Tipping point

It feels like one anyway. Today you can walk upstairs without the use of a ladder and it feels good. Today I finished the landing at the bottom of the stairs and the landing at the top, thus joining the two halves of the house together. Julia has been painting the ceiling in the kitchen and scraping the paint off the beams and I have to say it looks fab. Here are a few tasters:

Look you can walk down them: almost like a real house.

The lower landing or "pulpit" as I like to call it.

And the landing at the top. 

A small addition to hide the cross brace.  The stairs are not screwed together on the side you see, so I've put a 12mm threaded bar through the stringers to hold everything together.

Making the staircase; I had cause to dig out my dads old bull-nose plane. I've had this since my dad died over   20 years ago and in honesty never really used it in anger. My dad didn't really do woodwork in that he relied on my uncle Jeff who had his own joinery business. He had a few tools but not many...plane..saw etc. Then he decided to fit double glazed panels to the existing window frames in our house in Ipstones. For that you need to re-bate and for that you need a bull-nose plane. Well fitting the flooring to the landings using the T&G oak flooring is fine but in our damp cold house the flooring has swelled, meaning the T&G boards are very tight. The perfect tool is my old dads bull-nose plane. Just right to "ease" the tongue so the boards fit together nice. I did of course sharpen the blade to "within an inch of it life" and having done that it has been a god-send. The flooring, which is French production oak, I have to say is beautiful. When the floor is down in the salon it will look amazing! 

When this house was built in 1712, the guys who built it spent an awful lot of time and care making the house the best they could........hopefully we are doing the same!

Stairs at last

Well its been a while since my last post and for that I apologise. December is such a rush and January is such   a cold and miserable month its difficult to get motivated to do anything let alone blog. Not that I haven't been working, but a lot of it has been painting and filling in gaps; not glamorous and not really very entertaining. Today however I put the stairs in (having built and assembled them first of course). So here are some pictures, and for the first time you can at least "walk" up the stairs. Cool stuff

In place - at last

And I've filled in the gaps between the beams together with a little painting.

Don't know about you, but to me, it's starting to look a little better.

Building the Stairs (part 1)

Having got the stringers to size I made a jig to mortise out for the treads

Using a collar on the router

And another to mark out the angle of the treads, so they are at least all the same

This took a couple of attempts to get the mortise a nice snug fit. Bear in mind not too tight so I can get the thing together and glued

What it should look like

In place an levelled up, just to check

And an idea of what they will look like

And yesterday the tiles arrived for the kitchen. Laid out dry to see what they look like. I particularly like the fact they vary in shade. Should make a nice floor! 

Way up high

Fitting the new liner for the Chimney. For info that's about 11 metres

Getting up was a little tricky, in the end I cut a hole in the piggery roof and made some staging to work off. That way my ladder was just long enough. I could have gone up the roof but didn't want to risk breaking all the new tiles! Also gave me a change to see how bad the roof of the barn is. It's bad, and needs doing sooner rather than later.

Fortunately the chimney is big and quite straight so I could put the liner up the chimney. Last time I did this I dropped it down from above and it was a git to do. The liner is flexible but not very, so curving it round and down while 11 metres up on a ladder holding all the weight is not easy. Pulling it up was a doddle by comparison thanks to the able assistance from Julia and the kids.

The liner ready for the stove

Big Wood

Started the staircase stringers at last. I managed to get some really nice kiln dried oak from Granville Bois in Villedieu des Poeles. Cutting it was a bit of a swine and planing it was even more fun.  Had to get our neighbour Alison to lend a hand but we got the job done and I now have two nice clean blanks to lay out for the treads. The large piece of wood on the left is.... Ahem....spare.

And again with Libby to give some scale

On a completely different note, I found this in the skip at the tip....I thought it worth saving. I'm sure I can make it into something nice, maybe a mirror?

Screed

As the day unflolds;

 

 

 

 

 

Job Done!

Under floor heating

Well the time has come to do the floor in the kitchen. First of course we had to de-camp the kitchen into the salon. After that there was was a little reparation to do to the floor where the window seat will go and then down with the insulation:

This starts quite easily but gets harder as you have to cut more boards to fit into door and windows. The board i'm using is a French product desinged for underfloor heating. Its EFISOL in 56mm thickness.

 

All in all it took about a day to lay the boards and then fit the insulation round the edge

 Next was the pipework. This was a kit off the internet and I have to say the quality of the kit was very good, a good branded kit, delivered next day and clear instructions. There are loads around but mine came from: http://www.theunderfloorheatingstore-onlineshop.com

 The kit comes with the manifold and all the tools to cut the pipe.

 Now ready for the screed..