The Bath is Finally installed

Spent a long weekend in Morzine with my eldest son. It was quite productive. We managed to finish the kitchen floor complete with tiles, we put in the bath which has been a long time coming and started on the wood panelling in the bedroom.

Thursday was Ascension day and a public holiday here in Switzerland. Nearly everybody decided to take Friday off as well for a long weekend. Surprisingly my sons teachers also decided to take a long weekend also. So I took him along with me to help out in Morzine.

My intention was to get the kitchen floor in, so that next weekend I can start the construction of the kitchen proper. In order to do this I needed tiles for the floor, these I was going to get from Bahaus, a big DIY shop here in Zurich. But (as usual) something went wrong and when I got there at about 18:00 on Wednesday evening they were closed, despite the signs assuring me they opened Monday to Friday 8:00 until 19:00. Apparently they forgot to mention that they close early on Wednesdays or maybe just Wednesdays before public holidays or maybe just Wednesdays before Richard wants to buy tiles, who knows? Anyway they were closed and so I was not going to get the tiles I had been looking at for weeks for my kitchen. Never mind Thursday was not public holiday in France (?) so the shops should still be open, maybe I can get some similar tiles there.

We arrived in Morzine at about 10 ish in the evening, set up home and went to bed. Thursday was big shopping day but first we had to unload the car. I had brought most of the rest of the kitchen and a big chop saw recently purchased in Zurich. The saw is more precisely called an "Sliding Compound Mitre saw" and looks a bit like this:


Basically a new toy! Shiny! The mitre saw Rob has lent me can not cut the wider tongue and groove planks I wanted for the Mezzanine floor so I decide to buy one myself. I will also need it do do the panelling on the out side of the chalet as this will be wide planks also.

That plus most of what was left of the kitchen apart from the fridge, oven and worktops was all unloaded and stacked in the chalet.
We drove down the valley to Thonon and loaded up with electrical and plumbing goodies for the kitchen and bathroom. No luck with the tiles and we had to get back to Morzine. So that afternoon Ohmri and I spent putting insulation in the kitchen floor, cutting around the many cables and running other cables through the false walls I put in last time, cables for lights and cables for power sockets. With all the insulation down I started the carry the sheets of 22mm chipboard up from the garage into the kitchen and lay them. So by the end of the evening we had a kitchen floor all ready for the tiles we did not have yet.

Friday morning and we drove down to Voiron's in the hope that they would have something like the tiles I wanted but no. So back down to Thonon and run around DIY shops until we arrived a Gedimat. Loads of tiles. I found something in my price range that looked a bit like the tiles I had wanted.
Got them and some adhesive. Right, back to the chalet to lay them. Figuring out where to start is not simple. All the books say start in the middle of the room and work out to the edges. Place the middle tile where the cuts will be even on both sides of the room. Well that's all well and good but I have a kitchen to go in on top of these tiles and nobody is going to see 2 of the edges so what's the point in spending ages getting all the cuts evenly all the way round. More to the point they will see the other two sides which will look strange with cuts along them. So discarding the books advice I tried to figure out where the tiles should go to give me full tiles down the two exposed sides and minimal cuts everywhere else. Laying the tiles was fine with Ohmri helping spread out the adhesive and putting the spacers in. We laid one pack of adhesive and quit for the day as we had no way of cutting the tiles and I did not want to mix up the second pack just to waste in. A barbecue in the evening sunshine finished a nice day.
I spent the evening building a frame and support for the bath. The bath which has been leaning up against a wall for months (well probably more like a year actually) has 5 of these spindly plastic adjustable legs under it that allows you to spend hours and hours adjusting them over and over again until you get so pissed off with them you just snap them off and place the bath on a couple of big blocks of timber (offcuts from the mezzanine beams) which works so much better and takes about 30 seconds to level up! A framework along the sides made of the framing timber which magically just happens to fit the gap between the bath and the rim and we are ready to go with the taps. But I will leave the plumbing until tomorrow.

Saturday and a quick visit to Voirons to get a tile cutting machine meant we could lay the last if the tiles ready for grouting Sunday morning. The few cuts we had to do should provide a few thin strips that will act as a skirting on the exposed edge against the wall.
We then started on the panelling in the bedroom but after a noisy hour or so of drilling and fixing the batons on the wall I fixed about a meter of planks on the wall only to realize 2 things. The batons were not deep enough for the light and plug sockets and that I had run out of gaine so I could not wire up the lights or plug sockets anyway! OK so abandon that project! I will have to take down the first meter or so of planks and double up the batons. This will allow the plugs and lights to fit better plus give me an easy way of getting the batons over the gaine that all over the wall.
So that left the bath. Turn off the water, cut through the hot and cold spurs weld on and extension and a screw threaded end. Screw on a long flexy pipe. Fix up a back board for the taps to fix too. This took me three attempts to get right. But finally I had the right combination of small hole to hold the pipe and big holes to allow the joint to do up tightly and enough room behind everything to allow the flexy pipe to actually flex rather than fold and the tap was in. The waste pipe was another nightmare. Plumbing seems to be all about how to get the most complicated tangle of pipes into the smallest least accessible space possible. I spent most of the afternoon fiddling about crammed between the toilet and the bath trying to tighten the plastic fittings on the waste pipe. Eventually it all seemed water tight, which is just as well as the main electricity distribution box is directly below the bath. Something that made me feel distinctly uneasy as I wallowed later that evening in several gallons of water.

Sunday was the last day and we had the grouting of the kitchen to do before we left. Ohmri and I worked quickly to grout all the gaps and clean up all the tiles and by 11:00 we had finished the floor all ready for next weekend and the placing of a few kitchen units!
Quick tidy up, pack the car and off home. Clean (for a change) and tired.

The Burping Builders Brother Builds

So my brother, Eddy came over to Switzerland to help me out for a week. He arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday we loaded up the car with half the kitchen that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so, and drove to the DIY shop. We bought some paint for the bedroom walls and some other bits and pieces and then set off for the chalet. We drove down to Morzine in the brilliant sunshine and arrived about 3 ish. We unloaded the car and set up home. Eddy and I got stuck straight in and started work on the steps.

We screwed timber to the edge of the steps and insulated the gap covering it all in chipboard. The concrete steps were not very even and needed to be levelled off on each step.


The next morning Eddy started in the drying room by plastering the plasterboard joints and filling the joints around all the walls.


Meanwhile I was upstairs at the top of the house fitting blue insulation in the salon. We shifted some of the sheets of 22mm chipboard up to the salon and started to fit the floor.

Stuck together and carefully kept about 10 to 15 mm from the walls of the chalet. The pieces were slotted into place after being chopped to fit with my jigsaw, (thanks Mum!)

Some time or other we did actually confirm that we are connected properly to the sewage. So pigs can actually fly after all! There are 2 manholes. One is just a soak away and is rightly connected to the down pipes of the gutters. The other is definitely a sewer (you can tell!) and
my toilet when flushed, empties into it!

On Monday morning we went to Viorons to order the timber for the mezzanine for Tuesday morning. We picked up a car load of insulation and wood with just enough room for Eddy to squeeze in behind. After Viorons and some food shopping we returned to the chalet and emptied the bedroom in order to get the floor in. We fitted the 40mm blue insulation onto the floor and cut it around the cables.

After the insulation we laid 19mm chipboard on to the floor. I have to be a little careful with the floor height as the balcony doors are at a set height as is the door I fitted. I have 70mm to play with and this needs to include the insulation the chipboard and the actual floor finish. So with 40mm of insulation and 19mm of chipboard I am up to 59mm leaving me a slim 11 mm! for the finish.
With the floor down the next job was to paint the walls. I had bought two types of "paint" for the walls, (you can see a tub in the photo above) It seems so long ago when I painted the test panels in this very room. Those test panels seemed to indicate that an undercoat made very little difference, but the paint had a slightly better finish if applied to a damp surface. Since then I had thought of another way of messing up the paint. I proposed to seal the surface of the concrete with PVA glue in water, and apply the paint to that. Seemed like a idea, so Eddy painted the walls with watered down glue while I finished off upstairs.

The tub of paint went on first and it was quite hard work. It goes on like plaster and has troweled on and troweled smooth. With Eddy slapping on the paint and me finishing the wall it took about three hours to empty the tub (25kg) and we had not done the entire wall! Well no matter we have another type of paint, this was a sack of powder I had to mix. It was 30 kg of powder and I reckoned it would make about the same amount of paint as the tub so into the now empty tub it went, problem, it made more than the tub! OK get another bucket mix the rest in that. Another problem was, once mixed, it was not white, it was grey! porridge coloured. Right, put it on the wall in the drying room Eddy has filled it and it was ready so on the paint went. It was a lot easier than the original tub of paint but it was still grey.

The bucket of extra paint was not needed so I dumped it, interestingly when I tipped it out it was white! This started me thinking maybe the bag of paint had settled and the pigment had settled to one end of the bag (that got mixed in the bucket) and the gravel and stones that make the texture had settled to the other end of the bag and had got mixed first. Well I had another bag but I definitely needed something bigger to mix it in.

So the next day was Tuesday and we were expecting the delivery from Viorons. I started work on the railings I needed to finish in order to complete the insulation in the salon and Eddy began work on the steps for the salon. Around 11 ish the delivery arrived. We unloaded the timber from the truck and I was a bit surprised at the size of the wood. On Monday we had bought 14 joist hangers each 60mm wide and ordered timber beams 60x160mm for the mezzanine. Voirons delivered 80x160 timber.
OK so I had to drive down to Voirons and change the 60's for 80's but no big deal.
When I got back we started work on the mezzanine.

2 temporary timbers screwed to either wall and the joist hangers bolted into the walls,

Slot the beams into the hangers and there it is.

(With Eddy sat on top)

Wednesday morning and Eddy was getting itchy feet, he desperately wanted to go walk up a mountain and he had come all the way here so who was I to stop him. He compromised on a walk down into town for supplies. He set out around 11 and I soon realized that by the time he got to town it would all be shut for the French 2 hour lunch break. Anyway while he was walking into town I started on the ceiling of the hallway.

Eddy got back about 2:30 and I had lit the fire as about 1 o'clock it had started snowing and I was a bit worried Eddy would come back soaked and freezing, well the fire warmed up the salon although Eddy got back warm and dry. I finished the tongue and groove on the ceiling.

Thursday and we decided to use the second bag of paint to finish the bedroom as well as building the two walls I wanted in the kitchen. The kitchen was first and we got started on the two walls

With the frames of the walls built, I decided not to skin the walls just yet as the electrics and plumbing need to go in. This can be done later and will not take 2 people so we moved onto painting the bedroom, for the third time. This time I had bought a big trough, big enough to mix all the paint in at one time in the hope that the paint would this time come out white rather than grey. Unfortunately it was still grey. Ah well I suppose it can all be painted anyway. The bagged stuff is about half the price of the tubs and is just about easier to put on the walls. I will have to check the budget to see how much I estimated for the walls and see if I can afford white paint as well or if the new colour scheme for the chalet is now "porridge"

Well we slapped in on the walls anyway. It went up quite well but there was not quite enough of it to finish the job.

The last thing we did was get all the horrible rock wool insulation Rob had dumped on me and cut it to fit the mezzanine beams.

By the end of the day the grey paint we had put up in the bedroom was beginning to dry and it seemed to me to be going paler (in places) so I still hold out a slim hope that it might be white when I return in May, but I think it will all need painting one way or another.

Friday morning and a quick tidy up (Eddy had tidied up most of the chalet the day of his walk into town) and we drove back to Zurich to a very welcome shower and Eddies plane home.

Thanks Eddy for your help it was a great few days and I really had fun. I might have been a bit obsessed at times but my excuse is that I know how much there is to do and how much time I need to spend doing it all. Thanks Siewling for the curry, it was really good.

All in all a very useful week, we got quite a lot done especially the mezzanine which would have been really difficult on my own. The salon floor is just about finished except for a piece around the fireplace, the salon railings have been started, the mezzanine structure is finished (the electrics need to go in and the floor on top). The kitchen walls are up, although not skinned but they are up. The bedroom floor is in and the walls are painted (three different colours but painted!) the bathroom floor has been relaid with 40 mm, three flights of stairs have been completed. The drying room wall has been painted and I have loads of timber to be getting on with.

So the plan is to return, evening of May 20th (Wednesday) for four days (leave on Sunday) and the list of jobs is as endless as ever but the main points would be (in no order)

• Plumb bath and shower
• Floor in bath room
• Fix small but annoying leaks in bathroom
• Tongue and groove the bedroom wall, with all the electrics
• Electrics in Kitchen
• Electrics in Mezzanine
• Electrics in Salon
• Studding for new bedroom and bathroom
• Doors everywhere
• Kitchen floor
• Kitchen units
• Hall Electrics
• Hall floor
• and on and on and on...