Table

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

Here's some new stuff:

The stone sink

esse ironheart boiler removal

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

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

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

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

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.