5 Electric days

Saturday
Arrived quite late in the afternoon as I had only left after lunch and had stopped in Bauhaus to get some bags of paint.

House was very quite and still. As the kitchen was empty and clean one of the first things I did was to rub down the worktops and apply a layer of oil. With any luck this will be absorbed by the morning and not be a problem

Sunday
after unloading the car, stacking the last 20 packs of flooring on the mezzanine, the 5 bags of paint down in the garage, setting a shelf up and all its shelfs, bathroom cabinet - (Modern bathroom cabinets are extremely expensive, especially if you want, as I do, to light the bathroom from the cabinet. How hard is it to make a cupboard with a mirror on the front and a big light on the top? Nobody seems to get this, its all tiny little specks of light or anything that might light more than the top of your head costs the earth. Anyway I had ranted about this to my long suffering wife and she had begun searching the Internet for bathroom cabinets. Having found a couple and won the auctions we bought these oldish cabinets for about 5 swiss francs, saving about 2 or 3 hundred in the process. I was bringing one of these cabinets to the chalet in the car) I went to visit Robs next property, "The Farm". Its a pretty large 200 hundred odd year old barn over a few rooms just down the road. He is renovating it or rather he has got some local talent to renovate it for him. They seem to be doing a pretty thorough job of mucking it up at the moment. They have gutted the building and dumped everything that was inside in a huge heap outside. Then they built a wall and put in a concrete floor, carefully demolishing the wall that was holding the roof up. The roof is now propped up on long tree trunks. It doesn't look all that safe to me. Rob is hopping mad as the builders haven't done what he asked and have done strange things like knock down walls and left huge chunks of valuable floor tiles (2m by 1m slate flooring slab) outside on the road. Then they have the balls to say that yes everything is fine and that there is no mess and the carpenters can start next week when clearly they can not. Anyway I took some pictures and had a long chat to Rob about how crap French builders where.

Getting back to the chalet I set to work on the kitchen. I was surprised to find that the oil of last night had not soaked in. This I shall take to be a good thing. I will take this to mean that the wood is now fairly sealed and more oil will not soak in. So I rubbed down the worktops and begin work on the plug sockets just above them.

I mark up where the plugs are wanted, drill through the chipboard with the hole saw and extend them into socket shaped holes with the jigsaw. Then reach in and fish about for the wires I put in all those months ago when the wall first went up. Praying that they are about the right length and that I marked the sockets in the right place and remembered where all the sockets were planned. Insert the yellow boxes and wire up the sockets. Screw down the frames and clip on the covers. Voila. Now all the sawdust and bits of plastic wiring and god knows what else is stuck to the work top in what remains of the oil I put on yesterday night. Lovely.

The hob is next. The cable clamp on the hob broke while I was wiring it up last time so I resolved to dump hot glue all over it to fix it down. This seems to work and after a bit of trimming of the worktops the hob is siliconed into position and weighted down with handy boxes of tiles which are quite useful as well as heavy.

I keep going and start screwing the worktop down, up and to the units. Sometimes this is with some special angle bracket but more satisfyingly its a big screw directly through the unit into the worktop. The second worktop (with the sink in it) butts up to the first (with the hob in it) I silicone this joint and screw down the second worktop, the third follows. The joint all round the back is then filled with silicone. Not sure how well this will stick as everything is covered with oil but it will be also covered with a tile splash back and masticed again so this is really overkill but then who wants there splash back to leak?

While messing about with the hob I had to empty the drawer underneath it and low and behold there was the fridge fittings. These fittings allow the fridge door to be fixed to the nice matching wooden door and slide properly when its opened. It was these fittings that we had mislaid and were trying to get replacements from Ikea. No need now! these are quickly fitted and the fridge is finally finished.

OK with the fridge done I start to think about the microwave.
One of the last times we were here I went out to climb a mountain and left my wife and youngest son on there own. My youngest also had climbing ambitions and decided to climb the kitchen units, no doubt having discovered that the lollipops where "hidden" in the top cupboard. He opened the drawers and using them like steps climbed up to where the oven should be, then seeing the microwave door handle he grabbed it and started to pull him self up. The microwave was not fixed in at the time and instead of Hari pulling himself up he pulled the microwave out and down on top of him. Microwaves are heavy. They are a lot heavier than they look (after all they are mostly a big space for putting things in so whats in there thats so heavy?)

Hari fell on the floor and the microwave fell just next to him, corner down, onto my new tiled floor. Something must have been right that day as Hari was basically unhurt the tiles were unbroken despite being hit by both small boy and heavy microwave. I returned to find a badly dented microwave and a tearful but grinning three year old sucking a lollipop. He had got his lollipop after all! We were just glad the microwave landed on the tiles rather than landing on Hari!

Well I wrote the microwave off and thought of getting a new one when I eventually buy the oven. But today I thought I would try it out just to see. So I carried it to the nearest plug and rather gingerly plugged it in. Its alive!! All the right lights came on and it turns on and bings. It looks like it still works. I am, frankly, quite surprised and have to start thinking how to fix the broken plastic front piece.

After an hour or so of patient bending and straightening and ample amounts of hot glue the rear metal corned is kind of corner shaped again and the front plastic trim is almost in the right place. I can slide it into position and wind up the screw that extends the arms that grip each side of the unit and prevent the microwave from surprising my son again.

I am a bit nervous about microwaves as they can be really nasty if not shielded properly but there is nothing missing or broken off from this one just a bit dented and the plastic trim is back in about the right place so I think it will be OK.

To finish off the day I start to wire up the ground level plug sockets in the fake wall. I get there position completely wrong and have to drill and cut several holes before I can get the gaine and cables in the right place so that everything reaches properly.


Monday
Monday means the shops are open so Monday morning means driving down to Thonon on the trail for bathroom heaters and a replacement toilet.

Can not find a suitable bathroom heater for less that 500 euros which is way out of my price range and the shop does not or will not sell me a single toilet with out the frame and mechanism behind it. It comes as a set! Well bugger that. I am not spending 200 euros for a 40 euro toilet! I will buy it Zürich and pray that it fits and all the holes line up! They probably will not and I will have to buy the bloody mechanism as well next time but for now I can hope that it will work.

So after a less that successful trip to Thonon I drove back.
The doorway into the kitchen has always presented a bit of a challenge. The concrete wall needed a fake wall skin built over it to allow lights and power into and around the kitchen and the big wooden pillar on the side of the door was another design problem. With a fake wall or skin on the concrete there would not be very much room between the pillar and the new wall. Too big to leave and make a feature out of but too small to do anything with. I resolved to cover both sides of this gap although I had not got to specifics on how I was going to do this covering.

This gap was the right place for the electrical switches for the lights in the kitchen and entrance and because of this, a large amount of wires and gaine came up in this space and were distributed across the kitchen or the mezzanine. It was now time to fit this switch properly.

The gap on the kitchen side would be filled simply by covering it with a plank of wood!
Simple is good.
The chalet had other ideas. The pillar, it seems is not actually vertical (a little worrying) It leans slightly out from the kitchen. The doorway, just to be contrary, is not vertical either but leans slightly into the kitchen. The combined difference at the top is about 3cm. After trying various ideas and thinking about how I would do this I opted for the simple approach. Get plank of wood and screw it into the pillar and the doorway with some big screws and make it fit with the hammer!

Simple it might be but it was actually quite effective. I cut a three socket hole in the plank and carefully threaded about seven gaine through the hole after another few hours trying to identify what the hell all these cables were from! There are about ten cables coming down/up/through in this small gap and although I knew what most of them were, there were two which I just could not figure out.

They came in right at the bottom so they ran under the floor, they did not run out to the snake pit and to the consumer unit and I could not think were else they were from. Well after an hour or so of head scratching and searching through tangled knots of cables I figured out these mystery cables were for the external lights. I confirmed this by stripping the ends of the wires and twisting them together then circuit testing the other end with a torch. Then to make sure, untwist the cables and check again. I confirmed that these two were the external lights and resolved to make better notes and labels next time.

Each of the gaines and cables need to be threaded up through the hole in the plank and then the plank was screwed to the wall covering the gap. I turned to power off before I started all this so I was a bit against the clock. I had to finish this and get the power back on before it got to dark to see! I wired the cables up to the three switches and then made sure the ends of the cables were safe especially the external lights. Then turned on the power. Low, let there be light! and it was good! I now had a light not only in the kitchen but in the entrance as well!

Later that evening I cleared the entrance and tried to figure out he best way of tiling the floor. I laid out about 2 packs of tiles in various trial runs but nothing seemed to go right and I stopped to get to bed.

Tuesday
Today was for filling the other side of the gap. This side would have the underfloor heating thermostat mounted on it and would have the underfloor heating wires running out at the bottom. This would be installed in two boxes. One high, for the thermostat and one low for the connections to the heating elements. As well as all the cables hidden in the gap I would now need the underfloor heating power cable, the thermostat temperature probe cable and a gaine to connect the two boxes together. Then the underfloor heating cables come up through more gaine into the connection box. All in all it was quite complicated and took a long time to sort everything out and get it all connected, but eventually the power was switched on and I watched with delight first as the LED display actually came on and did not burst into flames but showed all the right numbers and secondly as the LED display showed the temperature slowly, oh so slowly start to rise. I could also feel the floor of the dining room and kitchen start to warm up!

Nothing caught fire and nothing shorted out and the temperature was still slowly rising.
I leave the dining room heating up for the moment and start to think how the saloon underfloor heating is going to work. I originally figured the thermostat would sit in the concrete wall just above the stairs but now I have actually installed the dining room system I can see this would have problems. To a quick redesign and the heating wires can come in at the top of the stairs and the thermostat can still be above the stairs. Now I have to chase out for all the cables and boxes I need. Using my new angle grinder (the old one is still MIA) I cut down the sides with the diamond blade. Not as effective as I had hoped and it makes a lot of dust. After the sides have been cut I get to work with the breaker and break out the concrete enough to get the plastic gaine in. There is going to be a lot of cables in these boxes and a lot of connections to make I just hope a can get all the heating element wires up the few gaine I can actually fit into the box. I fix some temporary wooden battens across the holes to hold everything in place. I mix up some "deep crack filler" and carefully fill all the gaps fixing the gaine and boxes into position. That will have to be left overnight to set.

Tuesday evening I set out to tile the entrance floor. I laid out the tiles in what was the third dry run and finally had a layout that seemed OK, no really small cuts and fairly straight runs. So I started tiling. I should have known better. Despite laying out the tiles three times I still got the lines skewed. The concrete wall was not running straight and was needing slightly bigger cuts each time and when I got to the opposite corner the full tiles would no longer fit! Bugger. I had too many tiles down to try messing about and adjusting it all so I made do and squashed the tiles into the corner as best as they would fit. Not great but hopefully there will be a big cupboard over all this so no one should ever see it.

Well at 2:30 in the morning it was about as good as it was going to get so I went to bed.

Wednesday
Today was the day the electrician would come and have a look at my efforts. Today I would know if I was going to have Christmas in the chalet or not. But that was after lunch. Before lunch I played about with electrics in the saloon. I removed the batons from the wall as the plaster had now set. I rebuilt the dalek on the new fireplace cursing the fact that I had forgotten to tile the fireplace and that that would have to be done sometime but now the weather was getting cold I would need the dalek before I could tile it so it would have to wait.

Around 12 ish the electrician turned up and was given the grand tour. I don't think he was very impressed. He pointed out a couple of big problems. I have red wires coming up into my light fittings. This is a big no no. I have the earth and power in separate gaine for the hob and oven. This is a big no no. So before I do much more I need to rewire most of my lights, the hob and the oven. He gave my lots of advise on the consumer unit and what I needed there. But he big news was that with the amount of rewiring I needed to do I was not really going to be getting the inspection this year. I think I was a little optimistic anyway but then you have to be with this chalet, you have to be!

Well I was little depressed at the prospect of pulling all the lighting cables out and replacing the red wire with a black one. threading the wire through in the first place is a nightmare and thats when the gaine is not fixed in. Threading a new wire in with no room to maneuver will be terrible! I quickly disprove this by opening up the three way switch I installed on Monday, undo all the connections and pick out the entrance light which I now know has a wrong color cable in it. I attach black cable to the end of the red, earth to earth, blue to blue and wrap it all in insulation tape, then pull on the wires coming out at the light end. The wire moves through relatively easily and with a bit of encouragement I have replace the wires relatively quickly. The stairway light does not need it as it is a cable and the phase is brown wire. The entrance way external light goes relatively easily for 95% of its length only to snap just before I can reach it. OK don't panic, stop swearing about electric regulations, calm down. Fix it. If I drill through the wall, I can pull out the gaine and place a connection box there. So I do that and with some pushing and pulling and fiddling about it all seems to work and the wires are replaced. Next is the kitchen lights. One of the best things the electrician said I could do was that as long as the light fitting was fitted, I did not need these fiddly socket things. I can just fit the light directly to the cables, so I am not too fussed to get the sockets fitted back exactly right. So after a bit of pulling and squirming about the lights are all rewired and I just have to rewire the three way switch. All before it gets dark, again.

All the lights comeback on apart from the entrance light. A sinking feeling tells me the three way switch needs to be rewired again! Ah maybe not. I replace the bulb and we have lights again!

Using this new light I grout the entrance tiles and the few kitchen tiles I laid. I hope the kitchen floor is a bit more stable now it has few bolts in it . We shall see.

Thursday
Big tidy up. Sweep floors, get all tonnes of dust and rubbish off the floor. Wash the kitchen floor. I don't think black tiles were ideal choice. They will never be clean. They are impossible to get clean. You wash them but they dry dusty!

I try to tidy up all the tools and accumulated rubbish from the saloon as sometime soon We need to put the floor in and everything will have to be cleared for that.

My big clean up of the dining room has revealed a couple of problem areas with the laminate flooring. There are 2 corners that seem to stick up slightly. Not sure what caused this. Probably caused having to take the floor to bits and relaying it. Most Ikea stuff is like that. I think is works fine when you put it together the first time and it looks like you could just take it apart and rebuild it again. But just try it. The rebuilt cupboard or floor or whatever will never be the same it seems like the fixings are fix once do not re-fix.

Anyway after the big tidy up I packed the car and drove back towards Zürich. On my way I pass another DIY shop on the other side of Thonon. I had plenty of time so I stopped and had a look round. There in the sale was my ideal bathroom heaters! Well not quite ideal as they are only 750 Watts not the 1500 watts I thought I needed. But they are on sale and the sale ends today! great I have to buy them. So I do. I will fix these up next time.