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...