Two week Transformation (part 2)

This is the second post describing the second of the 2 weeks I have just spent in Morzine. I got up to Saturday, so on with Sunday...

Sunday and I was due to pick up my son from Geneva train station. He had just spent a week on a camp, had been home for a day then been put on a train on his own for Geneva. He was not fantastically happy about the situation and was a bit overwhelmed by the culture shock of coming from a noisy camp with 40 other kids to the quite of the chalet with nobody about. Well not quite nobody as Robs kids were there and he plays well with them. Still he was not himself for a few days while he sort of recovered. Anyway I picked him up from Geneva and drove back to Morzine arriving back just after lunch. Once back I started on the shower room. I wanted a toilet and basin as well as the shower and wanted to work out the best position. I thought the toilet would work against the external wall. These suspended toilets (I like them a lot) have about six bolts that hold the frame against the wall. These have to be marked and drilled all in the right position to get the toilet bowl at the right height to sit on, all relative to a floor that does not actually exist at the time. So it quite a fiddly process to set all the adjustments up mark the wall, remove the frame, drill the holes and bolt the frame to the wall. Well, this I did against the external wall.

The frame has 2 long bolts onto which the toilet slides and is bolted back to the frame. I slid the toilet bowl onto the bolts and then to get a look to see if it would work I stepped back towards the door. It was not going to work. It was too close to the shower and you would not be able to sit with your legs comfortably. OK it would have to be moved. Just as I was coming to this conclusion. The toilet bowl fell off! It must have heard me! There was a bit of a horrible crunch as it hit the concrete floor and I realized, as I jumped forward to save it, that it was broken. It had cracked.


So this shower room really did not want to get built. First the shower doors and now the toilet. Bugger! Well, the toilet (frame) was in the wrong place and it needed moving, so off come the bolts and I have to readjust the frame in its new position and redo the whole process. Here is the (blue) frame in its final (hopefully) position


With the toilet frame in position I looked at the basin. These I had bought from Zürich as I have had no luck at all finding a decent hand basin in France. I am sure they are available but just not in the few shops I have tried. Anyway I bought 2 basins from Zürich with us in the car. One was going to replace the basin in the first bathroom, the second was going in here. I installed the big bolts that hold in up and slid the basin on, (making sure this time to put a nut on the bolts so the basin could not fall off!) It looks too big and too low. Right thats it for today enough It's all going wrong. I am quitting for the day. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Monday morning was spent in town at the mayors offices. Some time last week Rob had found a letter with my name on it but his address stating that I had not paid my water bill and I would be disconnected on August the 17th! So Sharon (Robs partner) and I were in the mayors office to sort it out. Also we were able to sort out (maybe you never really know) the numbering issue. We were able to tell the lady in charge that I owned number 4325 and Rob owned 4225 and to which plot of land these numbers belonged. She diligently entered and changed things on her computer system so maybe we will all have the right addresses now. Anyway I paid my water bill which they had been sending to England, to an address about 3 addresses old. I guess it was probably my fault for not telling everyone where we live and when we change. You would have thought with the number of times I move and change address I would be quite good at it by now but I think it has the opposite effect.
Monday afternoon saw me painting. I mixed up a batch of porridge, and started by finishing off the second bedroom.
With the bedroom walls finished I moved out on to the landing and began to paint the pillar on the stairs. The porridge is really good at filling in the holes and bubbles left in the concrete and when smoothed off against the metal corner strengtheners it really looks quite nice.

Tuesday morning and Rob and I rescued his old trailer from the ditch in which it had been buried about 2 or three years ago. It was full of rubbish but it was in surprisingly good nick for lying in a ditch for three years. We jet washed the inside and bought a new plug for the lights, put Robs new number plate on it and we were off. Down town to get me some more chipboard. We returned with 10 sheets of chip board strapped down to the trailer. Very good first trip. Now all I need is a tow bar on my car and I could make full use of it.
I set to work using up the chip board by fitting the floor in the shower. To do this I had to finish up the electrics and carve all the blue insulation around the cables then fit the chipboard into the floor. It certainly tidies up the place when its down. No more snaking cables and pipes all over the place.
My wife was due back tomorrow and I wanted to get the entrance floored out with chipboard too. We ate with Rob and his family and over dinner I removed my wedding ring as my fingers were swelling and it was beginning to hurt me. So I removed my wedding ring and wore it on my little finger as a pinky ring. It was a bit loose but I thought "I will put it somewhere safe when I get back" Rrrriiiigghhhhtttt. So there I am with Robs help laying the chipboard for the entrance floor. Rob showed me his patent method for stopping the chipboard from moving about - put a bloody big bolt through the chipboard, through the insulation and into the concrete. Fix the bolt in the concrete and tighten the whole lot down. Then grind of the top of the bolt and leave just a sliver of nut to hold it. Tile over this. Interesting but it looks like a lot of work. I will bear it in mind for the awkward bits that keep bouncing. Anyway around midnight we finished the chipboard and went to bed. As I retired for the night I noticed the inevitable, my ring had disappeared. F***K **@@/((()='*** (good job my son was asleep!) My wife is going to kill me! I will have to tear up the floor to find it all that work for nothing. Arragggggghhh.
After a look around the floor, down all the cracks and crannies I could not see it so I thought I would leave the ripping up of the floor until Wednesday.


Wednesday and when I got up out of bed I went to put on my trousers and ping my wedding ring rolled out across the floor. Oh thank God for that. I dont have to rip up the floor. How did it get there? I will not question how or what put it there but just accept that I have found it now and am saved from some horrible and embarrassing explanations not to mention ripping up the floor. I spent most of Wednesday tidying up the house and hoovering all the dust and concrete bits and rubbish that seems to accumulate when ever I leave a room for more than a few moments. That evening I collected my wife and youngest from Geneva.

Thursday was spent putting in the landing floor between the bedrooms and laying the chipboard in the bathroom. The blue insulation on the landing was a nightmare. In other rooms I had tried hard to keep the cables in a regular shapes but the landing was a mess there were cables all over it going in all different directions. This made cutting the blue insulation very tricky. The 19mm chipboard went down on top and mad it all so much better. My wife and I cleared out all my stuff from the second bedroom and moved the double bed in. We had our own room! The boys would stay in the first bedroom in the bunk beds cos they really like the bunk beds.

Friday and we took the boys out most of the day to a rope park were we exhausted ourselves climbing about on wire ropes and cargo nets high up in the trees. Friday night saw me fixing a few metal corner strengtheners on in preparation for painting the walls. My wife then suggested that we should get on with the mezzanine floor. OK lets do that. So Midnight finds us cutting and hammering away at the mezzanine floor, which the next morning looked a bit like this


Saturday morning and I asked Rob for his help again. This time I wanted to borrow an Acro prop. He had a couple in his newest property "The Farm" and I needed something to replace the tiny piece of wood that was in effect holding up me entire chalet and that was disintegrating. This is a picture of the piece of wood a year ago


That was a year ago and it was cracked and basically the wood had failed. The block of wood was supposed to be about 50mm (5 cm or 2 inches) square but now the block had been squashed to about 30mm or just over an inch high. This was effecting the entire roof. If you look at the picture of the mezzanine the big vertical wooden column to the left of the coffee cup, this holds up half the roof. Between that column and the concrete was this small piece of slowly disintegrating wood. It really had to be changed. It was a major error on the part of the builder in my opinion and it should never have been left as it was. In my thoughts this job could go 2 ways. It would either be quite easy and we would position the prop under the beam wind up the prop. Prop the roof up about 20mm and replace the wood with something else. Alternatively we would try to wind the prop up and nothing would move. If that happened than I would have to deal with it as it was. Fortunately someone was smiling on us that day as the prop was wound up the roof moved, well the column lifted. It lifted enough to get the old piece of wood out and replace it with a handy slab of stone which was ideally suited and just the right size.
Here is Rob jacking up the house


and here is the replacement chalet support. You can see the old piece of wood on top of the beam


That afternoon I used the last bag of porridge paint to paint the landing and one wall of the entrance. It makes such a difference and really tidies up the bare concrete.


Sunday was spent doing a bit of tidying up and packing before we left.

All in all a very good two weeks I did not do half of what I wanted to do but then that is the way of it I suppose. Next time I must get to grips with tiling the stairs and landing.

That should be fun.

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