Starting the first floor

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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!