Running a Gite in Brittany

Plasterboarding finished upstairs

Finished, finished, finished. The plasterboarding upstairs is finished. What a relief.

Thats 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a couple of corridors/landings, stairs and of course ceilings for each room. It's taken over 130 sheets of plasterboard, 400 m². It seems to have taken forever, and I'm in no hurry to start again downstairs. The good news is all the doors and windows for each room are fitted, the first fit electrics are finished and it's now time to start plumbing in the bathrooms.

A few things I've learnt from plasterboarding :-

1. Square and level - Pay extra attention to getting floors, walls, ceiling, door frames etc. at 90^o and parallel and level. Big rectangular plasterboards fit much better into 'square holes'.
2. Good quality screws - Cheap plasterboard screws are a false economy. They don't pierce the metal studding easily and tend to tear the paper surface of the plasterboard making filling more time-consuming. Use the supplied screwdriver bit in the box of screws and chuck it away at then end of the box. Use a new one in the next box, suprisingly they do 'wear' and can cause the screw to wobble as it's driven it.
3. Buy a Surform - It's invaluable for shaving off very small amounts or removing the bumpy broken edge to give a clean sharp cut edge to the board. I've never had much joy with a Surform on wood, it's intended use, but for plasterboard it's excellent.
4. Don't be too exact - especially when working on your own. Cutting to the nearest centimeter is fine and allows a little room for maneuvor if the floor or ceiling is not quite level.
5. Chamfered edges - Keep the tapered edges of the board together and on external corners, keep the cut edges for the floor and internal corners. Filling the joints is easier.
6. Planning - Take into account the size of the plasterboard. Avoid walls just slightly longer than the width of a board, or a door positioned the width of a board plus a few centimeters from an edge so as to prevent very thin in-fill. The same for ceiling height, make it the length of a board + 1cm to allow for irregularities. Any gap will be covered by skirting board.

|   6:49:51 PM   Plasterboarding techniques hints and tips   

P&O launch cross-channel fare war

From BBC News

A cross-channel ferry operator has slashed ticket prices after admitting it needs to compete more fiercely with budget airlines.

Read full article...

Hopefully this should be good news for our business as the cost of the ferries has been increasing quite a bit over the last few years.

|   6:34:34 PM    P&O launch cross-channel fare war   

Trellis

The trellis work, that Caroline and I bought the other day, destined for between the two gites is up.Those funny white blobs in the photo and the white stuff on the ground is snow. Snow, cold wet snow. Not what I expected when I started, but once the concrete mixer is going, there's no going back.

When the digger man arrives to dig out the hole for the septic tank I am going to ask him to put the topsoil in the border around the bottom of the trellis. Should look good with some shrubs and flowers.

Time to relax with some home-made cider. A gift from a local farmer after Caroline helped fix his PC. Thank you virus writers :-).

|   8:21:03 PM   Trellis   

Two new goats

We are now the proud owners of three goats. The original goat, Polly, was left to us by the previous owners when we bought the house and gites. During the holidays the guests children used to feed and keep the goat occupied, however in the winter she gets a bit lonely without any company. Today Caroline collected a couple more goats from a gentlemen 40 minutes away who had a few too many. Two new companions. First impressions during the day indicate they are all getting along fine.

Of course we are now all wandering around singing High on a Hill with a lonely goat, the classic song by Rodgers and Hammerstein from the Sound of Music.

|   6:42:42 PM   Two new goats   

Hard landscaping

I've been on half-time this week, mainly because of school half-term and partly due to half-energy levels. A few days recuperation is most welcome. Most of my extra free time has been filled either with playing with the children or shopping for building supplies.

After bashing up the concrete ramp in front of the gites last week I've taken advantage of the better weather and concreted in a load of flower bed border edging pieces between the two gites. Caroline and I have bought some fencing which is going to divide the flower bed and give each gite a degree of privacy. Next major landscaping job is to edge the terrace area in front of each gite with granite sets and in-fill with paving or block pavers. Not sure yet.

Before the main influx of guests in April I would like to get the outside of the building finished. The sooner the better, as it then gives us some time to plant up new beds and window boxes etc.

 

|   2:14:43 PM   Hard landscaping   

Angling pour les Anglais

An article in todays Independent,

Buy a French lake and make it irresistible to fishermen. Ginetta Vedrickas looks at the dream and the reality

With fishing the UK's number one hobby, many anglers are combining their passion with their dream of moving to France. Waterside properties have always been popular but this new breed of buyer wants to turn their purchases into business ventures by running their own fishing lakes. As March sees the start of the fishing season, many others may be tempted to join them.

Read the full article http://money.independent.co.uk/property/homes/story.jsp?story=611384
|   10:30:47 AM   Angling pour les Anglais   

New Doors

The menusieres came today and installed the two new front doors in both gites.

I have been working alone for the last few days on the placo. I've been doing all the fiddly bits, over doors, round the veluxes, the window bays, etc. Lots and lots of small bits of plasterboard. I think all the in-filling is going to take longer than putting up all the main boards. The worst part is that as we approach the end of the placo upstairs it means there is going to be days and days with a spatula in hand filling all the joints and gaps.
It's got to the point upstairs that I carry a screwdriver round in my pocket so I don't get trapped in a room cos none of the doors have door handles yet.

|   10:06:11 PM   New Doors   

Gite Insurance

A recent posting on insurance cover for guests staying in a gite has been discussed here. The crux of the problem is that as a gite owner your insurance may not cover breakages and damage caused by guests staying in your gite. See the discussion for more detail.

On a related subject there is a useful article on setting up a business in France.

|   9:04:22 PM   Gite Insurance   

Re-test trackback feature of Radio. Link to Donovan Watts Trackback help page.
|   7:57:51 PM      

Placo, whacko and sticko.

It's been a few good days in the office this week. My office being the two gites across the courtyard.

Still putting up plasterboard, but we are getting a bit faster now. Most of the walls are new ones and so are straight and true which makes it much easier. I think we are going to run out of green placo - moisture resistant board - for the bathrooms. The shortage is because it's twice as heavy and twice the price of normal placo so I was very conservative in my estimates. Hopefully I should know when I finish the last en-suite next week.

By Tuesday afternoon, Ian and I found ourselves gazing out of our renovation cell looking at the sunny weather outside. It looked absolutely glorious. After lunch we decided that we needed some fresh air. Pick-axes and sledge hammers at the ready we attacked with gusto the old concrete ramp that lead up to the original barn entrance in the middle of the two gites. As part of the hard landscaping plan we wanted a large flower bed between the patios of each gite to give each a little privacy. Flowers don't grow in concrete, so whack, bash and break to smash up the ramp. It's very deceiving quite how much concrete is in a ramp. A tiring, but satisfying job done. Tick.

Wednesday followed a similar pattern, placo upstairs, sun shining outside. After lunch we needed another task we could complete and tick off the list. The placo just seems to go on and on at the moment. A little more hard landscaping allowed us to fit the patio door to the side of one of the gites. The two front doors are still on order. There was quite a bit of fiddling and angle grinding to get the concrete door sill level for the door. It's the first door we've fitted so we had to offer the door up 5 times before the final fix. It got heavier and heavier everytime we moved it. At last, 3 tubes of silicon around the frame to stick it in with a number of angle bracked screwed into the granite for belt and braces fixing. Stuck.

|   8:54:41 PM   Placo, whacko and sticko.   

Heinz Baked Beans

I admit it I've got a soft spot for Heinz Baked Beans.The baked bean supply in our red cross parcel from England has been exhausted and they are difficult to find over here. None of the local supermarkets stock Heinz, so unless I travel to the big city (scary) or pay mega bucks for special mail order shipments I'm going to have to get used to the local French brands. Or more accurately, local brand. The French seem to prefer haricot vert, as displayed by rows and rows of tins in the supermarket compared to a solitary row of Haricots Blancs Tomates, 'Baked Beans' or haricot beans in tomato sauce. The helpful cooking suggestion on the side of the tin is "bung 'em in a casserole". See what I mean.

I did try French Baked Beans a couple of times a few years ago but did not like them at all - hence the relience on Heinz. Our next vistors from the UK are not due for a while, and I don't think I can last that long without Heinz Baked Beans so I have decided to wean myself off one of my last dependencies on UK foodstuffs and take the plunge again; but with a slight modification.

Armed with a tin of Saint Eloi Haricots Blancs Tomates "Le choix de la qualité", the Internet, the contents of Caroline's larder and my taste buds, it was time to experiment. I won't bore you with all the permutations - especially if you have read this far - but I think I've cracked it. A recipe for Heinz Baked Beans.

Take some Saint Eloi beans, add a squirt of HP fruity brown sauce and half a teaspoon of sugar. That's it. They taste remarkably similar expect the beans are a little plumper and softer.

Now all I've got to do is find a supply of HP Fruity Brown Sauce :-)

|   7:34:01 PM   Heinz Baked Beans   

BeatrIX

While surfing around problem solving our new Windows XP computer I came across a round-up of Linux LiveCD distributions. Since leaving IT there hasn't been alot of time in my life to fiddle about with Linux/Unix. Just for old times sake (and before the old PC get pressed into being the kids games machine) I thought I'd give it a whirl. Read the reviews and settled on BeatrIX. To summarise, the LiveCD format is the whole operating system, Linux, plus loads of pre-installed applications all on a single CD that you just boot. No installation, nothing written to your hard-drive, just insert the CD and reboot. The whole thing just runs in memory once loaded.

I downloaded, burnt the CD, inserted and rebooted and hey presto Linux. I was surfing the 'net, reading Email and even using a clone of Microsoft Office in less time than it takes to install Windows XP. Most impressive.

The LiveCD concept could mean that you don't need to take a computer travelling, just take the BeatrIX LiveCD and pop it into any convenient computer. Store all your mail and documents on the web, take a USB memory key for local storage and your totally mobile.

|   11:32:54 PM   BeatrIX   

Spring in the air

I think Spring must have arrived in this part of Brittany.

The last couple of days have been really mild and there is a definite spring feel outside. The birds have started singing, the chickens are laying double quantity and our new male duck is getting very frisky with his goose 'mother'. I think the lighter evenings have kicked everything into gear.

Caroline and I have abandoned work inside for the last two days to take advantage of the weather. We been mowing lawns (which sadly revealed some serious hidden mole activity), painting fences, a bit of gardening and tidying.  Caroline has gone off to our local farmer - whose tractor lifted the plasterboard - to help milk his herd of cows. A bit of Ricard inside Caroline this evening and a pint of full fat milk on my cornflakes tomorrow.
|   8:46:21 PM   Spring in the air   

Plasterboarding

It's been three days of solid plasterboarding (plaque de plâtre or placo for short) and even though the piles of placo are getting smaller there still seems an awful lot to do. All of the outside walls upstairs are finished and most of the stairwell along with the start of some rooms leading off the top of the stairs. Caroline has been pointing the exposed stonework in the stairwells with a traditional lime mortar. With the placo in place round the stairwell it's looks really good.

The main problem has been the sloping ceilings and exposed trusses (beams) that are not square, parallel or regular, so just about every board so far has needed at least two or three cuts with slight trimming and adjustments. To make calculating all the angles a little easier we've made two large adjustable 'protractors', a couple of bits of wood about 60cm long bolted at the end with a wing nut. It means we can transfer the angle from the wall to the board easily and accurately; essential when you haven't got a known square or level edge.

One of the other things that slows you down is the constant attention to providing a good fixing point for things that are going to be attached to the walls. For example in the bathroom you need to calculate the position and height of the sink then adjust any uprights etc, and ensure that a strong batten is secured behind the wall to screw the sink into. You just keep stopping and starting all the time and lose the flow.

For all the walls we are using a metal studding system. On the ceiling and floor are screwed metal U shaped channels called rails. The vertical metal studs, montant, slide between the top and bottom rails and are placed loosley to allow for adjustment at 60cm intervals (a placo board is 1.2m wide). The placo is screwed via self-tapping screws into the montant and the rail securing everything. Insulation (bought as a roll 60cm wide) is simply slotted between the uprights.

In the photo you can see the montant and the rail with grey coiled electrical conduit (gaine) hanging down to be enclosed in the partition walls for some of the switches and sockets. The green placo (it's normally grey) is special moisture resistant for use in bathrooms etc.

All the internal doors you buy come with the frame already around the door ready for fitting. The frame has a rebate the width of the montant and it so just slots in. Fitting a door is simplicity itself. You just push one side of the frame up against a vertical montant, slide another up from the other side and then screw through the two montants into the door frame and as long as the montant is plumb it's finished.

Things should start to get much easier and quicker with the new internal walls because 'everything' is square, horizontal and vertical with the ceiling height engineered to be 2.5 meters high (the same as a plasterboard). Just a straight parallel cut on the board for the correct width.

I think we are going to be placo'ing for quite a few days yet.

|   9:53:34 PM   Plasterboarding