It's all a pipe dream...

 

Happy New Year to you all! I have great expectations for 2021, hopefully it won’t be as dreary as a Dickins novel (sorry Christine).

The build up to Christmas here, was, as usual, peppered with days of diabolical DIY.

We had to dig a trench from the house to the bottom of the garden, we needed to lay a waterpipe and some plastic tubing, in which we will eventually put electrical cable. The chooks might need a heater!

We started the trench by hand, but it soon became apparent that some mechanical help would save our aching backs. The soil here is brilliant, no clay in sight, but we’d had a lot of wet weather and digging was heavy going.

As you can see, we had a way to go…

Cue Gary’s Handy Digger (I feel that the machine has earned its capital letter status).

Armed with a mini bucket, Simon commenced the trench digging.

We had a good run really, only one boulder surfaced.

‘Get that on the sack barrow’ Simon yelled, with a hopeful shout

He needs to work on his humour…

 

This picture belies the true nature of the green pipe. Here it lies, looking calm, relaxed and unruffled. Not so, ladies and gentlemen, the real story is without photos, as I fear they would be too distressing.

Although there is a short video clip

The pipe had the tenacity of a greased boa constrictor crossed with some Christmas tree lights that had been bundled into their box last year by a recalcitrant teenager.

 We wrestled the pipe out of its circular shape, which it was clearly much happier being in than a straight line, whilst trying to avoid the backlash of it trying to whip us round the head when we least expected it.

Still, it occupied an hour, and kept us warm, burnt off a few calories…

Who am I trying to kid, it was bloody hard work and I’ve decided that groundwork is not really my cup of tea. So at least we’ve got that established.

Here’s the trench, you’d barely know that the ground had been disturbed.

My arms, by the time we had finished back filling it though, were completely useless, they had the consistency of cooked spaghetti.

Now that we had finished that job, we had a slight dilemma (well Si did, I’m quite capable of doing nothing).

It was around the second week in December, France was in semi lockdown and about to go into a curfew from 6am to 8pm. We had no idea whether we would be able to have visitors over, for the Christmas holidays, BUT…Simon had nothing left to do….!! Do we start a new project or don’t we?

 

This is not a circumstance that anyone would like to find themselves in, let alone during confinement, in a small hamlet, in the middle of rural France.

‘We need to find out if anyone’s coming’ I implored ‘Because if they aren’t you can crack on with the downstairs bathroom and toilet’ I suggested encouragingly.

Well, flights were cancelled, the Eurostar was extortionate and the UK was about to descend into another lockdown.

We were disappointed that our nearest and dearest couldn’t make it but, silver linings…at least Simon wasn’t about to turn into the most annoying person on the planet.

First things first, the small window in the little lobby next to the toilet and bathroom needed replacing.

Here’s the original, single paned glass, with a grimy film over it to obscure the view. Subsequently it was freezing in this little lobby and every morning, especially since the start of the cold weather, it was running with condensation.

Simon took the old window out, they just lift off their hinges here, as do the doors. And then we paint stripped and sanded down the old frame. It’s a hardwood frame, which we wanted to keep, but had been painted an attractive beige colour, and so we thought that rather than pull it out of the stonework, we’d leave it in and Simon could fit the entire new window in the old frame.

This worked really well and without the usual and now expected disasters and swearing.

The new window was slightly smaller than the aperture and so Simon built it up with some treated hardwood.

The next job on the list was to lower the ceilings in the lobby, toilet and bathroom. They were really high and we had fitted a large radiator in the bathroom but it was struggling to keep the rooms warm. We thought that less room to heat would be a better option.

Note the concentration on Simon’s face…. he’s not contemplating the fate of the chandelier, just how on earth he can cover up that fuse box but enable continued access to it?

We found the answer in some tongue and groove ceiling panels plus a handy ready-made access panel.

He’d have to batten out the walls first though, the panels would need something to attach to.

Note the electrically challenged light fitting…this is why, up until now we have put up with this crystal monstrosity.

In the meantime, as the work area was in a very confined space, and Simon didn’t have need of my myriad of carpentry skills, I set about experimenting in the kitchen.

 

As my faithful readers will know, I had trialled making my own cream cheese, which turned out unexpectedly well, and with the festive season looming, I thought I would try a no-bake cheesecake.

An internet search and I soon found Nigella’s Nutella Cheesecake. Now, while I love Nigella, I don’t like Nutella, mainly because it’s choc full of palm oil, so, a quick trip to my local Netto and voilà!

Plus, it’s half the price.

It was surprisingly easy to make, just cream cheese, icing sugar and pâte à tartiner aux noisettes (not made with palm oil and the fate of orangutans on my conscience) and half a pack of digestives, which I found in the cupboard.

It was delicious. I can say this as, apart from the first slice, Simon declined anymore of my fabulous dessert in favour of some mint choc chip ice-cream, his new favourite, also from Netto.

If anyone wants the recipe, here’s the link.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/nutella-cheesecake

Don’t use Nutella though…

It was now the Sunday before Christmas and Simon had a surprise request from Thierry our neighbour.

Would he like to dress up as Santa and deliver the presents to the local children?

Obviously, Simon is very shy and retiring, the thought of being centre stage was awful to him…. needless to say, he jumped at the chance.

With 2020 being slightly disrupted, Santa’s usual delivery system was not going to work so, dressed appropriately and with a hessian sack full of presents Santa Simon alighted onto, not a sleigh pulled by reindeer, but a Peugeot Boxer van, I know, it’s slightly unusual but it’s been that kind of year.

We drove up to the mayor’s offices to the hamlet’s Christmas tree and waited for the children to show up.

We heard them coming up the road before we saw them. Three little girls, sisters, running up the road, full pelt, until they saw Père Noël!

They stopped dead when they saw him, they couldn’t quite believe their eyes!

 

It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.

We travelled to the next hamlet and Simon, still completely in character, bestowed more gifts to local children.

The village children had written some letters to Père Noël, which they gave to him. They were quite amazed that he spoke faltering French, but Thierry explained to them that he was from Lapland and that was why he had a funny accent.

With his festive duties complete, and the local children in possession of their cadeaux, Simon de-robed his costume and re-adorned himself with the usual DIY attire, shorts, braces and a woolly hat.

 

The following day we cracked on with the bathroom renovations.

Whilst Simon was sorting out the ceilings, I started chiselling the tiles off of the walls. It wasn’t very difficult, domino-like, they couldn’t wait to fall off.

The wallpaper, on the other hand, had been affixed to the walls with superglue, I think…

Luckily for me, when Simon saw the state of the walls after the tiles came off, more undulations than a topography map, he decided that he would batten out the walls and board it with hydro plasterboard so that he had a waterproof and flat surface to start tiling to.

As you can see in the picture above, there was a single-paned window in this room, which was constantly running with condensation, especially since the radiator had been fitted. We also discovered, that the air vent in the bathroom and the toilet had been blocked up by the previous owner. Not sure why…although unblocking them didn’t prove too difficult as they had just been occluded by the insert from a box of chocolates! Yes, you did just read that right.

Anyway, we decided that an air vent wouldn’t be enough to remove the steam from showers or the odour from the toilet…I’ll leave that part to your imagination.

We had purchased an extractor fan unit that connected the toilet and bathroom light switches. This could be fitted into the room above the bathroom.

The shutter that you can see, behind the satellite dish is the only entry point into this room, the two windows below are the toilet lobby and bathroom. There is no internal door. It’s roughly about the same size as our en suite but completely uninhabitable. My Dad thinks that as we had a bread oven to the rear of this room that it was probably used for storing grain for the bread.

I’ve taken to calling it The Room of Requirement, Potter fans will know what I’m alluding to.

As there was already two holes, one in each ceiling of the toilet and bathroom, it was quite an easy fix to attach the connector hoses to the pipes already in place.

I had to climb to the top of the ladder for this shot, I hope you lot appreciate my dedication…

So, with the extractor fan in place, connected and working, most of the tiles removed and the realisation that we would be bereft of visitors over Christmas, we decided that there was no time like the present to completely rip out the vanity unit (that is said very tongue in cheek) and the shower cubicle.

Two days before Christmas.

See what I mean…

We wrestled the top part, with mirror attached, off of the main unit and revealed some fantastic workmanship.

Here’s a close up of the electrical connection, the shaving socket didn’t have the earth wire connected!

Not sure what the brown tape was for?

Before we go any further, I just want to check that you’re not eating anything whilst reading this?

Or have a hangover, feeling a bit queasy? Ok, we’ll carry on…

We pulled the remainder of the unit out from wall and…

 

I know…

This is an old waste pipe that hadn’t been capped. Subsequently some gunk had spewed out onto the floor, under the unit. We have no idea how long this has been like this, although we now do know what and where the smell was coming from…

Next, it was the turn of the shower. We lobbed the cubicle screens out of the back door, to join the rest of the squalid junk.

Another delightful find of filth, damp and generally puke inducing grime. 

We had, in our haste to remove it, inadvertently snapped the waste pipe very close to the floor.

Of course, it had been set into the concrete with copious amounts of expanding foam. This was a godsend, as Simon was able to dig out around it and generally do something technical and fit a new pipe.

I would, at this point, apologise to anyone who has had to shower in this room. It will be sterile and fabulous next time you see it in person.

As my plumbing services weren’t required, I set about making some Christmas fare.

As mincemeat doesn’t exist in France, our good friend Jan had been busy making her own, she kindly donated a jar to me and I set about making pastry…

Not really…where France falls down in the mincemeat department it more than makes up for it in ready-made pastry. Every conceivable type is available, so it would be rude not to make full use of it.

They have lovely sausage meat too which needed no tinkering with to make sure it tasted delicious. Unlike the sausage meat of the hooves and lips variety readily found in Tesco.

I didn’t make too many, not having the usual hordes of Barney, Taylor and Rhys showing up to inhale them.

The next day was Christmas Day and we didn’t do any work! We did wake up to a sprinkling of the white stuff though.

We had a lovely day, we managed to facetime all the kids and my dad on the same call, I didn’t have to wander around with a dustbin bag cleaning up after anyone and dinner was a slightly tipsy later than normal affair.

We took advantage of the non-existence of Boxing Day in France and set off to do more DIY shopping.

Monday morning, we were back, hard at work, at the coal face and the battening out of the walls commenced.

 

We’ve bought tiles for the floors and walls in the bathroom so their decoration was decided. The toilet had some white tiles already in place, and to be fair, they weren’t in bad condition. I just felt that they were cold looking and not very inspiring.

So, I whipped them off.

Simon was working his way round the walls with the battening.

The next job was to change the bathroom window for a double glazed one.

He’s so happy in his work!

Looking much better with the added comfort of keeping the heat in.

Window replacement is not really something I can help with and so in a bid to continue on our self-sufficient expedition I started researching how to preserve garlic.

Garlic is something I didn’t grow last year and we use loads of it. Unless it’s harvested, dried and stored properly it doesn’t last ages and the bulbs that you can buy in the shops have a limited shelf life.

I had been reading about fermenting vegetables with whey, and had already had some success with red cabbage, and as I had about a pint of whey stored in the fridge left over from the cream cheese making, I wondered whether it could be done with garlic. Well apparently, it can!

Following these instructions

https://australianworkingmama.com/lactofermented-garlic/

It’s pretty simple, and the plus is that you have ready to eat garlic which is much easier for you to digest, at any time. 

Here’s my jar, gently fizzing away. I’ll let you all know if it also keeps vampires at bay…

Clearly, Simon hadn’t been idle or messing about with stinky vegetables but had been very constructive and done this…

This is the corner where the shower will go. With the old waste pipe removed, a new one fitted and concreted in he was ready to build a wooden frame for the shower base to sit on.

 

This has to be exactly level, not just because of drainage but because the shower tray is made of slate and if it was a millimetre out anywhere, when we stand on it there’s a chance it could crack.

This is where Si’s laser leveller comes into its own. As we have already found out, the house isn’t square in any way, shape or form.

In place and level…phew

Please note, the holes in the plasterboard are not for decoration.

After Simon fitted the double-glazed window, we were still getting condensation on the window in the mornings. This was strange because we thought that with the installation of the new window that problem would have disappeared. The radiator was keeping the room nice and warm and we had a new extractor fan fitted, even though currently we weren’t using the room for showers, so we weren’t making any steam…

Then we saw a damp patch on the new plasterboard.

Eureka! Realisation hit us.

The exterior of this wall was the one that hadn’t had a gutter on it since the house had been built. Simon and Steve had fitted one in June, and despite the Summer heat, we have still had copious amounts of rain and this part of the house receives very little in the way of sunshine. The granite stones had soaked up a lot of water in their time and because the bathroom had been tiled, floor and walls, plus the air vent blocked, the water had seeped up to the back of the tiles but not been able to get any further…until now.

We took off all the remaining tiles that we could and chipped away the old plaster. This didn’t really prove too difficult as it was like putty. Underneath all this, covering the original stone were terracotta bricks, which are porous and allow the stones to breath.

These stone houses were built without foundations, damp proof courses or any waterproofing materials. But they are not damp and don’t smell damp, even in the Bat Cave there is no smell of damp, but after a week’s worth of rain about 2 inches of water pools in its lowest level, and then it dries out again.

Ventilation is key.

The outside wall is not now getting soaked as it has guttering above it and we dug a trench along the bottom of the wall and filled it with stones so it could soak away. So, we know that it’s not getting any wetter from the outside.

We stationed an electric radiator in the room, as well as the central heating radiator being on, and left the extractor fan on to get rid of the now humid air that was being made in the room.

Meanwhile, Simon worked on building the airing cupboard and supports for the shower area.

This will be the airing cupboard, with an open top, a louvre door and a radiator at the rear.

It’s starting to take shape.

I’m going to leave the blog here for now…I’ve rambled on enough.

We’ll be back though, with a completed shower room and hopefully a new roof!