Café Clements is open!

 

A big bonjour to family and friends!

It has been a while since I’ve had the time to sit and tap away at the keyboard, we’ve been completely flat out building the kitchen from the ceiling down, keep reading, I’ll explain further.

Let me assist you to wind your memories back to the start of September. We had replaced the window with a door and had just brought our friend’s digger back to help us start digging out the footings for the extension.

Simon took the knackered old shutters off the wall and pointed up the brickwork and generally made it look lovely.

He bordered it with some hardwood as it will, eventually, be an internal door, from the kitchen into the extension, or as we need to start calling it the Puppy Palace. You see, the entire reason Simon is building an extension is so I can have a dog!

Unfortunately, Simon is horribly allergic to animal hair, dogs, cats, horses, llamas, anything with fur really, and so we have never really been able to have a pet of our own. This is horrible for me as I grew up on a small holding and we had a total menagerie, and I miss them terribly. But with the advent of our new life, here in France we decided that we might be able to incorporate a canine companion into our lives.

An extension, which will have the capacity to be very nearly open-aired in the summer, and one of these new-fangled fancy air purifiers, and we might well be able to manage it. The dog(s!) will only be able to go into the extension and kitchen, no further into the house, which should stop a great deal of the allergic reaction, and because of the outside nature of our lives here, that should minimise it too.

Keep your fingers crossed everyone, or Simon will be sleeping in the barn.

Anyway, getting back to the nitty gritty, we had a digger and Simon couldn’t wait to get started on using it. But first he had to mark out where the footings were going to be.

This was much more technical than it looks. It’s not just spraying yellow paint in a big rectangle you know. I had to learn to use a dumpy level! This is a clever little machine that allows you to check measurements are in line and level. It also allows us to work out what the floor level of the extension will be.

Obviously, now I’m a qualified surveyor I’ll be expecting my own Hi-Viz jacket.

Measuring done, Simon could hop onto the digger and start!

I’ll give you, it’s not the most exciting part of a build, but a necessary one.

The next job was to shore up the sides of the footings, ready for the concrete.

Luckily, our friend Steve was more than happy to help Simon with the shovelling, mixing and pouring of the concrete.

I was dreadfully disappointed not to be able to help with this fabulous job, as you can imagine and consoled my self with gathering in the harvest from the veggie patch.

Cantaloupe melons, cartloads of courgettes and tonnes of tomatoes…and the pièce de resistance…

A massive! Watermelon!!

With the footings done, Simon could get on with attaching the structural timbers to the house.

He drilled holes at intervals into the timbers and then proceeded to try and hoist them into position.

This was easier said than done.

Can you see the ratchet strap hanging out of the little window? Guess who got to hang onto the end of that?

Simon was up the ladder trying to fix the wood into place while I hung onto the timber. It was so long it was impossible to hold in place and put the bolts in at the same time.

 

This is clearly an ‘after’ picture. He’s smiling, not swearing.

With this part complete we sped off to our local wood yard to give Monsieur Pascal the cutting list for the oak we needed for the extension’s frame.

Unable to do anymore on the outside of the house, we turned our attention to…. the kitchen.

When we moved into the house, we soon realised that there were some rooms which would need a great deal more renovating than others. We were foolishly, it transpired, hopeful that the kitchen would be one of the easier rooms.

It had a flat ceiling, plastered walls and a ceramic tiled floor. Fairly simple then to install a kitchen and just decorate…voila!

No.

Our starting point was the ceiling. Upon closer examination, it was papered in some sort of herringbone pattern anaglypta type paper. Not really our cup of tea. It was also sporting a splendid fluorescent tube light. Nice.

Simon suggested that we get a plasterer in to skim it and we would quickly have a nice flat ceiling to work with.

This didn’t really go as he’d hoped. Upon telling the plasterer that the ceiling was papered, he informed Simon that the paper would have to come off, and to add insult to injury, if the wallpaper pulled the plaster paper off then he wouldn’t be able to skim it at all.

We decided to check on how well the paper came off. Foiled again.

Simon finally accepted that he would actually have to plasterboard the ceiling and set about in search of the joists, so he could baton out the ceiling as a frame work for the plasterboard.

Can you see the row of holes that he made with the drill? Horizontally and vertically. He didn’t hit a joist at all!!

Where were they?

After drilling more holes in the ceiling than your average sieve we finally discovered what the mystery was.

We had a suspended ceiling.

The tradition around these parts is to use terracotta panels suspended from the joists. They are used to reduce the volume of air to be cooled or heated.

We considered, for around 30 seconds, smashing the entire ceiling out and exposing the original joists. And if we didn’t have to live in the house while we doing this, then maybe we could have. But the thought of the funk of forty thousand years falling down around our ears was enough to put the kibosh on that idea.

Trouble was, we now had a conundrum. Terracotta panels are heavy, and they’re already suspended on the joists, with plasterboard attached to them. Did we really want to add a load more weight to them with more plasterboard? What to do? We needed a lightweight answer.

This came in the form of plywood. Light, smooth, easy to paint and without the horrible dusty sanding down component of plasterboard.

But first Simon had to make a wooden frame to fit it on.

The small wooden bits in the centre of the bays are to attach the plywood in the middle to stop it bowing.

Simon also took the opportunity of replacing the fluorescent tube light with a normal ceiling rose at this point, although we still hadn’t decided on the final lighting solution for the kitchen.

The plywood was so much lighter and easier to put up than plasterboard. The ceiling came together quite quickly once we got going.

A couple of coats of paint later and we had a flat, lightweight ceiling.

Obviously, we had joints that needed filling…. or sneakily covered with some handmade joists made by Mr Clements, but we’ll come back to that.

So, ceiling problem solved, we now confronted the next challenge. Although the room looked square and straight, we weren’t being fooled that easily!

We had to make the kitchen cupboards and put them into place so we could see exactly how they would fit against the…you guessed it…not square walls.

This mock up would also allow us to see where we thought we needed plug sockets and other mundane, yet important, features. A blank room is not as easy to plan as you might think.

Please note the following, very rare picture. A man reading instructions.

With the cupboard’s positions marked out, we could start to baton out the walls ready for panelling.

It also allowed us to see where the electrical supply would run. We commandeered the help of Carlos again to run a cable powerful enough for the cooker and he replaced our fuse box, which, in his opinion, was ‘ancien’.

Simon has been making full use of Google Translate and kindly wrote his electrical requests for Carlos in Spanish on the wall….it must have made sense…everything works.

As this room was going to be a working kitchen, we also needed a water supply. Luckily, the room that is currently the kitchen is right next to this one, and the water supply just a wall thickness away…oh dear, not again. Why does he look slightly manic?

Hole drilled, merely 700mm thickness of interior wall. It wasn’t noisy at all and I’m sure the resident mice all have donned mini ear defenders and are planning their revenge.

We had finally made a decision on what lights we wanted in the kitchen. In my opinion, lighting is hideously overpriced and so we scoured eBay and found some cheaper alternatives that winged their way to us.

But first we had to put the ceiling joists in place so that we could fit the lights.

We went for industrial looking lights, two, inch and a half BSP copper gas fittings.

Whilst this hive of activity was happening inside the house, I was outside renovating a couple of interior doors.

As you know, one of Simon’s favourite jobs is door fitting, and with the previous dire, door debacle imprinted clearly on our minds, refurbishing something that we already had seemed prudent, and also money saving!

One of the doors in this room had already had the ‘Libby’ treatment and been turned into a marvellous chalkboard menu. We had a new glass door, which had replaced the window. So now what to do with the two remaining doors.

Both the same, hardwood, mahogany coloured, cracked and dirty glass paned.

First thing to do was to get the beading and the old glass out.

Then I had to hammer and chisel off all the old putty from the frames.

Once that was done, a quick going over with the sander and they could be painted. 

I just had to pop this picture in here. Obviously the original beading around the panes of glass in the two doors had to be taken off. These are one set of replacement beading for one door. These needed painting individually, 132 of them in total.

I’ve had better jobs.

I also had the task of sanding down and painting the welsh dresser that we had brought with us from England. This was another eBay bargain, an old pine dresser that had seen better days.

Armed with a screwdriver and some elbow grease, I removed the old handles, door knobs and cupboard doors, ready for transformation.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen Simon had been putting the doors on the cupboards and fixing them into place.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen Simon had been putting the doors on the cupboards and fixing them into place.

He had also been panelling like a man possessed!

And doing Popeye impressions…spot the difference

  

We also had a handy sink and the poshest tap I’ve ever had!

With the doors and dresser painted I could start giving the panelling a first coat. White emulsion mixed with water not only goes on quickly but is saves money. French paint is notoriously expensive, roughly 2.5 litres is around €45.00. With 25m² to cover we didn’t really want to spend over €100 on paint by having to do two coats of the pricey stuff.

In the meantime, we had received an email from Monsieur Pascal to say our oak for the extension was ready. Simon had an interesting idea to do with the kitchen and so we added just a little extra wood to the trailer. It was only 3 tonnes.

The journey home was a slow and careful drive!

Without further ado Simon descended into the Batcave to start making an oak surround and mantle for the cooker.

Here he comes, after hours down there…..good job he’d had company.

Fixing it into place took some engineering ingenuity and making sure that the extractor fan hood fitted snuggly into the top of it took some carpentry skills. Not bad for a welder.

 

Here it is, with the sides panelled, ready for a coat of paint.

The inside, boarded out and the cooker hood in place.

We had deliberated over what tiles to use for the sides and back wall of the cooker surround. Finally, we decided on pale grey metro tiles with black grouting.

Simon boxed in above the mantel to hide the extractor fan and pipe.

We were nearly ready to start hanging the refurbished doors and laying the floor.

Did I mention I had to paint 132 little sticks of beading! 

 

Two coats on each one….

Simon had two days’ worth of back ache to contend with, courtesy of laying the wooden floor planks and I took our kitchen table outside (not single-handedly) and gave it a sand down and general facelift.

This will be the table’s fourth reincarnation. It originally belonged to Simon’s brother, who, after a few years lime washed it. The table then came to our house and I sanded the lime wash off one sunny Easter bank holiday weekend. Now it lives in France and is being sanded again, it might have to be the last time, it’ll disappear to nothing if I keep on.

So, the floor was complete, and we were ready to move in!

We’re just waiting on some shelf brackets to arrive in La Poste so we can put up a shelf either side of the cooker. The wire you can see is for some under shelf lighting.

So, Café Clements is now open for family and friends! Now, if this corona virus could kindly bugger off, we would love to see you all!

And you’ll be glad to know he’s cracking on with the Puppy Palace.