Running a Gite and Renovating in Brittany

New electric and water supplies

Both the electric board, EDF, and the water board, SAUR, arrived this week to do their jobs. I asked EDF to move the current electric meter from the wall next to the fireplace into the laundry room next to the kitchen. The lounge wall with the meter on it is going to be left as exposed stone. The guys moved the meter ok but with much huffing and puffing about drilling through the wall and fixing the new meter. Everything just seemed to be a hassle for them. Maybe they were having a bad day ? They also fitted a box outside, I assume with various extra control bits for cheap rate electric and remote meter reading. Once they had gone I just roughly connected up the supply to my new fuse box with some spare cable to give me light and power for coffee etc.

With the old meter gone it meant I could pressure wash the stone work to clean it up ready for pointing. The large white bit in the prior photo is where the old meter was 'stuck' to the wall with white 'cement'. I think it's come up really well, and should look great once it's pointed up. It certainly helped a great deal that Debbie spent a day or so scraping out the mud and old pointing from between all the stones. When I pressure washed the faces of the stones there was an awful lot of muddy water spraying around and without cleaning out the joints beforehand I don't think it would have got as clean.

SAUR also came to supply the second house with a new water supply and meter. They came and dug holes either side of the road then must have had some sort of tunneling machine to feed the new supply under the road, cos the road surface remained intact. I missed this part of the operation because the guys came, did their job without fuss. I've just got to connect my side up to their meter.

brittany renovation

|   5:29:48 PM   New electric and water supplies   

New doorstep and staircase opening

Two main jobs this week, increasing the size of the opening for the staircase and building a door step.

As I mentioned before I've got two pieces of granite from a broken mantlepiece. I did consider using them as external door steps but neither piece was really long enough. The sill of the side door from the lounge is about 20cm about finished floor height, so why not use the granite inside. It should tie together the stone walls and complete the picture. Each piece of granite had to be cut to length. I used an angle grinder with a diamond blade to cut around all four sides then a couple of whacks with a coal chisel and lump hammer saw the two pieces part company.

The idea here is to remove the broken ends of each piece then butt up the clean original outside edges in the center of a new step. The cut ends will be pointed in.

In order to get the levels right it did require some excavation under the door. A bit of hard core, sand, plastic membrane, then mortar to lay the granite blocks on. Positioning the blocks was really really difficult. We couldn't get our hands round the blocks and anyway they were just too heavy. After quite a bit of shuffling the blocks were in and positioned and level, but too low! The mortar shifted around, squeezed out and mucked everything up.

It was a tough decision, but it would have annoyed me every night, so out came the whole lot. The mortar dug out, more hard core and packing and second attempt. This time it went much smoother. We used a technique of aligning the blocks on a plank then rolling them onto the bed of mortar. It worked much better than trying to lift and shuffle.

The new opening for the stairs was necessary in order to fit a standard 'off-the-peg' hardwood two quarter turn staircase. I've choosen the staircase I like and it required a 180cm square opening. The current opening was too narrow. I could have had a staircase made to measure but that doubles the price of the stairs, so a bit of elbow grease was required.

The cross beam (the one with the ladder on it) needed removing and moving back about 30cm to ensure the hole was large enough. Because the cross beam was buried about 40cm into the wall the only option I really had was to cut off the tenons to remove the old beam. With the other beams supported by acro-props the cross beams could be wiggled free. The existing beams cut where short and new tenons made at the beam ends to fit into the cross beam mortices which where then pegged with new oak pegs. These seasoned oak beams are like cutting concrete and I've completely trashed a couple of panel saws hacking away.

Re-using the existing cross beam meant I didn't have the extra length to remake the tenon and I certainly didn't fancy cutting a new mortice so I cheated and got some 14mm steel bar and just drilled right though the beam and into the end grain of the cross beam. A couple of 'pegs' and it's rock solid.

You can just see above the blue clamp some shuttering where the hole has been filled from the old cross beam position. The horizontal acro-prop is just there to ensure the cross beam was pushed up tight.

|   8:03:09 PM   New doorstep and staircase opening   

Breton Fireplace renovation

In between renovating the fireplace I've also been sorting out some other little jobs, like digging trenches in the house to get the water supply to the correct place and digging more tenches to lay the soil pipes so I could install a temporary 'coffee station' with running water and a waste supply. I was getting a bit fed up with only having an outside tap and no sink. Because you are not allowed to use 90 degree bends on horizontal runs of waste pipe it is necessary to pass through a wall at a 45 degree angle. When the walls are over half-a-meter thick it needs a big hole. I guess the rule is to help prevent blockages in soil pipes buried under floors etc.

Anyway back to the fireplace. The photo above showing the original fireplace was taken just after I bought the house before sandblasting the beams. Not very attractive. After stripping back all the plaster and removing the breeze block and various in-fill I was left with a shell of the original fireplace. It's not very clear but in the photo there are two stone 'shoulders' about 1m50 off the floor. On these shoulders used to rest two oak supports for the mantelpiece. They protude into the room about 20cm and also extend back into the wall about 50cm. The weight of the wall on the rear of the supports and the lever effect would have supported the original mantelpiece.

I knew they used to be wooden, probably oak, supports because when I dug into the wall there where the remains of the old rotten timber.

From some spare oak I had left over from the windows and created two new supports and fashioned a traditional rounded end to the section that protrudes into the room. These were cemented into place and the stonework above reconstructed to lock the supports into place.

For the hearth of the fireplace I decided to dig down a little to lay a plastic membrane and cast a concrete base for the new stone hearth. It was a bit of a suprise and a real disappointment but under the floor I found two very large pieces of granite. Once pulled out it was obviously the original mantlepiece broken into two halves. A real shame. I can only guess the timber supports must have rotted away and the granite mantlepiece fell and broke.

Almost the last piece of the puzzle was to fit a new mantlepiece. I decided to use an oak beam 20cm by 20cm rather than granite. Partly cost and partly because it fitted in better with the beams above and the wooden supports.

The beam is shown resting on the new supports and just awaiting some infill above from the top of the mantelpiece to the ceiling.

Whilst all this has been going on Debbie has been slaving away raking out all the mud and clay between the stonework and cleaning up all the stones with a nylon brush. It's a bit of a time-consuming soul destroying job, but once it gets pointed up it should look fab.

BTW - The electric meter is being moved into the laundry room off the kitchen.

brittany renovation

|   6:25:36 PM   Breton Fireplace renovation   

Bits and bobs

With a few days off for Christmas and New Year I've been mainly doing just a few little jobs here and there. You know, all those ten minute tasks that end up taking all day that you put off and off until they start to bug you too much and they just have to be finished.

Before I do much more upstairs with the insulation I need to decide what floor finish I want upstairs. Floorboards, tiles, laminate ? I can't really start building the walls etc until I've got a plan for the floor.

With those decisions still pending I've made a start on renovating the old fireplace downstairs. If I get it done fairly soon it will stop the icy wind coming down the chimney and I can fit a wood burner to keep me a little warmer during February and March. The original fireplace had been partially bricked up and 're-modelled' with breeze blocks. In order to try to return it back to it's original Breton style I've had to rip out the breeze block and recreate the oak supports for the mantlepiece. It looked like they had rotted away and the holes also bricked up.

Once I get a little further with the uncovering I should be able to post some photos of the old fireplace and some of the renovation work which hopefully should be much clearer.

|   8:21:27 PM   Bits and bobs