff. As the weather warms up a bit I'll start to tackle a few of the smaller jobs. The good news is that this last few days the weather has really perked up a bit and there has been a really hint of the first signs of spring. Starting with the crocuses outside the front door! yipee

Some of CheekyLemur's New Year Creations

2011-01-08T13:00:00.000+01:00

Sweet Silver and Rhodolite Garnet Ring

Blue Ladybird

Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T16:38:00.002+01:00

Well is Christmas and snowing again. 1 year on and a lot has happened so I thought is would be good to recap on a few of the achievements this year.

So this year then, well we've built a shed..Described as:

"the poshest shed in Basse-Normandie!" Review by A Taste of Garlic
"a frankly fantastic garden office" Review by Shedworking

And the house:

Put in the first floor oak beams and floor board
Made and fitted the rest of the windows
Built the internal walls downstairs
Connected the electricity
Plumbed and fitted the downstairs bathroom
Dug and installed the fosse and pumping station
Built the laundry
lined the chimney and fitted the Esse
Lined and insulated the kitchen walls
Rebuilt various sections of stone wall
Made two bathroom cabinets, a kitchen table, one internal door and three workbenches.
All the other stuff to enable the above....

Not sure whether that sounds a lot or a little, but either way its been a lot of work. Added to that of course there has been all the other administrative stuff associated with moving to a new Country and settling two young children into the local schools.......

Well there's plenty more to do, so after Christmas it's back to the grindstone

Bench2

2010-12-06T19:28:00.005+01:00

So here it is my new workbench. Its a little more expedite than Julia's but hey its made up of all the bits of wood I had lying around. That said its fully functional and everything is easily to hand, bench peg, hammers and the skin under the bench is made from Colin Slingsby's old poof (I kid you not).

And I've even started using it. I have to say it is lovely to have a workspace of my own. Recently I'v been using Julia's bench and its very difficult since everyone arranges their tools differently and then when you come back everything is in a different place! Its also fair to say that Julia was even less happy with the arrangements than me. Still peace descends once more as we each have our own bench......and relax.

While I was looking round for a set of tools and splitting up some of the spare tools on Julia's bench, I came across a few little treasures which I have re-furbished. The set shown below were given to be by a very good friend before we left for France. There was a good few boxes of tools including the ones below. The hammer I've made a new shaft for in ash, and looks and works great. Incidentally the ash came from a broken axe handle so even that was "recuperated". The pliers have been lovingly re-polished (using the polishing motor given to me at the same time) and look fab too. They have a lovely fine point unlike the modern ones you buy today.

My dad was a great one for finding old tools and repairing them, in fact his favourite screwdriver he found in a skip! He found the process of taking something unused and making is useful again very satisfying and I have to say I have too.

And here is the start of my pendant. Its obviously a work in progress but I thinks it's going to work out alright

I'll post the finished article on my next post and you can judge for yourself.

And here is one I made (much) earlier modelled by my lovely daughter

Home Sweet Home 2

2010-11-30T21:22:00.004+01:00

OK its not finished but at least we can now use the kitchen. The things we have working now are: Toilet, shower, hot water, range cooker, kitchen sink, washing machine, fridge and freezer. Is there anything else?

Ms lemur blogging away.

The laundry....LE GRAND LUX

That's the bench our good friends Mark and Julie gave us, covered in duvet and a throw.

My stud wall between the kitchen and the laundry / bathroom

The table in action

The shed on a very cold -8 deg foggy morn

And I've made myself a new work bench. Today I installed the bench in the shed, just need a desk lamp and I am up and running.

We do take the internet for granted now, but it is amazing! Yesterday Julia sold a piece of jewellery to a guy in Australia! 10 years ago the prospect of living and working in deepest darkest Normandy and (hopefully in time) making a living selling jewellery all over the world would have been inconceivable. Now whilst not quite a reality it is at least in reach! God bless the internet.

Oh and one last thing, I really love my ESSE IRONHEART! It cooks brilliantly, warms the whole house and looks great. If you have space for one, buy one, trust me you won't regret it

Finished Table

2010-11-15T18:25:00.006+01:00

So here is my latest creation. Its taken about a week but its finished and marks a bit of a landmark. One of the things I was really looking forward to was being able to spend time with my lovely family sat around our big table, and now we have it. This and the esse will be the centre of our house as oppose to the television (no still don't have one). Size wise its about 7ft in old money, big enough for the odd dinner party. Ho here it is: Enjoy. As its taken quite a bit of work I'm likely to get a bit spoddy later on in the post but for those who prefer the their bloggs a little lighter you can look at the pictures and then quit here!

There are a handy 3 drawers to store the cutlery.

As and aid memoire here a liitle about the construction. Two of the legs are cut from the old roof timbers while two are bits left over from putting in the first floor. The drawer fronts are made from one piece of oak donated buy Julia's dad a few years ago. I think it was an off cut from a staircase he was making that was destined for the fire. The grain was (is) beautiful but as a short piece difficult to know what to do with. Well I think this is the perfect use on the piece. The drawer bottoms are from an old shop fitting that we were given when some friends moved to New Zealand. The drawer sides are from some oak my dad had lying around. So all in all quite a lot is reclaimed. The new wood cost around 50 euro from the saw mill down the road and has been drying in the loft for about a year. Screws, sandpaper, stain and was cost around 70 euro. So for 120 euro i think its not a bad effort, though I say so myself!

The design is clearly English rather than French but hey the stove's English too and I guess so am I. It started out as a rustic farmhouse table but as I found its remarkably difficult to make something very rustic if at heart your a little bit of a perfectionist. The dovetails in the draws are an example: When you cut a dovetail your natural tendency is to cut the best dovetail you can. The problem is if you do a good job they look like they are machine made! If you make a nice table top it's very difficult to then go back and "distress" all your good work. The result is that the table is not so much "rustic farmhouse" so much as "baronial hall". Ho hum!

For those who care (probably no one but me) all the screws used underneath to fix the top etc. are all old style slotted wood screws ( I hate to see cross head screws used in any furniture even when they are under the table and hidden.). The best bit of the table is of course secret but since my wife has already mentioned it once on her blog there's no harm done mentioning it here as well. As to the details I can't say here. If I invite you round for dinner then I may show you (maybe). Finally here are a few pictures of the construction.

Table

2010-11-10T23:13:00.006+01:00

Well I've been making a table for the house. The legs are reclaimed oak from the old roof and the rest is wood that has been drying for the last year or so. Of note; the reeding and stopped chamfers are all either scraped or cut by hand. Dovetails for the drawers (again hand cut). You don't really get a sense of the scale in the unfinished state but I'll post more pictures at we progress!

Note the old rope trick in place of clamps!

Cheap set of straps from the supermarket. I've used them for everything from strapping stuff to the trailer to impromptu clamps.

Here's Kitty. Arrived one day and now won't go away. As Metallica put it: "just like the curse, just like the stray. You feed it once and now it stays. Now it stays...."

The kitchen takes shape

2010-10-15T12:08:00.003+02:00

Here's some new stuff:

The stone sink

Ms Lemur at rest

esse ironheart boiler removal

2010-09-29T23:21:00.012+02:00

The esse ironheart comes in two flavours, EW and EWB the latter having a side plate boiler for hot water and one rad. Now this is great but esse do not recommend running the boiler dry, so if you want to run the esse before you have installed all the necessary pipework and tanks etc you need to take it out. Hear's how I did mine. Please note that this is not the official method but I did take advice from esse before I started.

Step one
Remove the left hand outer side plate by first removing the two M6 set screws at the bottom edges using a 10mm socket. Having removed the two screws the plate will slid up and then off. Mine was quite a tight fit at the bottom so be patient.

Step two
This will then reveal the inner side plate and boiler tappings.

The inner side plate is held onto the stove frame with 9 m6 set screws and the boiler itself is held to the side plate using one 12mm nut. In addition to this the tapping's a sealed around the plate using fire cement.

Step three
Chip away the fire cement from around the tappings

After which they should look like this

Step four
Next you can remove the centre 12mm nut and the 9off 10mm screws holding the side plate in position. Warning! the side plate is heavy so leave the bottom centre one till last to support the plate. After this is removed you can get a good look at the boiler.

Step five
Chip away any fire cement holding the boiler to the frame using a small chisel or sharp screwdriver (not your best one). The boiler will then lift out of the frame.

To do this you will need to have removed the grate bottom iron plates and the steel baffle. (note the baffle is the plate that forms the top of the fire box. Push is upward slightly at the back and then pull out the back fire brick. The baffle can then be lowered at the back and then pulled out. If you have difficulty pulling the rear fire brick out; screw a small wood screw into the vermiculite block and use the screw to grip the block)

And here she is

Step six
Make up some blanking plates to fill the holes in the inner plate left by the boiler tappings and centre bolt. I used 2mm steel plate and some bar to hold the plate central in the hole

Shown are the components for one plate (inner outer and centre spacer) That are then bolted together like a sandwich

And sealed with fire cement

Step seven
Having filled all the holes you can now replace the inner plate.

Then of course the outer plate.
Step eight
Having removed the boiler you will be short of a few fire bricks to fill the hole where the boiler was. These are easily obtained by ringing esse and ordering over the phone or on the webside. What you need is what they call a "full vermiculite set" Technically you only need 4 out of the set of 8 but they only sell then as a pack and at £48 quid they not outrageously expensive (they will even ship them to France for you).
When the set arrives you will need to do a bit of "fitting". Firstly to rebate to fire brick where the bolts for the blanking plates stick out. To do this place the bricks in place

Then give them a bit of a bash against the wall of the stove

Take them back out and the heat of the bolt will have left an imprint in the back of the fire brick

Which you can then drill a hole the depth of the nut using a wood drill by hand

Like this

The last thing to "fit" is to plane a bevel on the bottom edge of the three side bricks to clear the welds on the frame

Step Nine
Replace the fire bricks

and the steel baffle

And finally the back fire brick. The baffle hooks over the front and then pushes up to the top rear fire brick. The lower rear fire brick then pushes to the back of the stove and supports the rear of the baffle

Step 10
Refit the grate. In my case this a the wood only "Dutch Grate" option. This replaces the multi fuel grate supplied as standard.

Last but not least you can then stand back admire you work and light up your esse ironheart for a nice cup of tea!

Or even indulge in some mood lighting:

Fitting the esse

2010-09-29T23:00:00.007+02:00

Well at long last its time to fit the range. Now the esse ironheart is about 400KG so the first problem is moving it. My top tip here is to make it lighter by removing all the door's, hot plate, and grate etc and to fit ski's. That way she will slide around a lot easier (not easily even then)

Next tip is if you do have to lift it, wherever possible use a jack!

Then of course there is the stove pipe connection to the flue liner and a frame to support the fire proof placo

Not to mention getting it level

Finally filling the hole in the chimney

So that's the esse in place on my new hearth and connected to the flue. Next time it's commissioning!

The first floor has arrived

2010-08-28T00:36:00.014+02:00

You know I said it would be the first thing to install, well 7 months in and with a little (lot of) help from my sister and family (James was a star) we have a first floor. check it out!

Above we have the work in progress. And below Jon hard at work.

By this point you will have noticed that I'm laying a chipboard sub floor. Anyone who knows me well will know that I don't do chipboard; Not for kitchen cupboards, floors or indeed anywhere (in Coventry I made the Kitchen cupboards and dovetailed the draws by hand). Well folks, after 4 months of living in the caravan and winter drawing in, I'm a born again chipboard fan! Whilst I would have loved to put down oak or solid timbers, time is of the essence and we need a house to live in before the winter sets in. So like most things in life its a compromise. My excuse is that we will cover it later with some sound insulation and a hardwood floor. It is of course Hydro chipboard and resists damp, oh and 22mm not 18mm (so the best chipboard you can buy). That said laying chipboard flooring for me is a bit like admitting I'm never going to win the lotto? Ho Hum!!!

As a side note you will see in the first picture the support bandage on my arm. According to the doctors I've been over doing it a bit and as a consequence my arm swelled up like a football. Anyway the surgeon has drained all the fluid off and whilst not back to fighting strength I can at least use my arm again!

And if you were wondering what Ms Lumur has been up to here is her latest creation!

See her work at:CheekyLumur

And if you find CheekyLemur via this blog and quote promotional code MLFF we will give you a 10% discount on any jewellery you buy!

I've never been so excited

2010-08-27T21:42:00.010+02:00

By the sound of a flushing toilet. As we all know in rural France this unfortunately means installing a septic tank and associated drainage soak away for the run off. This I can tell you is hard work. Even with the aid of a man with a digger raking out 12 tonnes of gravel is not easy. If fact its been a bit of a epic saga all round. First off you have a survey done, a man comes along and does a soak test of the ground and then sends you a report. In our case we waited a month just to get the man to come because they were so busy (this is because, of new regulations, many fosse septics have to be replaced by 2012). You then submit this to the local Maire who sends it to Veolia. They approve it, and send the plans back with strict instructions to inform your Maire not less than 10 days before you start work. Simple! This bit is tedious but fine. Now you have to get someone to dig it. At this point you will be tempted to hire a digger and do the job yourself. My advice would be not to. If like us you need 48 metres of trench 600mm deep and 500mm wide then its a lot of trench. If you have tight spaces to manoeuvre you will probably knock something over or turn the digger over, especially if the ground is as hard a dry as it has been this year. On the other hand getting in an enterprise is expensive. The best root is to find a neighbour with a digger and form some sort of reciprocal arrangement. This is what we did and in the end worked very well. I say in the end because most arrangements like this usually involve "a mate" and "mates" work in their own good time. In usual French style the "Ami" would appear probably at the beginning of April...then beginning of May...late May....June at the latest...July definitely! Then when all hope had failed low and behold middle of August he appears. One day later we have to work done, next day its inspected and passed and bingo we have a fosse. Well no, cause there are a few other bits to a fosse, like air vents that need to go in the roof and in our case a pumping station. We got the pumping station off the net half the price as the local builders merchant and fortunately the guy who did our roof is also a neighbour and came at really short notice to fit the roof vent when I chickened out!! (shed roofs are one thing, big houses are a bit different. Any way its done, it works and I for one am very happy not to have to empty a chemical toilet three times a week. This last week my sister and family came over to help (next post I'll cover all their hard work and assistance) but 8 people and one chemical toilet really is no fun especially if like me your head of sanitation. In fact as Leslie Nielson said its "Like being in charge of sanitation at a Haitian jail".

That's my lovely sister and her husband in the background. Don't worry Joanne, next time you come over I'll have a kitchen sink!

And thanks to our local roofer. It was a pleasure to watch him at work.

And the pumping station or "station de relevage" from www.station-de-relevage.com. Good value, well made and excellent service. Ours was the sanidrain model at €607 as I said over €1200 at the local builders!

If any sad people are wondering why there are two pipes its because one, the top one is the vent for the fosse and the pumping station, the other lower one being grey water.

Bathroom

2010-08-08T09:49:00.008+02:00

The bathroom's not finished yet but the main elements are now there (drains, shower toilet, walls and a door). The door is all held together with oak pegs because nails and screws would have been too easy! The cupboard under the window is a home made affair. For this I've re-used the old shutters off the house and I think the weathered grain really goes well.

Likewise the hinges came off the old windows and have been cleaned up with some hydrochloric acid and then finished off with wax.

And Julia's also been busy, here is one of her latest creations:

Go to Julia's Blog

Friends

2010-07-17T23:36:00.003+02:00

Good friends are few and very far between. Friends for life are even rarer and a great privilege.

The Bathroom gets under way

2010-06-26T12:13:00.004+02:00

Well I've started building the supporting wall for the last beam in the main downstairs room. The "poutre" is a little on the skinny side and a bit to bouncy to put a bathroom above. To solve this I've jacked the beam up and put in a couple of oak posts 15cm2. The floor underneath is re-inforced so more than able to take the weight. To make a bit more of a feature of this I'm building a colombage wall between the two. Once the supports were in I could then put in the next bay of solives on the first floor. This was a team effort with my friend Andy down the road, and much easier levelling up with two people. This is all going well, the only fly in the ointment is that I've had to dig out the bit a wall below the window to make good and get a conduit through under the wall. Ho Hum. I'm not goung to build this back to full 1 metre wall thickness but make a small bay or alcove in which I can put a bathroom cupboard. Every cloud and all that. Hopefully this make a bit more sense of the pictures below.

Catchup

2010-06-24T22:50:00.006+02:00

Well, its been a while but I'm back. Since finishing the outside of the shed I've now pretty much finished the inside and moved on into the house. The big thing is we now have our own internet connection. Yeeha!!! And the second big thing is the mains power is hopefully coming next week...double yeeha!!! The third big thing is the plans have been approved for the run off the the septic tank, so a flushing toilet is also in sight. LUXURY.

To achieve most of this has been the usual battle with bureaucracy except the phone. For me this was the biggest surprise. Went into the orange phone shop on the Tuesday and on Thursday the dude arrives to string the new phone line in place and fix the sockets. The guy tippy toed across the beams on the first floor without a word of "more than my jobs worth health and safety dissent" et Voila. Phone (free calls) and internet and satellite TV with all the hardware for 35 euro and month and no need to pay France Telecom a red cent. Not often stuff just works but in this case it did.

Anyway here are a few catch up photo's of the shed

Meanwhile inside the house I've had all the stuff delivered for the bath room and laundry room. I've started building the walls (oak) and dug out the wall under the window, but i'll post again tomorrow with the pics and an explanation. As I've dug out at least three tonnes of earth and rock today, I'm off to bed!

The outside finished

2010-05-12T21:47:00.006+02:00

So, after some blood sweat and a few tears, the outside of the shed is finished

To celebrate I'm running a competition to name the shed. Not sure if there will be a prize a such, but think of the kudos. The best name will be posted above the door for all time. Names like "dolls" and "Wendy" will be automatically disqualified cos your not taking it seriously. Bonne Chance!

Ta Da - The finished roof

2010-05-04T19:18:00.008+02:00

Well its been a long 5 day haul to slate the roof but here it is finished. Special thanks need to go to our good friends David and Christine who despite the somewhat blustery conditions have worked valiantly cutting and sorting. Without their help I'm sure it would have taken twice as long. But finished it is complete with chimney and zinc flashing. Enjoy...

That chimney flashing by the way is all fabricated and soldered up from sheet. Had to do some technical drawing revision courtesy of the internet to work out how to draw a plan view of a cone with a 52deg slant cut off the bottom. If your interested in how to do it you can go to sheet metal world

All in all I think its a nice job. The slates were free since they came off the house roof and have been re-cycled. That said I don't think i'd like to do anything bigger. If nothing else i certainly have a new found respect for the guy's who slate roofs day in day out in all weather's; If its sunny you bake, if its windy you get blown off the roof and in the rain it's just treacherous. Still done now.

L'il old House on the prairie..

2010-04-25T09:36:00.005+02:00

Opps sorry, I mean shed!

At last some bardage

2010-04-21T21:06:00.003+02:00

Life is like a box of chocolates

2010-04-20T08:40:00.003+02:00

And so is the shed. Wrapped and partially battened, and most of the tin edging for the roof fitted. The edging comes in two parts. One acts as a fascia board (shown) which you buy and then have to bash the end over. The next bit sits flat to the roof with a rolled edge to to hold the edge of the slate.

Last push now to finish the sheds structure, so i can get back to the house (the big house that is).

Its a Shed

2010-04-13T19:15:00.004+02:00

With the able help of Alan and David, its starting to look like a shed!

I'm glad the plastic is on; its water tight and also its one job i wasn't looking forward to done. Next battens and slates

Lieutenant Dan

2010-04-08T20:24:00.001+02:00

I think lieutenant Dan found his peace with God...

Chevrons - Rafters to you

2010-04-01T20:52:00.009+02:00

Most of the rafters in today, just the dormer window to build.

I've set the rafters 400mm OC and cheated a little when installing them. I've bolted them together at the apex and installed them as a pair. this way I can slip them over the roof and they always sit right at the apex. Add a few nails and bish bash bosh the jobs a gooden. Also today ordered the stainless steel flue for the wood burning stove. I've ordered this off the internet at Flue supplies. Turns out these guys are about half the price for twin wall flue than any place I could find in France. The odd thing is that single wall enamel flue is just the opposite, i.e. cheaper in the local brico. The one thing I've noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of rational in the pricing structures of stuff in France. Some things are really cheap compared to the UK, while other even very similar stuff is much more expensive? Ho Hum.

Oh and by the way, the construction at each end that looks a bit like a ladder, is in fact a Gable ladder (see page 140 "Roof construction and loft conversion, Third edition ISBN 0-632-05201-5). I've used this to provide the overhang for the slates. In a stone house the purlins go through the wall and you have no problem running a chevron the other side of the wall. In a timber house (oops I mean shed) the purlins stop at the wall and some other device is required.

And a reminder of the stove I'm using:

Top Tip

2010-03-29T21:00:00.007+02:00

"Never ask a French builder to give you a hand after lunch". I did but think i still have my teeth. Mind you I have a fat lip and was spitting blood for an hour. Schoolboy error! My "ami" had a bit of a wobble and while we were 4m up in the air dropped a 6m long 3"x8" which bounced off the roof and smacked me in the mouth. Ho Hum. Anyway here is the progress; purlins are up and the roof is braced ready for rafters.

roof still with temporary bracing

And some more permanent cross bracing

Next its the rafters and then some slates. The spacing of which is up for some debate. In France all slates are held on with wire clips not nailed. The clip hooks over the batten and supports the bottom of the slate. The next clip above holds the top of that slate and the bottom of the next slate above. The spacing of the battens depends on the size of the slate and the size of the clip. Easy, so batten spacing is derived from the following formula:

length of slate - length of clip - a bit / 2

The "bit" above is the amount you want the top of the slate to sit past the top edge of each batten, usually about 5mm. The divide by two is because there are two battens supporting each tile. So in our case we have 320 mm slates and were going to use 90mm clips

320 - 90 - 5 /2 = 112.5mm spacing

et Voila

Raising the roof

2010-03-27T18:13:00.001+01:00

oooer mi Noggins

2010-03-24T11:35:00.007+01:00

After a short administrative break I'm back on the shed. Roof trusses are done and the wall now has some noggins. All in all the structure is looking a lot more rigid. And as we all know rigidity is the name of the game. I took a few picture of the progress, the colours of which are a bit funny but that's because it was dark!

Note the oak dowels, sad really!

Anyway time the raise the roof. I was thinking about this and how i would do it using all manner of complicated methods. Then it struck me i was being stupid, the shed has a first floor!!! So I'll just build the floor first and then I can work off that to put in the roof, easy...ish.

The new shed gets some walls

2010-03-15T18:24:00.006+01:00

Today David and I constructed the walls for the shed. Using the compound mitre saw it actually was pretty straight forward, and a lot of progress for one days work. Julia is kindly providing a little scale.

And the view from the lounge:

Oh and yes the wood pile has gone down somewhat!

Looking at the shed today I think I may have got the decimal point in the wrong place on the drawings..Ho Hum, never mind. Still it wont look quite so small when the nice steep pitched roof is on!

Stage One Completed

2010-03-12T17:16:00.006+01:00

Well stage one of shed is complete. The base is down, level, insulated and boarded. From this platform I can build everything else on top, so pretty much the hard bits are done...ish.
First off with Julia's able assistance we covered the frame with Tyvek and chicken wire. Tyvek as a breathable membrane and the chicken wire is to both hold in the insulation and protect against rodents.

Next I've laid in 145mm of insulation with an R value of 3.85 (Toasty) followed by DPM and then floor boards. The boards were the same price as chipboard and although a bit on the rustic side they are at least real wood (don't know why just don't like chipboard, even in a shed). Then the fun part laying the boards with David and his very cool NAIL GUN.

It was so much fun even Libby managed to get in on the action:

And then TA-DA the finished floor:

Except of course you can't see it because it started raining.

Ho Hum...

Ca Commence

2010-03-08T19:51:00.007+01:00

Day 4 of the shed build and we are out of the ground. Levelling up took a while since the ground is frozen to about 4 inches. Many thanks to our friend David without whom the progress would be much less impressive. Having someone there who knows what they are doing is a big help. I promised my brother Nick that it would take 3 weeks to build the shed so I'm on a tight schedule....

Tomorrow it's insulation and floor boards. We have laid a fleece on the ground to help control the mud, but underneath that the ground is like concrete so I don't think its going to go anywhere.
And here is Julia's latest creation: isn't she clever..

Oh yes the shed really is that big.....

Hunting and gathering - was it all bad

2010-03-04T20:35:00.007+01:00

This week I've finished off the design for the shed, ordered the wood, cast the concrete beam in the wall and glued up the door for the first floor. We've also met some new friends and visited their house and a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten about already. Trouble is with moving out to live a tranquil life in France that there are lots of thing to either occupy or distract you! Anyway the wood was delivered today and we started to dig the foundations to the shed. Sounds easy given that this is digging through 12 inches of top soil but take it from me its not. Digging or indeed farming in general is in fact the work of the devil. Given the choice between hunting and gathering and farming, why we chose farming eludes me! Here is a pile of wood:

And then there was the digging:

Now when I started digging out the foundations I had envisaged just for the blocks not whole area. WHAT WAS I THINKING. Mike Duckett if you read this, I never learn!!!

Oh and the mechanical plough in the picture...doesn't help. Just makes you even more knackered trying to control the plough and you still have to dig out the mess. Ho Hum.

Bench

2010-02-23T20:39:00.011+01:00

As mentioned in my last post it was about time a made a workbench. Whilst it's not the work of art that the jewellery bench is its functional, and it will give me a stable platform to fasten things like the planer to. Ironically to make to workbench I had to use the planer to mill up the top for the new bench. In the process the planer slipped off the workmate and my instant reaction was to reach out to catch it. Stuck my hand straight into the blade of the planer! How I still have my fingers I honestly don't know. Luckily I was wearing my leather work gloves which took the brunt of the damage and certainly saved my fingers. If your reading this Jon, it was the pair that you bought me, so thanks again. Sometime I guess God's on your side! Here is the finished bench and no I won't be using the planer again unless bolted to the bench!

And the missing fingers!

Note to self: Always make sure you are wearing the correct safety kit......

After that little episode I thought I'd have a break from rotating knives and do a little gentle wall building. Today then I put in the lintels above the kitchen window and built up the wall at the front. When this has set up a bit I can then pour concrete into the void to create a beam to tie the end gable into the front wall. Not a bad thing really?

Eventually when filled in and built back up i'll make this into a window seat for the girls.

So tomorrow will be mixing concrete in the mixer (yet another thing off you Jon!) just hope its a warm as it was today; 11 deg and walking round in my shirt sleeves.

P.S. Yes and trim up the foam around the window (the shame of it!!!)

Time to make that door

2010-02-18T20:15:00.004+01:00

Now all the wood has been delivered I'm going to make the back upstairs door. I know its a bit unusual to have a door upstairs but when the ground was built up at the back you could step off into the back field. now its all been dug out its 10 feet off the ground. Trouble is its on the north facing side of the house and every time it snows, it snows in through the opening, so its time to fill it in. When I ordered the last lot of timber I ordered some dry stuff. The best you can do from the saw mill is get stuff that's been cut about 6 months. Even then in this load I was struggling to find enough that were straight enough to mill down into the stiles for the door. So in the best traditions of using what you've got I've modified the design to suit the timber and now its going to be a stable door, et voilà. By the end of play I had all the pieces for the door milled and cut to size. As the joiners amongst you will note this is not in itself a small task when you start of with rough sawn timber. Its always amazing to see the beauty of the wood reveal itself when you plane all the crud off, and each piece is different. Some even have a hint of pink in the grain! For my workshop Alison has been kind enough to let me use her garage (many thank's) which is close enough to run power (yipee.. lights) from the gite.

Here's a before and after picture of said timber. The eagle eyed and safety conscious among you will note that the planer is in fact about to fall off the workmate! I must build a bench that I can bolt it to....

Having cut the wood to size I carried out a few test cuts at my saw bench. This soon revealed what a pile of junk my saw bench really is. However its what I've got so I spent about an hour and a half going through and setting the blade, packing up the table insert and setting all the extension tables level. Now low and behold it cuts straight and true and at 90o and wood doesn't snag on the transition between the table and the table insert. Brill, should have done it 4 years ago. Still it's another job done.......

Lovely to see Mark and Julie in their shiny new camping car, our first visitors from England!

Snowing again

2010-02-11T21:14:00.006+01:00

Never mind, still managed to get some work done. One of the main things I've done is to re-arrange all our stuff so I can get to the other half of the floor to work on. Not a very glamourous or photogenic subject but lordy it doesn't half make a difference! Now everything is packed into the salon leaving the cuisine free for tools and work. I've not been down to the saw mill to order the rest of the solives yet so I've been tackling the repairs to the lintel and wall above the kitchen window.

That gap between the windows is where the rotten lintel was this morning. As you can see with the aid of a hammer and chisel and of course the chainsaw its all clear and ready to fit the new lintel and build back up again. Just need a few days where the weather is sufficiently above freezing to mix some mortar!!
I've also been cleaning off the remaining beam ready to fix the rest of the solives. Mostly this involved removing the old ledger strip and de-nailing. Sound easy but not as easy as you might think when the ledger strip has been there for 300 years. The aproach I took was to saw through every foot or so and then split with a chisel around the nails. All the nails were lovely old hand forged jobs. I almost thought about cranking up the forge and making a few replacements, but on reflection that seamed a little excessive even for me.

As you will notice that beam is a little on the skinny side so I'm going to build a colombage wall with oak posts to add some support. I reckon 150mm square should do the trick. When I'd finished up today I even had a little help tidying up!

Just to remind me what I'm aiming at with the upstairs I also taken the opportunity to look at the plans (not a bad thing now and again). Good thing I did because a few things are a bit different than I remembered. Also taking to Julia I think were going to do the main bedroom as the architect intended as a "room in a box" sitting within the space. I wasn't overly keen on the idea at the time but actually its quite simple and inexpensive to do, so its back in.

More...well..floor really?

2010-02-05T19:54:00.010+01:00

OK! so it's a big floor and these things take time. Today I finished off the floor round the fireplace. I was a bit stumped at first and it's taken me a few days to work out what I was going to do. I put in the floor either side of the chimney breast with the solives next to the chimney sistered up to carry a solive across in front of the chimney. When I looked at it, the span across all six foot of chimney, looked a bit wide for one solive to carry the ends of the other beams. To solve this I've taken one of the shorter solives through into the chimney to support it and thus halved the span. Well it feels pretty solid; I can stand and jump up and down on it and it doesn't bounce. In addition I've mortised the solives in to each other. There is a tendency to do a straight halving joint but to my mind this would weaken the beams to much (although on a shorter span this would probably be fine). Instead I've notched the male 1/4 of the thickness and then cut the female mortise only 30mm into the 100mm thick beam. This way neither is significantly weakened. As a belt and braces the middle solive/beam has a ledger stip for additional support. Well right or wrong (comments welcome from any experience joiners out there..Darren?) thats how I've tackled it and short of an earth quake that's how it's staying!
Here's the view from the kitchen

And from above. If you squint it almost looks like a room!

A close up of what I've been rambling on about;

The other thing I did today was convert my trusty generator to LPG. Running on good old petrol is OK but expensive and a pain to keep refilling. So god bless that lovely internet if I didn't find a company doing garret regulator conversions. As far as I can make out this works in a very similar way to a divers demand valve. Took a bit of fiddling to fit since the holes in the gas adapter collar didn't line up with the studs on the carburetta and you need ptfe tape for all the connections. Drilling out the holes in the collar was fine, but could I find my ptfe tape! It's there somewhere but I'm blowed if I can find it (like my meter long rule and spirit level!!!!!). Fortunately Andy down the road in the village came to the rescue with some tread sealing gunky-stuff. That said works a treat and I'm now cooking with gas...well sawing and drilling and lighting and generally power tooling it up. Here's the finished installation. Oh and of course you need to make sure you've drained out all the petrol, thus avoiding making a fuel/gas/air bomb!

P.S. For those of you who know our neighbour Guy, he had a heart attack on Wednesday night and had to be taken by helicopter to Caen. Touch wood he's making a good recovery and was well enough to be moved to Flers today. Our thoughts and prayers are with him.

Workbench №3

2010-02-02T21:41:00.011+01:00

The floor is still progressing. In my spare time I've knocked up a Jewellery workbench for Julia. The bench is constructed using bits of oak I had lying around so the only things I've actually had to buy is the plywood top at €14 and some varnish at €9, which to be fair I thought was a bit steep! Anyway the legs and rails come from off-cuts of beam. This I fashioned into usable timber with judicious use of my trusty chainsaw followed by the band saw and planer/thicknesser. All the other bits are offcuts of reclaimed wood from various sources. The most interesting of which is the back rail which has a really lovely grain that has blackened with age. It looks a bit like oak but definitely isn't (doesn't have that oaky smell), my best guess would be chestnut!
I have to say the bench may be tad over engineered but one thing is for sure, its not going to fall apart in a hurry!

I've wrapped the plywood top with a strip of wood to cover the end grain. This I steamed to make pliable so I could bend it into shape enough to glue and clamp.

I love that back rail, the grain is fab!

And here it is fully loaded and ready to earn it's keep.

As the title above suggests this is the third (and I may say the best) jewellery bench I've made. The first I made when I was a technician engineer at GEC in Coventry. In those days GEC was like a small town in its own right. It had carpentry shops, electricians, tool rooms, canteens, bank, photographic studio, garage, ballroom! the lot. The carpenters cut all the wood I needed to size and loaded it all onto a trolley for me to take away, all for free. In its day it was a proper little community, but then that was in the days of cost+ contracts for British Telecom before privatisation! All (mostly) gone now of course - sad really.

P.S. The skin under the bench is to save you grubbing round on the floor when you drop something, it also catches any bits of precious metal filings so they can be re-cycled.

More Floor

2010-01-30T22:42:00.010+01:00

Well its progressing slowly. The other carrier beam is in on the other side of the fireplace and I have to now fill in with solives in front. All the same sort of stuff but seeing as it was a nice sunny day I took some more pictures.

This one gives you some idea of the work involved.

When its finished this will be the children's bedroom. Although they are already enjoying climbing on the temporary floor (closely supervised).

Frankie making her quality control inspection!

As a bit of a diversion, I been making a new jewellery bench for Julia. It's not finished yet but here are the legs in the process of being morticed in for the stretchers. These were hewn out of a 250 x 250 beam I had spare with the chain saw, so a fair bit of work involved just getting 4 square ish usable bits of timber. The bench should be completed tomorrow so I'll post a proper picture then.

P.S. The marking gauge I made during my first year of woodwork (would the be 1st year or 3rd?) at Leek High with Mr Procter and Bobby Beech. It's made from beech wood with a brass face and screw all turned by hand and finished off during my lunch hour. Been one of the most useful things I ever made!

P.P.S Hi to Barbara and Owen in Bristol, hope you have a long attention span Its likely to take a little while!

Bon courage!

Good old fashioned housing joints

2010-01-27T10:39:00.009+01:00

A little more progress. I've morticed in the solives into the carrier beam. OK I confess I intended to sit the solives on top of the beam, but put the beam in too high; oops. Still its probably a better job in the end, just took a little longer. Still as my old dad used to say; The "art" of being a craftsman is not, not making mistakes, its getting out of them once you've made them! Well I'm not a craftsman yet but I am learning each day, and that's good. More mortices to come on the other side of the chimney, to make it all match! Its just a good job I had a handy stationary morticer sitting in the barn.

So that make the Fox stationary morticer the "cool tool of the day"

Oh yes managed to get real live post including parcels in France through our new regulation Post box. How cool is that. Instead of spending all your life going to the Post office to pick up a parcel because it wont fit your letter box, you have a box and the Postie has a key; fantastic. My parcel was a shiny new jumper from my favourite on line shop at the moment. Trust me if you want a 100% British wool jumper at reasonable prices delivered anywhere in Europe in a matter of a few days go to WoolOvers or "Woo-Lovers" as we like to call it. So forget you iphones and wide screen LED TV's give me a nice warm jumper any time! I went for the fisherman crew shown below (still waiting for the boat and the girl to be delivered though...must go down to the post office...)!

Bye for now

2010

2010-01-24T23:34:00.009+01:00

The beam has now been hoisted up into place and levelled up with a few shims of slate. I used my 1 ton chain winch suspended off a ladder used as an A frame. Nice and controlled and no danger of any nasty accidents, as slipping with a big piece of oak is not funny!

Here is the beam in place and ready to fit the solives

And yes it is level (if your really sad you can click on the picture to get a close up of the bubble for proof)

Just to remind me what year it is I added a little detail to the beam (it was a excuse to use some really sharp chisels).

I got the beam in place just in time to go over to a depot vente with Andy to help him collect some reclaimed oak windows. While there I had a quick look round and it's staggering what you can buy in these places. Everything but everything you could imagine, most it has to be said i wouldn't give house space to. Still I've promised Julia not to buy anything until we have somewhere to put it!

Back in time to cook some tea and skype to my brother Nick and his wife Jenny. It is an amazing thing to be able to sit in a farmhouse deep in rural France and have a video call to your brother in Derby, all over a free piece of technology. Before moving to France I never used skype, always preferring to pick up the phone instead, but I'm really a convert. In-fact I think I've seen more of both my brother and sister than I did when I lived just down the road. And it does make a huge difference being able to talk face to face; without it it would seem a lot more remote (and as my wife will attest, I do like a good old chat with the bro).

What will they think of next!

More first floor antics

2010-01-22T18:32:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I finished of the first run of solives and blow me if it isn't lovely and level. This now gives me a level to work across to the wall and install one of the carrier beams to support the floor between the chimney and the front wall. As usual this is never straight forward and low a behold on one side where I needed to make a socket for the beam there was the end of an old beam and on the other two great big stones in the side of the chimney breast! Ho-hum! Anyway my good friend Alan will be pleased to know that the reciprocating saw he lent me about 10 years ago was just the tool for cutting out the end of the Oak beam. in fact without it I'm not sure how I would have cut the socket! So a big thanks to Alan. The other side was just a case of cutting through the stones with the angle grinder and smashing a hole big enough. Built up the holes to just below the right height and lined with slate so i can shim with more slate to level up the beam in place. As for the beam I'm using 200 x 100 green oak and just for good measure I've hand cut a bevel into the bottom edge. I always think that its those little touches that make the difference!

If you look through the socket for the beam the wall is black on the other side. That's because its the inside of the chimney! Well it'll give me plenty of room to slide the new beam in and i can leave the ends of the beam nice and long.

So if the mortar ever goes off in this cold weather I can install the beam. While I had a bit of mortar mixed I thought I would tidy up round the bit a wall between ground floor and first floor window. Closer inspection however showed that the supporting Oak lintel needs replacing, so i'll have to take that bit a wall down and rebuild it. Bummer! Oh well probably only take me half an hour.

EXPLANATION:
Any job you have to do always feels easier if you tell yourself it will only take "half an hour" even if you blatently know it won't!!!!

ALTERNATIVE:
Tell yourself "How hard can it be!"

For Alison, Cool tool of the day is: Stihl MS260 50cc Tronçonneuse

Nice!

Starting the first floor

2010-01-20T19:03:00.000+01:00

So far this week I've spent Monday and Tuesday wire brushing down the oak beams ready for the solives. This is one filthy job. First off I chiselled off the loose rotten wood and then finished off by wire brushing and then brushing all the dust off. This leaves the beams solid and ready to nail up the mounting strips for the solives. The only tricky bit is than because the beams are no-longer square you have to try and bend the mounting strips to match the shape of the beam. After this its just a case of finding the high spot and working out from there. The good thing is that is you make a bit of a cock-up (like nailing the first mounting strip 20mm too low) you can just shim it up and carry on. To some extent it actually looks more authentic if its a bit uneven. I went round to Alison's to crib from the ceiling in her house and not one solive is spaced the same as the next, it's all over the shop (and looks all the better for it). With this in mind I decided not to get too precious about it and just get on with it.

For good measure where the old beams are rounded off I'm mortising the solives in so they're not just sitting on the mounting strip.

I've learnt one or two things today.

1, Oak is hard, after 300 years its like concrete.
2, When nailing into Oak use a big enough hammer.
3, Once you have nailed something to an Oak beam using a 6" nail, Don't try and get it out again (measure twice, nail once).
4, Wear gloves, oak turns your hands black.

Lastly, I love my Makita mitre saw, You should be issued with one free with every French house.

à bientôt

Lazy Friday's

2010-01-08T23:20:00.000+01:00

I abandoned trying to get the solives home in the trailer. Having tried to lift one or two of the pieces of wood it soon became apparent that some sort of truck would be in order. Fortunately a phonecall to an "Ami" by the owner of the saw mill saw the delivery scheduled for Monday. By that time hopefully the snow will have gone and the road up to the house all together more navigable than today. I on the other hand drove the Doblo straight into a bank side at the T junction at the top of the road. Still the crease in the bumper makes it look all the more "French". So renovation on hold we went for a walk around Tinchebray? Even the ruined mill down by the river looks pretty in the snow.

Step One: Put in the upstairs

2010-01-06T21:06:00.000+01:00

As you can see the downstairs of our house is full of all our stuff. This causes a few working issues. Then some bright spark suggested putting the first floor in and then we can move all the stuff upstairs leaving the downstairs free for working! Obvious really. So this week I've ordered the solives for the first floor. Looking at our friends house in Clairfougere 10cm x 10cm oak seem the order of the day. Each beam is about 2 metres long spanning between the major timbers at about 400mm centres. To start with I've ordered the first consignment of 32, since its going to take about 3 times this quantity, I thought I would order in batches and then there will be less to store while I fit them. I'll need to allow for shrinkage so I'm going to joint where possible. For the floor I'm going to use good quality pine boards from the builder Julian DuPont. I did look at oak board from the saw mill but they were wet through and only 14mm thick. My conclusion with the saw mill is that its great for green timber at around €500 m3, but for where you need dry timber you can forget it.

The Sisters Sledge

2010-01-06T14:53:00.001+01:00

The Girls have never been sledging before, but thankfully the French have opted out of global warming using their EU veto. So its been snowing, quite a lot and about -6deg at night. Currently the only way in or out of the village is if you walk, how cool is that! I think its safe to say they are having fun in Normandy.

Obviously its good to have a handy pack horse!

Happy New Year

2010-01-04T20:10:00.000+01:00

We arrived on the 2nd of Jan in the middle of a snow storm.
Alison our neighbour has very kindly let us stay in one of her lovely Gites. That gives me three months to get the house habitable! Today we went to the local school and enrolled the children, they start tomorrow. Both Frankie and Libby are really nervous, but then they will be, not only a new school but also a new language to learn in. we'll take them for the first week or two, after that there is a free school bus. they do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 8:30 till 11:30 and then 1:30 till 5:30. So they get all day Wednesday off! yipee.

Also arranged car insurance and measured up for the joists (solives) So a visit to the saw mill is in order. If I get the first floor in place then it will give me somewhere to put all the stuff (of which there is a lot) so i can work on the ground floor.

Keys

2009-12-15T21:56:00.000+01:00

Its a funny thing with keys. Generally speaking I recon there is a direct correlation between the number of keys you carry round and how complicated your life is. When I was a kid I had no keys and no complications and I was dying for my first key.

Actually I had a thing about locks in general. I think this probably came from the Colditz series in the 1970's. I can't remember the exact episode but its the one where they steal a key off the German guards and make an imprint in a plasticine mould. They then use the imprint to make a copy and make good their escape. I'm pretty sure they also got captured thus making sure there was enough of the cast left for the next thrilling episode. Anyway this I found fascinating and the next day when the opportunity arose used the same trick to copy the most important and closely guarded key in our house; The key to the drinks cabinet! This aged 7 I duly fashioned into a copy using a similar key as a blank which I then sold to my older brother for the ludicrous fortune of 50p. My first commission sale! (Bumping locks it quite good fun to).

Then as you get older you gradually start to get more keys; First motorbike, then bike locks, garage keys etc. Then later in life you get car keys, house keys and work keys. Eventually if your like me you end up with so many keys you can't even get the bunch of key in your jeans pocket (Well not and sit down). Your life has become more complicated, and that's not to mention all the electronic key fob widgets.

Today I went into work to hand back my key and say farewell. Whilst in one respect this was sad, saying good by to my work colleagues (a great team its been a pleasure working with), equally my life got a whole lot less complicated. On Saturday we will hand over the House keys and things will be vastly less complicated. Now I know that the real complication is in the mortgage and the bills and we have already got rid of these. But my point is that there is nothing really tangible there, when you pick up a bunch of keys and its a whole lot lighter, that is something you feel.

Preparing for the move (and a bit of a rant)

2009-12-14T22:40:00.000+01:00

Well it's taken a bit of doing, but it looks like were on schedule. The house completed on Friday so now sans mortgage! Yippee. Today we've been paying off the remaining bills and going through all our correspondence. My favorite bit was going through and stopping all the direct debits; felt good ooh yeah. just the Gas, Water and electricity to go. One thing I have become very familiar with over the past few days is automated answering systems. Banks in particular all have them. Some to be fair are OK, a bit of security before being put through to a human. Some though are just atrocious! Particularly where the said bank has spent a fortune in trying to filter as many people away from ever getting to a human as possible. Unfortunately I can just imagine the project steering group for the new call handling system all sitting round discussing the "success criteria" = % calls dealt with by the first two levels of menue...la...di..lar...de..lar. Well in this case they came up with something quite special! Quite how they even got the automated system to mimic the sort of attitude you got from banks 20 years ago I don't now but they managed it. My call went something like this:

Dial number..Ladies voice automated answer.

Automated voice system: "Hello welcome to XXXXX, in order to transfer your call in the most efficient way please tell us in a short sentence what you would to talk to us about?"

Me: "I'd like to speak to an advisor?"

Automated voice system: "Well we offer a wide range of services maybe you could be more specific?

Me: "I'd like to speak to an advisor?"

Automated voice system: "Can I suggest the following options; Perhaps you would like the balance on your account or may-be to check a recent transaction?

Me: "NO I really would like to speak to an advisor, Please?"

Automated voice system: "(pause)...Humph..Alright I will transfer you to am adviser as soon a one becomes available...

This being a euphemism for a long wait in the queue to wait to speak to the one human left on the help desk having got rid of all the others because the new super automated system made them redundant!

Maybe I'm just cynical but, I like speaking to people. I don't like speaking to machines. Just because something is technically possible to me, does not automatically make it a good idea! Another prime example of too much technology was the hire car I've just returned after getting my car back. If by any chance you don't follow the correct starting procedure (usually because, since the gear box is so crap you've stalled it in the middle of a junction) the dash board would start telling you off. The car would even show its disapproval at your scant regard for the carefully worked out and strict German procedure by attaching numerous exclamation marks on the end of the said admonishments!!!

This is the point I want to get off!

I seem to remember watching the science fiction film "demolition man" where all the integrated systems start telling off a recently thawed out and very 20Th century Sylvester Stallone. It seemed a bit far fetched at the time, but VW obviously saw the future.

Bring on that Early 18Th century monastic french living!

Spot the tool

2009-12-08T01:28:00.000+01:00

Since I didn't really leave very long for anyone to respond to the last post I thought I would have another small quiz. This time I need the name and brand of the tool and this time there is a prize. VODKA

Tool number 1

Tool number 2

Tool number 3

Tool number 4

Tool number 5

Well that's all folks, easy. And just as a little tip, if you need some help finding the answers try hitching a ride on a magic carpet and visit the best online tool store in the world!

Packing up, Counting down

2009-11-24T21:19:00.000+01:00

Lordy! how much stuff can you accumulate in eighteen years...That would be a lot. No really A LOT. Fortunately the very nice manager of the local Sainsburys gave me a few boxes for free. This was instead of spending a bunch of cash on proper moving boxes. It's surprising what you can get if you only ask! As you can see I've been inspired by the new series of Tommy Walsh's fix your house for free. This is where Tommy and his mate go off and try and get as many building materials for free out of skips, or going spare or sold as seconds at builders merchants. Julia is hoping that some of this thrift will wear off onto me! (and of course some of Tommy's rugged good looks!)

So Packing is going well, the ferry crossings are booked. All being well on the 2nd of Jan we will be in France for good. That's 38 days and counting down!

P.S. There is a prize for anyone who can correctly identify the hammer Tommy is holding

Life

2009-11-15T02:25:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking. Actually I've been thinking a lot...about life. I guess when your about to do something truly life changing, it makes you think. This year I will be forty two and for the past 24 years I've worked a full time job. Next month I'll leave my current job after 3 years. My previous job I did for 11. The depressing thing is that for 14 years of my labours there will be exactly nothing to show other than the money earned. Zero. No product, nothing tangible to look at or point to. What a waste of 14 years. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that most people's jobs now consist of pretty much the same thing, and result in a similar outcome. I think this is one of the main reasons i want to go and live in France. Not to live in France but the opportunity for a change of life. It would be nice to finish the day and point to something achieved that day; something created. Don't get me wrong I know nothing lasts; houses fall down, jewellery gets discarded or melted down, clocks get binned. At least however there is something to show even for a short period. I also think its something deeply rooted in the human psyche; the need to create. My father worked hard all his life till the day he died at 55. The most precious things for me are the memories and the things he made. The memories I try to keep alive by telling my children stories about him, but after 20 years since his death it seems like a lifetime ago. But each time I go out into the shed after work and make something with one of the tools he made and stamped NQ, I do think he would be pleased with that.

Winding down

2009-11-15T00:33:00.000+01:00

This week I've been winding down with my new book:

Actually its a really good book. For anyone wanting to drop out its got a bunch of useful stuff. The main thing it gives you is a sense that becoming self sufficient is going to be a long and difficult Journey. And yes the main thrust of this is one of living on no money rather than any sudden need to protect man's environment. Would the planet be any worse off without us? Anyway the book is really good with sections on going off-grid (handy since our house isn't on grid!), keeping animals, crop rotation, water harvesting systems etc.

Anyway, time for a cig....

18th Century ECO Modernism

2009-11-09T00:05:00.000+01:00

What do you really need? Modern life seems to increasingly revolve around gadgets and stuff, but how much of this do you actually need? By most standards we're pretty good, no ipods, xbox 360's, wii's, automatic espresso machines, dish washers and the like. So much so that my colleagues at work were aghast to find out that not only was my telly not lcd or flat screen but neither was it even stereo; was I living in the dark ages and how did I cope! Well as far as I can see mostly very well. In fact most of the stuff we do have we don't use. But just exactly what do you really need? That got me thinking about how we will choose to live our lives, both in an ECO friendly and economic way. Looking back into the 18th century when our house in France was built people lived very differently, no electricity, no Tv, no washing machines; but then as a friend of mine pointed out the average mortality was about 45years old. This was not I suspect due to the lack of television and more to do the state of medical science and basic hygiene! So if you take that 18th century life and add in the bits of modern life that you really need what do you get: 18th Century ECO Modernism.

So hear is my list of what can stay and what can go:

To Stay
Internet access and laptop, washing machine, mains drinking water, Shower and WC, Electric lights, wood burning stove, Freezer, radio portable DVD player, Power tools (well were not animals you know) hair dryer(For Mrs Lemur), One Car, Generator.

And to go:
Electric kettle, TV, Fridge, Satellite TV, Mains electricity connection, Computer games, Mains gas, Dishwasher, Microwave, Toaster, Bread maker, Electric Mixer, Hoovers, Gas fire, Gas/Electric heating, Electric iron, In fact all other electrical kitchen appliances.

And will never buy:
And than there is the stuff that we don't have and never will have; Namely the afore mentioned wii's, Xbox, satnav, iphone, ipod, trouser press, coffee maker, Electric Tumble Dryer, cuddly toy (lapsed into the generation game there for a moment).

And lastly here's the list of stuff we're going to be making much more use of:
Candles, Hot water bottles, Slippers, Jumpers, Fork and spade, Food smoker, Air drying, Clothes maid, Bread oven, Veg patch, Assorted livestock, books, solar power.

The aim of all this is of course to bring our living costs down and reduce the amount of crap also. How we get on is of course a different matter and with two growing girls who are soon to be teenagers it will be interesting to say the least. My hope is the the laptop and internet will generally mean that they stay in touch with the 21st century while gaining an understanding of what's actually important and what's not? How realistic this is remains to be seen?

P.S. Taking the advice of our good friend Alison, we won't be throwing any of this stuff away. We will be packing it up with us and than we can either use it or later or if all goes to plan and we can do without it, we will find a good home for it then.

And now some good News!

2009-11-06T18:42:00.000+01:00

I've heard today that the buyers mortgage valuation on our house in Coventry has come back OK and he now has his offer sorted. Hopefully that's the last big obstacle to selling the house so it looks like were in business. Now that's out of the way we can really start to make preparations to move. Tomorrow we can start packing our life up into boxes, order packing materials etc. I think we are going to get some flat role plastic tube. This stuff looks good to go around boxes and furniture to keep the damp out while its stored in our barn in France. In the mean time I've been filling out insurance claim forms for my car repairs..deep joy. Still they will have a month to get it fixed before it really becomes a pain, surely that can't be beyond the wit of man.

Ho-hum

2009-11-05T22:17:00.000+01:00

Well this week has been a bit of a roller coaster. Flew over to Dublin Monday for an all day meeting Tuesday. Stayed over in Derby with the bro Wednesday and drove down to Reading for another meeting today. This was nicely rounded of by the fact that a Taxi driver drove straight into the back of my car at some traffic lights and totalled it. The Police attended and took statements and I spend half an hour in the back of an ambulance while the medics assessed my injuries. Nothing serious, I'm just going to have a really stiff neck. Will I miss the UK...err...NO. Ho-hum.

Moving on

2009-10-31T21:39:00.000+01:00

Friday was "S" day. Yes that's it the day of the house survey! Actually contrary to my expectations he didn't seem like a bad bloke. Anyway nothing I can do but wait for the report. Fingers crossed it will be one step closer to France. In the mean time I've been doing a little quad bike repair. We're spending the weekend with my big sister and family and it transpires that my nephews quad has been feeling a little neglected. So me and the boy have been enjoying a bit of spannering in the garage. Valve timing...Check, Ignition timing...Check, spark...check. Fuel...Fuel...Fuel...Ah. That would be the carburettor then. So a little clean and gratuitous bending of the float valve plus adjustment of the air screw and now it runs like a sewing machine.

Cheekylemur on the other hand has been shopping. I think this beauty should look pretty swish on top of the esse! She did in fact get two, Why two? The theory is that when one has boiled the other can go on to boil. And economical too, just think of all the electricity we will save not having an electric kettle. If you think about it 3KW x No of cups of tea = a lot. And being LECREUSET French (ish) too. Like most things they are actually made in Taiwan, Oh Hum, It's the thought that counts.
Back to reality, we should get the report from the survey next week. If it goes OK we can get packing!

Honfleur

2009-10-23T23:23:00.000+02:00

Honfleur, one of my favourite places to visit. The Classic French port

Honfleur has also got some really nice and crafty Artisan shops. There is a leather shop down one of the little back streets that is what I would describe as a proper old fashioned shop complete with the authentic smell that you just can't recreate with a new shop. Reminds me of a shop in leek that closed down about 30 years ago.. Brilliant.

Obsessive? Me?

2009-10-23T01:30:00.000+02:00

OK, this week its stoves. Yes I know the house will have the two esse stoves, but what about the shed? There's no point in having a nice new shed studio if its too cold to enjoy now is there. Anyway it was a complete bargain, with the VAT free promotion at Machine Mart that's £23 quid off plus it was reduced from the previous catalogue. So Mrs Lemur will be able to create her beautiful jewellery in her studio and then discuss Life the universe and art with our neighbour Alison round a lovely warming stove and a hot chocolate, while I work on the house. My hope is that the ongoing comfort provided by this new addition to the family will over the years make my wife's despair with her husband slowly fade. Well maybe. Anyway back to the stove, styled for a canal boat with a flat bottomed wood burning grate it will burn all the off-cuts of wood from the house plus sawdust and logs; perfect! Cheap too, for a 5KW cast iron stove, and I think in its own way not unattractive.

Moving on the the shed, I have been planning the construction: Here is the side view showing the framing and openings-

And the view of the gable end:

As you can see the stove is already shown pride of place and fashionably off-set. This view of the gable shows two alternative ways of creating an internal buttress wall as seen at the grand designs show. If I'll use this construction or not I'm not sure. Once the basic framing is complete I'll skin the whole construction in ply and wrap in breathable membrane. Then its just a bit of cladding and slates on the roof. Mmmmm.....Nice

No Going back

2009-10-18T22:21:00.000+02:00

Oh my God, we've accepted an offer on the house so it looks like were really are off then. Now I've probably watched every episode of "no going back" together with "Grand designs abroad", "a place in France" and my personal favourite "sun sea and scaffolding" but now it's us its decidedly more real. Exciting, scary and definitely very real. The other dawning realisation is just how much stuff there is to sort out! Then of course there was breaking the news. Kids were really excited, Mrs Lemur decidedly Shell shocked (see her blog posting) and the rest of the extended family, the full range in between. And yes I know there is still a lot that could go wrong with the sale! Having said that optimism (if slightly unrealistic) has for better of worse been a long standing trait of mine and with this in mind, we've started the ball rolling. Yesterday I packed up the best china and deposited it at my mums house in storage and today we ordered our wood burning ESSE for the house in France. Followers of this blog will have heard me go on about the ESSE Ironheart range cooker / stove. This fantastic bit of kit will make the tea, run the bath and put your slippers on for you but sadly even the Ironheart needs a friend. The perfect friend I'm reliably informed by the nice man from ESSE is the 700 boiler stove.

This little beauty will complete the package by keeping the salon lovely and toasty and running the central heating and additional hot water. As you can see from the picture this stove is simple, clean and with that flat top will probably boil a kettle to boot. OK so its a decidedly "English" in design and we could have gone for something more Godin but its a funny thing about brands. Some brands stick with you, and having warmed my feet on an ESSE as a child somehow it seemed the only choice for my children. You see the idea of the stove gently warming the house and the whole family gathered around the farmhouse table eating food grown in our garden, for me is what its all about.

Grand Designs Exhibition

2009-10-13T01:25:00.000+02:00

Saturday saw me, Mrs Lemur and the kids visit the Grand Designs live exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham. I was like a kid in a sweetshop who's mother had confiscated all of his pocket money. There was everything to do with building, houses and garden, together with cooking demonstrations and even Bee Keeping. In truth there was a small amount of bribery involved in "encouraging" the kids to go, In the end the promise of meeting a celebrity chef or two did the trick. Armed with autograph books Frankie and Libby both managed attract the attention of John Burton Race who very kindly signed them.

My favourites from the exhibitions? Well the man from esse was there so I got to impress him with my somewhat extensive knowledge of their product range! And of course play with the Ironheart again. Nice! I made some good contacts for materials supplies like underfloor heating and floor tiles. I think though my favourite stands were those showing off their ideas for micro living (big sheds). These were in the "village" section of the show and showed some really clever thinking. Both eco and sustainable the best of these was this dwelling:

Designed by a group of young architects in Manchester who also manned their creation it was a really well thought out piece of design. The construction is designed to be assembled in two or three days by two people, each section about a metre and a half wide. There is a little mezzanine with a double bed, a functional kitchen and a bathroom all in a building 6.7m x 3.5m in size. There was also a few more outrageous designs, one based on a large igloo design covered in cedar shingles. As the lady on the display noted "getting planning permission" was sometimes a problem.

Mrs Lemur favourite I know was the Bee Keeping section in the gardens area. While the bees were OK I was rather taken with the large range of chicken houses. In architectural terms there was every type of chicken coop from the compact and bijoux 2 up 2 down to the full 4 bed grand residence befitting any young up-and-coming executive chuck!

ECO - Tradition

2009-10-07T02:53:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine once said to me "its not how much you earn, it's how much it costs you to live". My friend lives on a small holding and runs his own business and he by most standards lives very well. Now it also helps that he is a very capable "entrepreneur" but in essence that's the gig. Living economically is a key part of what we want to achieve in France. It's also a happy coincidence that economic and ecologic are pretty well aligned, and this as we all know is the latest fashion. Now I've never been an eco warrior, hell I used to own a 4x4, but it is clear, and has been for several hundred years that we are increasingly making the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and the species we take with us. So whilst I have little faith that economies in general will be able change sufficiently to make any difference, I will at least have saved some money.

One of the key elements in this is my aim to go off-grid if possible. Today this seems like a big step, but lets not forget that less than 100 years ago, very few people had electricity. This brings me to the second point in this blog - Tradition. When my French house was built there was no 220v. People burnt wood for heating, put another jumper on if it was cold, burnt candles at night (or went to bed) and had countless mechanisms for keeping warn without the need to wack up the central heating. The ESSE Ironheart is going to be the centre piece of my plans to keep warm:

Limbo

2009-10-07T00:09:00.000+02:00

That's the problem with deciding to make a life change, you put all your efforts into getting into a position to make the move and then......nothing. The problem is I've spent the last 17 years either working on our house in Coventry or feeling guilty for not working on the house. For some reason there are always those outstanding little jobs you never get around to sorting out, then when you decide to sell up and go the France, you rush round and go and do just that..finish them all. House up for sale, bish-bash-bosh and I'm ready for booking the removal van. Instead I'm in limbo. I even have to confess as to feeling a bit at a loose end NOT working on the house. It's a bit odd not having house stuff to do but not really wanting to start anything else for fear of making a mess. Still at least we have had people round to look at the house, just no offers yet. Still I'm told that patience is a virtue...just not one I possess.

Shed Living

2009-09-20T11:12:00.000+02:00

I Love Sheds. No really I do. My current shed in the UK is 4 meters by 3 meters stick framed with a shingle roof. I built it about 8 years ago in December. At the time it was about -6degC and of course the shortest days in the year. It took me about 2 weeks to build by myself mostly in the dark. The design was a modified Norm Abram design and over the past 8 years its worked brilliantly. Amongst the many accolades she has received over the years are "The only shed you can see from space" and short listed for the finals of "Shed of the year". Used as our jewellery workshop its a great space to work, everything to hand and no need to put your tools away after you've finished work. Alas we may need to leave the shed when we sell the house to move to France. If we do the first thing on the to do list will be a new shed! Where else to go for inspiration for the new Model but back to Norm to get the latest thinking.

By now hopefully the plans and DVD of Norms latest creation are winging their way from the states, God bless the miracle of the web. Now the plans will have to be modified to scale-up a little since you get 20 meters square to play with before you need planning permission in France.

Anyway here is a taster of what the final building will look like. I love the steeply pitched roof and painted weather board look of this building. Add to that the arts and crafts style hinges and six pane windows and this should complement the house just fine. I'll use the slate we took off the old house before we recovered the roof as a re-cycled environmentally friendly option. Fitted out inside with a new jewellery bench, space for the kiln and a sink for washing enamels it should be the perfect retreat for Cheekylemur. The finishing touch would be a small wood burning stove for those cold Norman winter days!

To help with the build I've enlisted to help of my little friend. Ok she wasn't cheap but if you've ever wondered what the difference between cheap Chinese power tools and proper professional tools is? Its immense, the quality and finish from this bad boy is just superb.

Now if we can just get the house in Coventry sold......

Making an Entrance

2009-09-18T12:11:00.000+02:00

Literally! Here is the front door I made to help keep the wind and rain out. Sometimes when I start a small project I may on occasion under estimate the amount of effort required. Ah it'ill only take half an hour! Well this was one of those... the best part of a week and a half later et voilà!

The view from the inside

Made in solid oak with a leaded glass panel made by Mrs Lemur (AKA CheekyLemur). This is one substantial door, so heavy in fact it takes three people to lift. I think I may have to be slightly more realistic about the rest of the fixtures and fittings if I am ever going to finish the house.

The Project

2009-09-15T02:35:00.000+02:00

Well here it is complete with roof, windows, walls and stuff. How Hard can it be to finish off the twiddly bits!

Life, Work and Jewellery

2009-09-15T01:05:00.000+02:00

I've been making Jewellery for around 25years now, always as a hobby. For about 19 years i've been working in IT. Many people have said to me over the years that its nice to have a hobby that's completely different from their work, that way you never get sick of doing your hobby. The question i've been asking myself lately is which is better; Not doing something you love on the grounds that you my grow not to like it, or continue to work doing something you already know you don't like?

My father had a saying "what thist had the canny tak away".

Well here's a project i've just finished. The Clock is Zebrano and silver, the halmarks are my own registered mark. The sense of pride when you look back at something youve made by hand...priceless.

The Master Plan

2009-09-13T00:27:00.000+02:00

So here it is, the master plan. Take one family living in Coventry, England and transplant them lock stock and two smoking barrels to rural France. Simple? How hard can it be?

To be fair at this point its probably worth me covering a bit of the background to this. Much as I would like to say that i just got up this morning and had a moment on the road to Damascus i didn't. Actually the moment on the road to Damascus was about 5 years ago. I woke up, had the moment and within 4 weeks we had found our dream home in France and put down the deposit. Well actually it wasn't quite our dream home, in that it wasn't actually a home, more a building project. A really really big building project. Five years on and its still a building project. Five years on with more than a little blood sweat and a few tears and its still a building project. The problem is one of time and money. Renovating a house takes either a lot of money or a lot of time. As i currently have neither this is a problem. Not that we haven't made progress, we have; new roof walls, floor, drainage, windows, doors etc etc. The problem is how we progress from here. So that's it, were off, sell the house in Coventry, move to France, finish the renovation and live and work in France.

Why blog it? Don't know since I've always been really anti blogging. Who cares, really? However since buying the house i have found some really good stuff on the web from blogs and forums etc. So each day if anything interesting happens I'll blog it. This way I can look back and my friends and family can see how its going. For anyone else who is interested, fill yer boots.

So the general theme to the blog will be: Moving to France, renovating a stone farmhouse and setting up a small business in France.