Beading on the Barge Boards

Well I dont have a long holiday as yet and I dont have the money as yet, but I took four days roughing it in my chalet to see what could be done without spending any money.

Roughing it is right, there is no heating so dress up warm, there is no toilet so trips to the public lavatory in town need to planned! There is no kitchen so barbecue time! There is no running water but the river is pretty close. It was very primitive.
At least I had a bed and was warm enough during the night. It wasnt that cold it only got down to 13 degrees which is a bit chilly but not as cold as the night Rob and I spent in his chalet while we built his bathroom now that was cold minus 10 and all we had was one small blow heater! Anyway another story or perhaps one for Rob.

So build chalet but spend no money. Arrived on Wednesday night, just after it had got dark of course, I was planning on arriving while it was still light but got delayed at home and did not leave as planned. So its dark and I set up my bed and crash out for the night. I actually slept quite well and in the morning although a bit chilly went to town as usual. Shopping for some food and then back to decide what to do.

Basically the place was a mess, there was beer cans and wine bottles and rubbish everywhere, the garage was a tip ( I think Rob had been repairing something down there) so the first few hours I spent tidying up. Whilst clearing up i was thinking about the jobs I could do. Basically I had made a list of stuff that I could do with the stuff I knew I had already in the chalet. One of these jobs is to break a big hole in the wall. So I set to it and a couple of real dusty dirty hours later I had my hole.










This will allow the waste from the toilet and shower to flow out as the builders kindly forgot one of the connections. So this is where eventually the waste will go down through the floor and through the wall to the out let. In pipes of course!

OK I was covered in dust and rubble so lets try the river for washing. Stroll over the road and get down to the river. It was cold! straight of the mountain refreshing but still cold. I didnt want to use soap or pollute the river any more than I had to so a brisk scrub up and I was feeling good. Time for dinner.

Cooking dinner was a campfire in what I hope will one day be a garden of sorts, may be decking. My earlier clear up had provided lots opf wood so that burnt and burgers fried and were eaten. Then as it got dark I went to bed.

After a warm enough night I discovered it was raining, a situation due to last all day. At least it proved the varnishing work of the last few weekends was working because as you can see the rain was beading on the barge boards

This is a good thing it means that the varnish is protecting the wood! all that hard work was paying off!







Looking around a bit further I could see The white bits that the rollers had missed. In the corners and crevices the wood was still white.


Well its not a great picture but you might be able to see at all the angles the roller cant get in to the corners and the wood is still white.

Well there is nothing to be done now so ignore it for now maybe I can fix it later.


Well today was electric day I had been thinking about the bathroom and the bedroom and what they required and after a quick consultation of the book I knew I needed an extra plug socket in the bedroom. The other challenge was to sort out the lights for both the bathroom and the bedroom. In my enthusiasm for putting up walls I had forgotten to think about the electrics so I needed to sort them now. The bedroom was not too bad as only only side of plaster board was in so out comes all the insulation and then I realize I dont have a drill. Well I have an SDS drill for breaking concrete but nothing really for wood which I am going to need if I want to finish the electrics. Of course they are in Robs chalet but I dont have a key. After many text messages and phone calls I get Robs lovely property manager, who agrees to call round in a few hours and let me in. Meanwhile I drill through the timber with the SDS drill its messy and hard work but it works (kind of) I install the light in the bedroom and the switch, doubling the nu,ber of working light bulbs in the chalet! I also put in an extra plug socket remebering just in time to turn everything off before cutting the live cable to slice into the plug.

Wonderful I spent the afternoon switching the light on and off, on and off on and off like primitive mans first encounter with electricity!






Robs property manager called round and let me in. I grabbed an armfull of powertools and legged it back to my place. I am sure she thought I was stealing them all but never mind Rob knows where they are.

With the rain the barbecue was out so a cold dinner and bed hoping for better weather tomorrow

The morning dawned (Saturday) bright and clear. Right the bathroom lights, these will be provided by a bathroom cabinet fitting hung on the wall with integral florescent strip light, or thats the plan anyway. The light needs a swith so I need to cut a groove in my new plaster board wall and put a switch in. I dont have a switch so I will just cut a hole and fit the cable. Cutting the groove was quite easy so easy in fact I would consider it for some other electrics if I do the same thing again. For cable I was using the three individual strands of 1.5mm wire and it works really well at least with shorter pieces of gaine, dont bother with the horrible wire in the middle just pull that straight out. In fact I had no choice as little wire had dissapeared from one end but threading the three wires was not a problem. Put the wire filled gaine in the groove and fill the groove with plaster. Done.

Came out quite nice I think.

Right next was to relay the bathroom floor insulation to allow for the new cable and two others. The cable for the bathroom towel heater and a cable to get power to the lights for the other bedroom and the shower room.



Still with electrics on my mind I had turned up three more yellow boxes for embedding in walls these I fitted into the salon upstairs after cutting neat (ish) holes in the timber.

One more job today and that was another dusty one. Break a socket in the wall of the salon for plugs and probably the phone or TV cable. This was fine apart from the steel bars inside the concrete which took some cutting but nothing too difficult.










Well that was about it for Saturday and after another fine barbecue I went for a wash in the river. By this stage after three days of dusty work I was a bit grimy . I am not really bothered most of the time about personnel appearance but my hair was horrible it was dry and dusty and like twigs. I just had to wash my hair. Feeding the river just where you can go down to it is a big culvert nicknamed the hungry drain and this was flowing so standing under it I got what can only be described as a really cold shower! It did not do much for the state of my hair but I felt cleaner.

Sunday rolled round and I packed up and began the drive home. During the summer the mountain communities do all the major road repairs ands this results in diversions all over the place. I was on my third diversion which led eventually to the Col du Cobier. It wound though a few little villages one of whicvh was holding some market or festival or something. Anyway the whole of France had decided to go to this festival and had parked, as the french do, everywhere. All down the side of the narrow road leading up to and through the village there were cars parked. Soon enough we ground to a halt as cars coming the other way could not pass. Some cars turned around, some cars reversed back God only knows how far. But cars were backing up. This was the only route over the pass and once you are on it there is no way off. 2 hours of squeezing past cars and waiting for other cars to squeeze past me and I made it through the village to the clear road. Waiting just the other side of the village were 2 of the biggest camper vans, huge things that normally would have no problem getting through but today no chance. I pity them and the problems they had. It must have been horrible for them. After taht the trip home was not eventful.
I was looking forward to getting back and having a long hot bath.

Painting painting painting

OK so its been a while since I last posted anything but things have been happening. I have been trying to get lots of money from the bank which although agreed is taking forever. I had planned on taking a holiday and spending the money but with no money yet it has not been possible. So I have resorted to travelling down for the weekend and finishing off the painting.
This turned out to be slightly more epic than it should have been, after all I paid Mat to paint the chalet! Well that was a bit of a waste. Last weekend Rob and I painted all but a few square meters of the chalet and this weekend we did it again! So how did it take Mat a week to not paint the chalet even once!

We used a revolutionary new technique in house painting called "brush on a six foot stick" this allowed us to slap varnish on most everywhere. Even so we were at some points piling up blocks of insulation and furniture to reach some of the highest bits.
When I say slap on I do mean slap on. It is really hard to achieve an even finish when you are reaching up with a paintbrush at full extension trying to cover as much as possible without a) falling off what ever you are perched on and b) trying to avoid huge globs of varnish landing on you.

So by the end of last weekend we had clear varnished the place all over bar a small section on the front.

I came back this weekend to apply the second coat.
I was varnishing the house with a clear varnish that "retains the beauty of the wood" well thats fine and I was OK with the result but it was very bleached from its year in the sun and snow.
For the second coat I was in 2 minds as to what to use, whether to stick with the clear varnish that you cant see or go with a slight stain that you can. The clear varnish would have the problem of not knowing exactly what I had painted where as the coloured varnish meant I would have to paint the entire chalet or end up with a patchwork effect.

I went with the slight stain and am quite happy with the result.
This time we improved on the brush on a stick slightly by replacing the brush with a roller. The roller on a stick method is far more effective but cant get quite into all the nooks and crannies around the chalet and there are a lot of nooks and a lot or crannies!

The chalet certainly looks better for the couple of weekends it took to do it. All I need now is the lots of money from the bank and s long holiday to get some serious work done inside!