Floors and Fireplace

Spent the weekend in Morzine. Drove the family down on Friday arriving about 10 ish.
Determined to do some electrics this week end and try and move the next two bedrooms along. Saturday morning and I was fixing the door frame up on bedroom number four hammering in big nails when instead of hammering the nail I hammered my left index finger. Full on smashed it! Oh my! painful.
It is two days later and its all gone black and swollen to twice its size and is still totally agonizing when ever I bang it against anything.

Any way with this slight handicap I finished the door frame and started on the underfloor electrics for bedroom 3. One handed electrics!

I wanted to start on the tiles in the entrance and in order to do this I was going to use Robs idea of bolting the floor down where ever it moved. So I drilled the holes put the bolts in, tightened up the bolts fixing the floor down. It worked very well but the next phase is to grind off all but a sliver of the nut so it can be tiled over. OK I need the grinder. I cant find the grinder, somehow it must be in Robs chalet locked away out of my reach. So now I have these bolts sticking up out of the floor about 5 cm just right for catching feet o, right in the entrance to the house and whats more they stick up so far I cant actually get the door open past them! I have to go out via the ground floor bedroom and round to see if I can get into Robs chalet and locate the grinder. Well I cant get to where I need to be. But I still have a door that will not open. In the end I get a metal blade for the jig saw and slice off as much as I can with that which although leaving a fairly lethal spike in the floor at least the door opens now! Ok this is not going to work so I wrap up the ends of the bolts and tell the family really clearly to avoid them. This pretty much guarantees that one of them will stub or spike them selves on them by the end oif the weekend.
My wife suggests that we do the dining room floor. Right. Underfloor heating and laminate flooring. What could go wrong? Well remarkably little actually.
We cleared the room and laid down the black foam underlay for the heating.

This we nailed down to the chipboard to keep it from rolling around. Next we taped down the heating elements. Not quite in the recommended pattern as the kitchen breakfast bar had moved forward by about half a meter meaning the heating elements would no longer fit sideways. We hastily improvised and laid them long ways leaving one left over which I will put in the entrance under the tiles. (good job I had not done the tiles today!)

Then comes the laminate

 

Each section needs to tapped into place and every other section I would bash my finger so the laminate proceeded slowly across the floor as the air filled with blue swear words. The floor was 5cm bigger than two sections of laminate which meant both ends needed to be cut.

All the wires for the heating elements have to be routed back to the thermostat and the temperature sensor needs placing in the floor but it all went quite well 

So well in fact that my wife insisted that we do our bedroom the next day.
The bedroom does not have any underfloor heating so the laminate so it went down onto the thin (3mm) white foam underlay.

 

Then the laminate on top, bit better sized this time not quite so many cuts.

 

 Again the flooring proceeded across the floor accompanied by much swearing and cursing as I bumped and knocked my finger.  My wife was amazing and ended up doing most (if not all) the hammering.

Monday morning and before we left I wanted to get the fireplace finished so the floor up in the salon could be thought about. So I dissembled the dalek and moved it off to one side, then constructed a wooden frame and filled it with broken tiles from the garden where I seem to have a huge supply.

 

Then mix up four bags of morter and spread out

 This will have tiles on it and then I will put the dalek back on top.

We all signed the slab, packed up the car and drove home. 

Mail From Morzine

Arrived Friday night for a quick weekend visit determined to get a lot done. I had a list, I was on my own, no interruptions, I was going to get a load of stuff done. This new determination arises as a result of inviting my brother and his family to the chalet for Christmas. My mum is invited too (although as I haven't actually talked to her about this, she is on holiday, she may well read this before we talk, well, Hello Mum, Your invited to the chalet for Christmas. Let me know if you want to come!) My sister will be invited as well but unfortunately if she decides to come she and her family will have to stay elsewhere as my brother has three kids I have 2 and with my mum makes 10 people in a chalet that officially sleeps 6/7! My sisters family would be another four which we just don't have room for. Maybe Robs chaet is available, I will have to ask.

Anyway I figured I had about 15 weekends before Christmas which didn't sound to many and with all the work ahead of me I thought I needed to get cracking. In order to have all these people here I need the electrics all certified and I need that done soon. Hopefully I can get Robs electrician to fix this up for me.

So Saturday morning and before the traditional trip down to the DIY shop in Morzine to fetch the required gear.  I had to unload the car. 20 packs of laminate flooring, about 250 kg and that is only half of what I need had to come out of the car and be stacked in the salon. When I finally made it down to Voiron's I managed to get a letter box. Arrived back and started work on the third and fourth bedroom doors.
I fixed the uprights to either side of the doorway after extensive calculations and determining the gap between the uprights should be just enough for the door frame, only to discover that the timber is not exactly the desired dimensions. 50 by 70 mm timber when rough sawn is only nominally that size it varies. It varies quite a lot, so much so that my careful calculations were completely useless. The door frame would not fit.

Shiny toys to the rescue. Rob had brought with him from the UK a new electric planer, just the job. It took a while to get the hang of the thing and figure out just how to get the best out of it. You have to apply most of the pressure at the front of the plane and it really helps if you go with the grain and don't use the silly shavings collection bag. It just gets full very quickly, as it is far too small, and this somehow stops the plane planing off any more wood. It took a couple of hours of some quite hard work to get the timber down to the right size and ready for the frames. as well as reducing the size I had to chop out notches for the hinges and at the top for the fixings that keep the frame square. Once the frame would fit I had to pad out all the edges with plaster board which is pretty easy, just nail up the board then run the hand saw down the frame to trim the edge. Glue up the frame and glue the uprights then slide the frame in. Fix the other side of the frame together and slide that into the frame. Make suer its all squashed in together as far as it will go and the frame touches the paster board all around then brace:

While that was setting I was looking at the door next door. After having to mess about with the plane I was a bit more careful with this side and quickly spotted there was not enough room for the uprights on this side either! I only had 40 mm to play with so that meant either cutting down a 50 by 70 plank or getting 40mm some other way. I ended up taking 2 strips of 19mm chipboard and gluing them together and gluing that to the wall. Brace it off and let it set. Then i would hang the frame on that.

While I was waiting for this to dry I was thinking about the stairway tiles. I was on my own which was a perfect opportunity to do the steps as only I would be walking and I would be the only one to blame if I stepped on the wet tiles. I started to figure out what I would need.

Rob invited me to dinner and before I could really start we were eating freshly caught trout from the trout farm down the road caught and killed that very morning, They were delicious. Anyway after the meal, Rob went to put his kids to bed and I started on the step tiling, I thought I would just do the risers and leave the treads for another day but when Rob turned up after about an hour we progressed on to do the whole thing. About 2 in the morning we had all the tiles for the first flight of steps cut (all except one) and Rob, who was driving back to the UK the next day, decided he had to get some sleep. So about an hour and a half later I had fixed all the bits on the steps and left them to clean up.

Sunday morning and a bit of grouting later:

Not bad but took ages to do.

Sunday was also the day I out the post box up.

And finally got round to putting up my official number. Well, not actually the number I thought I was. I received, via Rob another number!

 

4215? where does that come from? Now, last time we were here we told the mayor of Morzine that Rob owned 4235 and I owned 4225. So where does 4215 come into this? There is a rumor that these numbers are supposed to be the distance from the mayor of Morzine's office in the square, but this is not strictly true as many places the numbers do not run in sequence. Anyhow its a bit weird and How I ended up with 4215 I dont know. I somehow do not think this is the last we shall hear of this. So I putthe new number on the house:

I also found out that the huge bill I got last weekend was for tax Froncier and tax habitation . The habitation part I should not be paying so I will write to them and explain and ask for some money back!

Floored by the tax bill

Saturday and I went to buy the floor, the laminate flooring that will finish the salon, dining and bedrooms. Overall I need 100 square meters of this stuff which turns out to be 42 packs! So I am in Ikea (yes I know ikea but they sell some good flooring that is pretty cheap) and I need another double bed so I buy that then down to the ground floor to get the flooring, 42 packs is never going to fit in my car with food shopping and the bed and then I notice the carts have a 130 kg limit on them. Each pack weighs 14kg so 10 packs will put me over and ten packs is about all I am going to be able to push and fit in the car. Right 10 packs it is I will have to come back for the rest in a couple of more trips. Well I loaded up the car and it was full so I am glad I did not push it. Anyway I got home and there was a letter waiting. Unfortunately the episode in the mayors office last time has started something unpleasent. It means the French tax people have figured out where I live! So now I get a letter demanding payment or they will stop my bank account and freeze my assets the whole none yards - this is the first I have heard of this bill - presumably someone is Swindon has been getting wierd letters from France demading money for a while now! Any way I will have to pay this or bad things will happen. I will try to talk to them on Monday and prevent them stopping my bank or anything silly so I can see them next Saturday to sort it out.

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.

If you want to receive an email when ever this blog is updated please leave a comment and I will include you in my mailing list.

Two week Transformation (part 1)

Just returned from 2 weeks "holiday" at the chalet. 2 Weeks of hard work building. 2 weeks turning what was really a building site into something livable.
We arrived on Saturday evening and installed our selves.
Priorities were set and established. A kitchen sink and the shower were at the top of these priorities, but it being Sunday and both of these activities required the purchase of stuff we made do with placing the dining room floor. This meant I had to complete all the electrics in the kitchen and dining room before the patchwork of blue insulation could be laid around the cables and have green 22mm chipboard laid on top of it. Sunday night at 1 am (Monday morning) We had a dining room floor.


Covers up the snake pit nicely!

Monday and after a trip down to Voiron's I return to plumb the sink in with what I thought was 8 meters of 40mm diameter waste pipe. This is to carry the waste water from the sink along under the kitchen units then down into what will be the second bathroom and connect into the drain. Easy thing to buy you would think and it should be. I went to the shop requested 8m of 40mm waste pipe in my best French and it was understood (a minor miracle in its self) and I was pointed at a formidable rack of grey pipes that presumably contained my pipe. OK. The rack it turns out contains every diameter of grey waste pipe known to man and several unknown bits and pieces. Well 40mm is 40mm how hard can it be? I spent a literally a 10 minutes trying to decide which pipe was the correct one knowing that I would almost certainly choose the wrong one. Most of the pipes could be ignored as they were obviously too big or too small and it came down to a choice of three, 40mm external diameter (yes I had a tape measure with me) 40 mm internal diameter and some other pipe that said it was 40mm but I couldn't measure 40mm anywhere, 35 internal and 37/8 external, anyway there was not much of this strange pipe around so I chose the 40mm internal diameter pipe on the basis that there was a lot of it and it looked about right (?) Of course when I got this back to the chalet and compared it to a piece of real 40mm pipe I knew I should have chosen the 40mm external diameter! Fine! I knew this would happen I can return it and swap it for some correct pipe. Only fly in that ointment was that this pipe comes in 6 meter lengths and in order to get it into the car I had to saw up a 6 meter length into 3, 2 meter bits and then with great care I had actually hunted about to find a 2(ish) meter length of this stupid wrong pipe to make up to 8 meters. Anyway I was unsure how they would take back there 8 meters pipes when it was in 4 pieces!.

Well it would have to wait until tomorrow, today I had plumbing to do. I had to get the hot and cold water from one side of the chalet to the other. From the "hot room" across the ceiling to under the shower room (through a concrete beam on the way)
Of course for this I would need copper pipe and this morning Voiron's had had none so I scoured Morzine for 16mm copper pipe, I scrounged up about 5, 2 meter lengths of pipe (i needed at least 8) from about three different shops. Right these all have to be soldered up together and taken through a stud wall and a concrete beam to get to the right place.


Through the beam and to the taps...


Then on with the plastic pipe, through the wall, through what will be the second bathroom...


and up into the kitchen under the fridge, round under all the kitchen units and up into the taps


Now the waste has to reverse that journey via a U bend under the kitchen units down into the second bathroom and into the drain.

All this took me until Tuesday to finish, but Siew Ling was very happy with her kitchen as it now had hot and cold running water (like all good kitchens should have!)
Voiron's very gracefully accepted the 4 bits of pipe and allowed me to take another 4 bits of the correct pipe, they also found a few more copper pipes in the back somewhere that I needed.

So running a little late with the list of priorities, Wednesday saw me started on completion of the shower. Wednesday saw the first real disaster (of the whole build really) I was constructing the shower door assembly and holding one of the glass panels when all of a sudden it turned with a snap, from a glass panel into a pile of windscreen glass


I don't really know what happened just it went from one solid piece to thousands of pieces in a split second for no apparent reason, other than I was holding it.
Well this was pretty bad news the 300 Euro shower was pretty much junk now and I was rather annoyed.

Thursday and I went at the studding around the shower and the bedroom. This went well, and despite the last minute change to on suite the door frames all went in well.


Sound insulation and plaster board


Having finally done this piece of studding I could finish the other side of this wall and plater board the section between the two bedrooms. (sorry no photo)

Electrics in the walls takes forever, setting in the lights and plugs and heating cables demands constant thoughts about what is going where and what will be connected to what. The radiator in the second bedroom in wired in and connected up as is the power socket and then the cable runs up to power the entrance plugs. (Slightly unconventional but something I forgot when we floored the dining room) Still it is still within the 8 plug sockets allowed on one line of 2.5mm cable, 3 in each bedroom, one on the landing and one in the entrance makes 8.

Thursday saw blue insulation go down in the entrance and then the afternoon was spent with the family.

Friday was a trip down to Geneva to drop Siew Ling and Hari off at the train station (Ohmri was at camp this week) and on the way back stop off at Thonon to see what they can do about my shower doors.Nothing it appears. I bought it too long ago so they cannot replace it and the one single shower they have of that model (now reduced from 299 to 199) is for sale fully assembled! I cant get it back even if I buy a completely new shower. Well just below the assembled showroom shower is a set of doors that might just fit. I will have them! 199 euros! bugger. This shower that was pretty cheap just got pretty expensive! That afternoon I fitted the new doors together and with Robs help (he turned up with the family on Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday?) The new doors were fitted.


They look OK and apart from some fiddling about with the tops of the old shower they work quite well. I was able to have my first shower and the shower works really well. (thank heavens)

Saturday and I cleared out the second bedroom, swept and hoovered then put the 40mm blue insulation down followed by the last of the 19mm chipboard. I need another 20 odd bits to finish the rest. Then I painted 2 of the walls of the bedroom with the porridge paint from Zürich. Which is not as porridge as it looks. It seems to dry quite white. White enough to probably not need to be painted.

Thats it for now I will continue with the next week in the next post.

One Of Those Days

Another weekend with the family down at the chalet.

On Friday evening, just as we left I had stopped in the big DIY superstore here in Zürich and bought some lovely door handles and before we went to bed we fitted these. They are solid aluminum and sculpted just a little. They feel wonderful and solid and make the doors really look finished.

This time I was concentrating on the plumbing. I need to get water to the shower and the kitchen. This means bringing the water across the chalet, up in to the shower, along through the second bathroom and then up into the kitchen. I was pretty sure I was not going to get all of it done but if I could sort out the fiddly bits then the main runs would be that much easier. The main "fiddly bit" was bringing the pipes up into the shower and splitting them off for the basin, toilet and shower. I wanted to be able to seal off sections of the plumbing without turning the whole house off, so I installed taps in the ceiling of the store room at the bottom of the stairs.

You can also see in the photo the waste water for the shower room, which I need just one more bit to finish. Isn't that always the case!
The pipes then come through the floor by the wall and up into the shower. It rapidly turned into "one of those days", nothing was going to go right. Joints would not solder, pipes would not fit, every second hole I drilled into the concrete would hit re-bar half way in. Well, with these days the only thing to do is to continue on and work though it.

So it was unsurprising when I realized I did not have nearly enough pipe to finish and that the pipes I had fit for the shower supply way to high and it would have to be changed.

Eventually, sometime after dinner the remaining pipes I had were all in place.
Next time I just need to take the run across the ceiling and in to the hot room to connect it up. The kitchen will run from the second set of taps through the wall and second bathroom, up into the kitchen along under the units and finally up in to the tap by the sink. This run I intend to do in plastic, if I can figure out the easiest way to join my copper to plastic and the plastic to the kitchen.

After running out of pipe I set to work on the stud walls between the shower and the bedroom and in the full "nothing is going to go right" spirit I determined that there was not enough room for the shower door!

I had spent a long time umming and ahhing about whether to have on suite bathrooms or not, this bathroom shower was the perfect example. It could go either way. I decided that if I was going to have a nice shower then it should really be available to everybody and not just the one bedroom. So I had decided against on suite, although I was told that on suite is basically worth more in both the rental terms and final selling price.

Anyway it turns out there was not a decision to make anyway. There is not enough room for the door so the shower will be on suite! Anyway I ran out of wood pretty quick as the studding really soaks it up.

Looks like I need another delivery!

Saturday night saw us in the kitchen again fixing some of the remaining doors and handles. The fridge door was my main target but I quickly discovered that that there was a box of bits missing. The important bits that connect the fridge door to the unit door!

OK they must be here somewhere, but we could not find them at all. I suppose it is possible they got chucked out with all the polystyrene or cardboard last weekend but I think thats unlikely. More likely they are just hiding under something waiting until I have gone out and spent more time and money to get replacements then they will reveal them selves and laugh at me (OK they wont actually laugh, but you know what I mean)

OK so no fridge door.

Sunday saw me trying to put some of the finish on the top stairs. I had decided to clad the stair way hole in timber and leave it for a while, in the meantime the timber would enable me to paint the walls and finish the rest off while I waited for inspiration about the hole.
Using the new miter saw and cutting some fancy angles into the timbers, I clad out some of the hole and with my eldest sons help we screwed it to the sides.

OK time to go. Never enough time to do very much on a weekend visit like this. I will get more done next week. I am staying for 2 weeks.

So a big push to get "finished" or at least not quite as deadly as it is at the moment where one wrong move will trip you over or pull wires out of sockets or flood the electrics with water or any number of other horrible things. Especially with my kids wandering around. I would feel a lot better about it if I could get rid of the most deadly stuff lying around!

My aim is to get all the chipboard floors down in the saloon, the dining room, the kitchen, the entrance hall, the first landing, the second bedroom, the shower and the first bedroom. I want to get the shower and bathroom tiled, walls and floors, so everything up to that stage. I want to install an oven and the dishwasher, maybe even the washing machine and dryer.
I want to tile the entrance hall, the first flight of stairs and the first landing. I want to paint the second bedroom and finish the first bedroom (T&G, paint walls and ceiling)
I want to finish the mezzanine floor and get some timber on to the balconies. I want to sort out the electric panel in the hot room.

I think that should keep me busy for a couple of weeks!

Instructions Inside

The whole family went with me down to Morzine this weekend. My wife spent her first night in the chalet on Friday and although it was a little cold it was OK (I think)

With only the weekend there was loads to do, Friday evening we emptied the one semi finished bedroom and hoovered the floor then put the beds we bought up in the van into it with the mattresses.I checked the fridge out and wired its plug into the mains. After putting the kids to bed my wife and I sat in the kitchen putting drawers together until midnight and oiling worktops ready for Saturday.

Friday night was distinctly cold and as this was my wifes first weekend I was anxious to make it as comfortable as I could, so first thing Saturday morning I set to work wiring up the bedroom heating.

A quick trip down to Voirons, mainly to pay my bill (for the Mezzanine) and I set to work clearing out all the cardboard plastic and polystyrene and general crap that had accumulated to about head height in the dining room. Basically if it was cardboard my three year old and I chucked it out the window, if it was plastic or polystyrene it went onto bin bags.

Its still a mess but there is now a whole load less rubbish!

I then began to assembly the shower. loads of bits and no instructions! bags of screws and strips of plastic, feet things and roller things and all sorts of strange fittings and clips. How does all this go together? The shower came in four big boxes and we slowly unpacked each box trying to find any sort of guidance on how it all went together. I mean the basics are not that difficult, we have a shower base, big white quarter circle thing made of fiberglass - Check


Drain and U bend assembly screwed into base.
Leveling feet go into base base gets leveled up.

Two big glassy panels go each side of the smaller silvery panel, but which screws/bolts hold them together and what are these big strips of silicon rubber for?


How do all these nozzles and pipes go together, OK so the nozzles screw in to the holes in the big panels but how do they all get water? What do we do with all these pipes and clips?

Well we discovered some bits of paper with the glass doors right at the bottom under everything else along with a whole load more screws and bits. A huge helps the instructions were! Obviously in French but they were for a different make of shower. It was close but not quite the same. I could only assume that the principles were going to be the same and to water proof everything!

Saturday evening we had a barbecue - I need to get a proper grill for the barbecue, our makeshift assortment of supports drops more food into the fire than we get to eat!

Saturday evening saw my wife and I in the kitchen again, we cut the hole in the worktop for the sink and started on the drawer handles and cupboards.

Saturday night was lovely and warm, the radiator working a treat, I was worried as the other 2 radiators I had tried warmed up once and then never got hot again!

Sunday and I was only allowed a cup of coffee once I got the hob working! So I set to work wiring up the hob in the kitchen. Simple job, undo a few screws wire it up tighten it all back again made really annoying by the French design which uses star headed screws! Nothing normal like a cross headed screw, but a star so I have to dig about to find a star bit that fits and then cos the only thing I have that will move them is the electric screwdriver I end up shearing off one the screws and generally having to bodge up the whole job!
Not too happy I decide not to completely stick down the hob into the worktop as it sounds like it will probably have to come up again! Anyway I got my coffee!

The electric distribution panel is getting to be a real mess. I know what I want to do with it, to give me more room for all the "hundreds" of cables coming in I want to do what we did in the kitchen and stud panel the wall to give me room to drop all the cables down behind the panel and bring them through but its quite a big job and basically I will not have any power while I do it.
Mind you the longer I leave it the worse it will be to resolve! Well lets say, it has risen in priority and leave it at that!

The sink went into the now oiled worktop and although not very impressed with the fixings that came with the sink, I do not think its going anywhere.


A door on the bathroom was todays challenge. The frames and doors we brought up in the van are ever so slightly different to the three I had bought before but you would not notice unless it was pointed out, one or two of the edges are rounded in the new doors rather than square on the old and the finish is a bit better generally.
Anyway these new doors actually came with instructions - in English! (and French and Italian and polish and ....) so I can now finally see exactly how you are supposed to install these doors and apparently I have been doing it completely wrong! Any way i prefer my way of putting them up it seems stronger and all the wedges and foam installation they suggested sounds tricky!


So the door went in and I found my self with a few hours before we left, so my three year old and I started on the studding walls for the next bedroom and bathroom. We cut the sole plates, drilled and screwed them into the floor. Hari, my three year old looks cute in his ear defenders and bob the builder helmet! He helped measure up the timber and pull the trigger on the drills.

Time to go I was pleased with what I had done and even more pleased my wife and children had enjoyed the weekend.
We plan on doing the same thing next weekend and then I get 2 weeks to do as much as possible.

I have my orders from my wife, shower and kitchen sink, get them working! I intend to use the plastic plumbing we bought to hopefully speed up the plumbing but need to think more about the fittings.

I need to make a list!

The Big Van

So, this weekend the plan was to hire a van and load it up with the kitchen worktops that do not fit in the car and take them down to the chalet. Hiring a van for a couple of pieces of wood seemed a bit extravagant so we decided to fill the rest of the van with a load of other stuff. We bought a couple of mattresses and beds and dug out stuff thats been sitting in the cellar since we moved to our latest apartment. All this was loaded in the van including 6 doors purchased from Bahaus. A good friend of mine, Steve, had agreed to come down with me to help with some lifting and also I think out of curiosity about this building I keep ranting on about and no one has ever seen.

Well we left about 5 ish on Friday and arrived about 9 something just as it was getting dark so after a brief tour of the building we had dinner and went to bed.

Saturday was shopping day but first we had to unload the van. Doors, beds, mattresses and other furniture was all unloaded and parked about the chalet in various rooms. We drove down to Thonon in order to get the fitting for the second bathroom, namely a sink a toilet and a shower. After some faffing about in the shop and after two shop assistants were surprisingly helpful we left with a toilet and a shower.

Then it was off to Gedimat to get a huge amount of tiles. i wanted to get all the bathroom tiles, the bathroom floor tiles and the hall and stairway tiles also. this was about a 1000 Euros in tiles with all the adhesive and grout I would need. All this was loaded into the van and we drove home.


All this was unloaded and, God those tiles are heavy!


After a cup of tea to recover we set about making the rest of the units for the kitchen and sizing up where and how the worktops would go. Eventually, after much thought and with some trepidation I made the first cut in order to fit the back worktop that contains the hot plates. It seemed to fit and in our enthusiasm we proceeded to try and cut the hole for the hot plate. Measure carefully, weigh up the alternatives and then commit yourself. After cutting two sides out the jig saw finally broke and left us half way through the third side. Critical bits snapping off left the saw unusable. The worktops are hard stuff! I finished the third side with a hand saw but that still left the fourth side. I then attempted a "Plunge" cut with the rip saw. Normally with the rip saw you start from an edge and slowly work your way across the timber to the other side, with a plunge cut it is possible to start in the middle of a piece of wood with the cut. We only needed enough to get the hand saw in then we could finish with that. You don't do many plunge cuts as they tend to be a bit messy and a bit rough and difficult to get exactly where you need and its not recommended to do this to cut out holes in worktops! Any way it all actually went very well the cut was close enough and we finished off with the saw.

Sunday and I wanted to get the three worktops cut to the right size. Again, after some ponderous thought and careful measuring the cuts were made. Steve had meanwhile oiled up the first worktop and with that in place the kitchen actually started to look like a kitchen.




One last job and I changed the swiss plugs on the microwave and fridge to French plugs.

We left about 1:30 and got back to Zürich about 5:30.

I think the weekend was a success, we got a lot of stuff delivered to the chalet and even though the jig saw gave up we did cut one hole out. Only the hole for the sink remains. we have the fittings for the second bathroom (except the sink, I cant seem to find a decent sink in France! must have them somewhere!) Loads to get on with next time.

Next time I need to prepare for the family coming down in August. So the dinning room will need to be cleared of all the rubbish from the kitchen, the chop saw room will have to become a bedroom and it would be really great if I could get the stud wall up and the shower working for when they are there.

Return of the Hot Box

Returned the Hot box yesterday, Ikea very good about it, would not give me cash back, as I had taken all the wrapping of the oven, but instead, gave me a kind of credit card thing with 599 CHF on it.

Now all I have to do is get another 240 volt oven to replace it. I wonder where the nearest French Ikea is to Morzine?
Meanwhile I am trying to figure out how best to get the large worktops down to Morzine. The plan at he moment is to hire a van and take them down in that but if I am hiring a van I should make it worthwhile and take a bit more stuff that will not fit in the car, like beds and mattresses etc. Either that or balance the worktops on top of the car and drive with them strapped to the roof.

The Warm Box

Ohmri and I where down in Morzine this weekend and took the fridge and oven down with us. The plan was to see how much of the kitchen I could get built now that the tiles were in. But first I would have to finish the electrics for the lights and plugs, skin the walls and then start the actual build of the units.

Rob was down with his family for their half term and he helped put the kitchen walls up and wire up the lights and plugs. Then we started assembling the kitchen units that fit along the back wall. Once the carcasses were fitted and screwed to the wall we started to fit the fridge, microwave and oven. The fridge and microwave have Swiss plugs on them and I did not have any French plugs but the oven just needed to wired directly to the wall. We wired it up and as we did noticed that the oven said 400 Volts. This is weird. Rob and I expected 240 volts. 400 is just really hard to get, especially when the plugs lights etc are all 240. Well we tried it and I can confirm that a 400 Volt oven is just a warm box when you try it with 240.

It was bit disappointing and I will have take the oven back to Ikea although it will provide Rob with hours of entertainment, teasing me about how many volts an oven has, I have looked and they do actually say it is a 400 volt oven in the web page. Strangely, you can buy the exact same model in the French Ikea which is 240 volts! Stranger too is that the swiss oven coats 599 swiss francs and the French oven costs 525 Euros! Nearly 800 swiss francs. Apparently swiss ovens all are 400 volts and they do something clever with 2 or 3 phase electricity to get 400 volts, but it must be complicated and why bother when you are providing 240 to lights and plugs anyhow? Seems weird. Well a couple of friends here have confirmed it and the oven in my apartment is actually 400 volts as well, but I still have no idea how to get 400 from 3 240 phases. I could perhaps do the same thing as I have three phase power in the chalet but I have to get the electrics signed of by the EDF and I don't want to have to explain anything out of the ordinary. I just want it simple, so I will replace the 400 volt oven with a 240 volt oven (not quite sure where from yet) and use that one.

Any way the kitchen is looking good apart from the oven, loads to do still but it looks good.

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...