Blood on the tiles

Blood on the tiles, rather a dramatic heading but it takes ages to come up with catchy titles for these things. Its true too, there was blood on the tiles but probably not quite what you might be thinking.

My friend Mat has been painting this week. He was under instructions to paint the chalet. One coat of preservative and at least one coat of varnish all over. All over means all over, every bit of wood on the exterior needs covering, the walls the balconies under the eves of the roof, everything. The chalet is not an easy thing to paint and Mat knew what he was getting into and he said he could do it in a week. This sounded reasonable so away he went. I meant to be there last weekend to help him out at the start but something came up at home and I could only get there this weekend.

Text messages through the week told me how he was getting on and it seemed OK although it was raining a lot.

We turned up at about 9 at night on Friday, just after it was getting dark. It was raining and as we arrived in the gloom I thought the chalet looked a different colour...

That night Mat explained that he had not been able to paint the whole chalet but had done most of it. Most of it included nearly all the preservative and about 70% of the varnish. He then went on to explain how the varnish was weird and might not be varnish after all...

The varnish, it seems, is totally colourless and it dries quite quickly, its really hard to see what you have done and what you need to do.

So the next morning we are out and about on an inspection of his work. It was raining, which Mat told me was not unusual for this week, in fact it had been raining all week and this was one reason why he had not quite finished yet. Well he is right, it is real difficult to see what he has done but slowly you get accustomed to what you are looking for and yes it has been varnished, well most of it, just the hard bits are left. The problem is that the varnish is clear and water based. You need two coats to see it. Most of the other chalets around the place are brown or even orange from using varnish with a touch of stain in it and I imagine its a darn sight easier to see what you have done if the wood actually changes colour when its painted. Well this stuff is clear and the wood is the same colour as it was. Its great, it really looks nice. Just to make sure I gave the front door and the panels around it another coat


Maybe you can see, the wood is a bit shiny, but still the same wood colour.

Although you do feel a bit like the little boy in the Emperor's new clothes. Has it really been varnished? Am I just imagining this? No there really was varnish on the wood. It shiny, you can just see where Mat stopped. I haven't just wasted all that time and money! I haven't. I will believe, I will, I will.


Anyway, the bits I really wanted to do were the bits of timber that the sun and rain had already started to effect. That is the balcony above the garage, the barge boards (thats the timber planks on the edge of the roof) at the garage end and the other balcony. So we spent Saturday varnishing balconies and anywhere else I could reach. Meanwhile Mat regaled me with stories of how hard it was getting up to under the roof and how many times he had to move the ladder and how many times he had nearly fallen off and how it had been raining all week. Any way By Saturday the balconies where done and all the windows and most of the easy places had had two coats of varnish.

On Sunday I decided we had to attempt something more interesting and when the morning dawned not quite bright and sunny but not raining. So the barge board beckoned. Probably easiest to get at from the roof and although not recommended in the wet, in the dry it should be fine. So I opened the varnish and in doing so sliced my thumb open (you can see where this is leading...) Up the ladder and on to the roof. Easing my way over the roof right to the edge I have to lean out to paint the barge boards.

Its not easy and every now and again you get this feeling that your leaning out too far.

Well as I worked my way up the roof I left a trail of blood from my thumb. Looking down I think "Blood on the tiles" great blog title! - How sad is that? thinking about a blog while sitting on your roof in the sunshine!




What you cant see in this photo is Mat:

Just who is paying who ?










Well, I now have a partially varnished chalet, which on the whole is better than an totally unvarnished chalet so I am happy. The colour is great, I love the natural colour of the wood and I am really glad it will stay that way. For how long and how it will age remains to be seen but for now its great.

Saturday morning was spent at the bank seeing my new Bank manager, she was very helpful and is probably going to lend me the huge amount of money I need to get this place rentable!

Walls and door handles

Spent the weekend in Morzine. I arrived on Friday evening to find Rob and Mat around a camp fire after a barbecue I just missed. Rob had been up a mountain with one of his children and a friend and had come down that afternoon. Mat is there to create robs decking masterpiece. It all looks very good, a little springy but it all looks great it really finishes of the surrounds to robs chalet, especially the front door. I dont have any pictures of it, as I only had my phone with me and the camera is rubbish on the phone (as I will show later). Well Saturday rolled around and I went as usual into town to do my chores, visit the bank and go to Voirons to get supplies.
I need the bank to lend me lots of money as I don't have any and my personnel friendly bank manager has disappeared and is not responding to his email. I discover that he has moved on and his replacement is not available for a meeting until Friday. Not very helpful. So I resolve to phone and email her when I return. That's my job when I finish writing this.
Next was Voirons, this time it was gaine and some plastic boxes to hold plugs and switches. I had worked out what I wanted where inside the walls. Plug sockets heaters lights and lights switches, but as usual the plan needed changing almost immediately.
There needs to be a heater in the drying/store room as this will hopefully heat the center of the house as well. The heater needs its own electric supply so that's one line of 2.5mm cable (each of the three wires in the cable is 2.5 square mm in cross section, the whole cable is actually about 10mm diameter) This needed running to the far wall. I think that the hot room heater will probably go on the same circuit as the drying room heater, not sure yet as it may be nice to keep the hot room independent of any thing else. There need to be plug sockets if only for the washing machine and dryer (which should go in the alcove under the stairs) Plug sockets can be chained together up to a point and as good practice I run all the plugs on 2.5 mm cable as well. I have all double sockets and have added another in the garage on the other side of the wall. All these sockets will be powered from the same trip in the consumer unit. This is another run of cable, The lights or at least the switch for the lights required yet another run of cable. For this I was going to use 1.5mm cable but I did not have any so I used three 1.5 mm separate strands of wire run through the gaine for the switch.

The lighting posed a few problems, (which are not fully resolved yet) My intention is that there will be a light on each of the four levels of the central staircase. and that on each level a single switch can turn on or off ALL the lights on all four levels. Now this is possible (apparently) with a load of wire and complicated three way double rocker switches, but I have looked and looked and not found a easy way to do it. So I have opted for the French way! What I plan is to install what amounts to a relay in the consumer unit and push button switches on each level. The switches are chained together in parallel on one side of the relay and the lights are chained together in parallel on the other. Any one of the push buttons can turn on or off all the lights.

So I start drilling holes through all the uprights in the new wall for the gaine and wires to go through and after a bit of repair with a metal file I discover that my big drill (the one I ruined earlier) is not quite ruined and is in fact quite good still as long as I dont hit any more metal stuff!. So the holes are drilled and the cable and gaine threaded around









This wall needs to be insulated. Rob donated some large furry sheets of rock wool insulation that he previously used on his garage doors. It is about 200mm wide, uncompressed and should be a good insulator. I have to split it in half to make it this enough to fit inside the walls and still be able to panel the side.

Up goes the plaster board and voila there is a wall.

Hard bits include moving a sheet of plaster board (not light) on my own, that is 1.2 meters wide and just a fraction less than the floor to ceiling height high. Plaster board is quite brittle and bends only so much before snapping. corners get crushed if the weight of a whole board. rests on it. Cutting the holes of the plug sockets is tricky to get right and I am not convinced I have done it properly, we will see. In order to see where the cut out should be you rub chalk or marker pen over the edges of the box fixed in the wall then offer up the plaster board to press against the boxes. hopefully and actually it worked remarkably well, the marks transfer to the plaster board giving you a nice outline of where to cut out.

In the last photo you can see the switch with three wires coming out of it. This was the first time I have installed separate wires rather than cable and I was determined to try the official French method as suggested in my electrics book. I was surprised to find it actually worked really well! The separate wires all pulled through very easily. I can only assume that the system is not designed for cables but it designed for wires.

With still no doors to install I moved on upstairs to the bathroom/bedroom walls. This were a little easier and needed a slightly different insulation as I want to stop sound more than heat.

This stuff is rigid and cuts really well so you just carve it into the gaps. then plaster board up!

Again, voila walls!











There is a comedy series on TV called Absolutely Fabulous and in one episode the kitchen burns down and Jennifer Saunders spends the next three months trying to decide what design her new kitchen will be. After three months she has made a decision, she now knows what door handle she wants. Well I feel like that about my front door handle. I have been trying for months to get the right door handle to fit properly. How hard is it? First of all the square piece that actually does the work was too short to connect the handles. Then the replacement was too thick to fit in the door. Then the replacements replacement was too short. Chopping up the two short sections to make a longer one did not work. Then I finally found a section that fit in the lock and was just big enough to connect to the handles, then the slots cut (for some strange reason) in the section caused the handles to spin on the section. I am fed up of door handles but I think I might have fixed it. I have wedged slivers of metal into these stupid slots and now the handles can grip the section properly. Problem now is that with all the messing around I seem to have lost one side of the door handles!

Any way I left on Monday afternoon reasonably happy with what I had done this weekend and full of plans for the next trip, which will probably be around 1st of June to help Mat with the painting.

That reminds me, I really should get in touch with the bank now....

The wall and the fox

Spent this weekend in Morzine building a wall across the garage. The idea is that this wall divided the house from the garage and hopefully will keep the heat in. In order to construct this wall I needed an order from Voiron's the DIY shop. So Friday morning we are ordering wood and plaster board and insulation and varnish and wood preservative. All this to be delivered on Friday afternoon. Cool. So I spent the rest of the morning making space in the garage and figuring out where exactly the wall was going to go.

At about 3:30 the lorry pulled up

This is the lorry. (finally get to see how to spell Voiron) Rob who was there for a holiday had organised a delivery of timber so that a friend of his could construct some decking around his chalet and my materials hitched a ride with his. Good job he had a delivery as I have discovered that Voiron does not deliver at all on Saturdays at all.

I had ordered insulation, plasterboard, framing timber, and sound insulation. All this was unloaded and stacked out side. So construction could commence!
From empty space to wall in 12 hours:













Studding.



















Plasterboard.










And a bit more around the corner for the "hot room" The hot room is an interesting concept, which I suppose Rob dreamed up originally but I will copy (and perhaps improve) as it seems very sensible. Basically the services most especially the water supply is installed in an area that can be kept warm. Seems simple but its not generally though t about until its too late. With temperatures getting down to minus 20 C the pipes will freeze solid and burst when they thaw. Big problems. So I have designed this service room to be insulated and heated through the winter. The outside wall against which the water supply comes in (great design Hervè) will have to be insulated but that is fine as it will give me a neat method to get cables along the wall, running under the insulation behind all the pipes, without getting messed up in all the plumbing. Also its nicer to fix to a wooden surface over the insulation rather than to concrete.

Before my trip up/down to Morzine I had purchased some doors and frames from the DIY shop here in Switzerland and driven down with these in the car with the intention of installing them in my new wall and if this was not to be then installing them in the bathroom bedroom walls upstairs. Well this was not to be. The frames the doors came with were not entirely suitable for the job so at this point I decided to omit the doors for now and have a bit of a rethink. We did not manage to finish the walls but we got a fair bit done. The walls need to be insulated and have the electrics installed and I discovered I am woe fully short on that plastic gaine stuff for threading cables through so that will have to wait. As it is we did not have time to insulate but it looks pretty good from the other side.

We were working on Friday night about 10 in the evening busy banging away using eclectic saws and drills generally getting it on and I turned around to see a rather large fox walk straight through the open garage door, stop and look at us as if to ask what the hell we thought we were doing! Beautiful, I guess female and about 3 meters from us. It stayed for about 5 minutes looking about. We stayed still pretty much amazed and enjoying the privilege and novelty of being quite so close to a wild animal. Then she left.

Well Rob had told me he though there were foxes about but we never imagined we would be introduced. On Sunday just before Rob left we were treated to another visit. We were all inside and Mrs fox trotted across the field and between the two chalets

Cool.

Mat arrived on Saturday afternoon in order to do some work for Rob and I will be using him to paint my Chalet. Although officially I am not employing him. He is a guest and is doing the painting to fill in his time!
He will start some time around June 2nd and it should take him about a week to do the chalet. My plan is to look in on him at both ends of that week and help out with some if the hard to reach bits which one person may struggle to reach.

So as soon as I can I will be back. Around the middle of May. Put the insulation and electrics in to the garage walls, put the doors on, put the plaster board, sound insulation and electrics on the bathroom and look at the floors in the bedroom.

So much to do.

Got another bill from Hervè not very happy about that. Seems to be the balance for his services. Right. Now I have no money and I need to pay everything and everybody, just how is that supposed to work?

Easter 2008

Wow, no posts since Christmas, I have been lazy!
Well its been cold and I have been thinking about the chalet, I promise!

So Easter break and the family made the trek out to Morzine for a long weekend. I specifically wanted to open an account with Viourons and make an order for wood and plaster board for Saturday then build the garage wall on Sunday. That would amount to a load of work and a big step forward.
Alas, things, as usual, did not go entirely to plan...

We arrived on Thursday evening, a little snow still clinging to the ground in the shaded parts of the valley, Nothing like last Easter with its brilliant sunshine, so much so we had picnics out side. The forecast said snow, snow, snow. No problems getting in this time as an outcome of the key issues of last year Rob and I have an "arrangement" with the keys. All a bit hush hush and I cant say too much in public but I got the keys and managed to open the doors. As we went to bed on Thursday night the first few flakes of snow began to fall and waking on Friday saw a real dump. 30 cm or so of new snow and it was still snowing. All day it snowed.

For the first time I had to put chains on the car wheels. Never used them before. Pain in the arse to get on and off but they make a huge difference. Would never have made it without them. Good job I thought about the weather and bought a set before we left. Apparently my car has enormous tyres and requires the biggest chain sets made. Any way I was well pleased with my forethought at buying them and even more pleased at there performance.
Friday I drove down to the DIY shop and opened my account, all in French and I understood most of it too! They could not of course do a delivery "a demain" (Saturday) because of the snow and the fact that they were closed of Easter. BUM.
So with my new account I piled up a few things on the counter and went back trying to figure out what I could do in the mean time.
Still snowing and the boys playing in the snow, I fiddled about with some electrics, fixing up the sockets in the bedroom and in the kitchen upstairs.
Saturday dawned with brilliant sunshine

So off out on the boards with my son, sod the chalet, lets go surf!
Minor problems including a car that would not lock did not dampen our spirits too much.
Saturday afternoon it began to snow again and kept snowing until we left on Monday!
I put in some more cable for the bedroom heaters and had a major clean up through out the chalet but feel a little embarrassed at the amount of work I didnt do.

I really need to get on with it. Rob is out in a few weeks time and I need to speak to him about some other project we have going but I want to arrange a delivery for that weekend, this will have to be done over the phone!

Something to look forward to!

I have found the key !

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all my readers!
No real news, I only wanted to report that the key that was lost has been found!
No idea where it had been but it turned up in one of those odd dishes we have around for emptying pocket change and general kipple into. Well, I was emptying my pocket of kipple and there it was lying in the dish! The key that was lost.

So the key has returned!

Electric Weekend

I bunked off work early on Thursday afternoon, stuffed some clothes in a bag and headed for Geneva. I arrived at about 4:30 just in time to meet Rob from the plane and then we were off again. We had intended originally to rent a mini digger and move tonnes of earth and rocks about this weekend but worried about the weather and being buried in snow we wimped out and settled for doing some electrical work in my chalet. On the way up to Morzine Rob wanted to pick up some shutters for his windows, which he assured me would fit in the car. Well, fair play, the did actually fit in the car, but they were resting on the front seat, Rob was squeezed in somewhere at the back, I could only just get 5th gear and each time we turned left I thought the whole lot of it was going to slip over on top of me. Any way we made it with no significant damage to the car (or the window shutters)

Along the way we had discussed my previous trip and why I was unable to get in. When we arrived low and behold there was a key in the other side of the lock, just as my wife had suspected.

Rob was very apologetic, he said he and his wife had spoken about just this and decided that because I only had this key that they should not leave the key in the lock. and then they did. Well not them, apparently the cleaner is the most likely suspect. So we have revised our key arrangements especially in light of the fact that I still cant find my other key so I have reclaimed the spare one from Rob.

The next morning we head down town for breakfast and supplies, although it turned out to be supplies and lunch, but that it typical. Rob seems to have lost the cheque I gave him in the post so I have to cancel the cheque and get him a new one, so I see my friendly bank manager Julian, and have a quick chat, he tells me that he could probably lend me the 30,000 Euros it would take to finish the place off. Interesting news. Anyway, Viourons (DIY shop) supplied us with electrical goodies at vast expense and we headed back to fix them up. I had lights and sockets for the garage and power sockets for the bedroom. Easy stuff.
Rob fixed up my earth breaker and hid it all behind a piece of wood screwed to the wall while I screwed sockets and switched to the wall and tried to measure gaine. Eventually we got the power sockets wired in to the consumer unit and they work. Now we had extra sockets for the power tools and importantly the halogen flood light. Its getting dark and we are just finishing off the lighting circuit, I am about to wire the cable into the consumer unit when the bulb blows in the flood light and we are plunged into darkness. OK enough for tonight, come back tomorrow.

The next day, Saturday, as usual we spend the morning in town doing stuff which seems necessary at the time but seems to take up a really long time, so the afternoon is taken up with wiring up the remaining lights and making it all fairly tidy and then we move on to the bedroom.

Four plug sockets later and a bit of fiddling around with the new fixtures and I have power upstairs in the bedroom. Cool.

We have also discovered that we are connected to the mains sewerage at last.

That afternoon we spent fixing up bits of wood in Robs chalet, trying to sound proof it a little bit. seems to work well but its a bit dodgy up that high on the ladder!

Sunday morning and I attack the pristine woodwork around my kitchen. I hope the splash back will cover up any mess I make of the timber, but I have to cut big holes in it in order to pull out my cables. Those cables that I ran nearly a whole year ago! and what do you know, the chippies had made little marks where the cables should be and there were there! Next time I am back we will have power in the kitchen.

I need a few more supplies and a day or so I should have power in both the kitchen and the salon upstairs.

The next big job is the garage wall. This is a must if I am to get any heat in the rest of the place. I think the plan should be go as soon as possible for another weekend, while there arrange account at Viourons then arrange a long weekend and a delivery to coincide and get a load of stuff delivered. Framing timber, plasterboard, cement, sand, gravel, insulation, and anything else I can think of. make it a full lorry load as the delivery costs a fortune.

The Keys of Misfortune

Well we all set of for Morzine on Friday night. The whole family, thought it would be nice, spend the weekend in France. Siew Ling has not seen the chalet for a while and there have been a few changes since.
One minor problem before we left. I have mislaid the key to my chalet! Yes the most important key in my life at the moment and I cant remember what I did with it!
OK I thought I gave Rob a key maybe he left that spare key in his chalet or if not I can get in through the garage. Fine so off we go. As we got to the Swiss border on the pas de Morgins the snow was falling and there was about an inch on the road. The car is rubbish in the snow and I realized I had no chains and what the swiss call summer tyres on the car. Crawling up to hill to the border the traction control is flashing and the back end is weaving. Not a good sign with the col du Corbier to come! So I took the longer way and went down the valley then back up the Morzine valley rather than take the pass over the mountains. Great we got to Robs chalet at about 10:30 ish and I discover the key I have for Robs front door does not fit! Well it fits it just will not turn. Its like its the wrong key. I was slightly annoyed. Phone calls to Rob who was very helpful but still could not get in the door. So with mobile phones going dead on me the snow falling, the temperature dropping from -4 downwards and both kids now awake moaning at how late it is, we admit defeat.
OK stay at a hotel and try again in the morning? try what again?
Bum.
So to save what was left of the weekend we drove 4 hours back to Zurich! 3 am we got back and I still cant find my keys!

Too good to true

Well thats typical, apparently I dont have 17000 euros left, in fact I need another 5000 to pay off the last invoice. Great. I spent the last few days trying to work out how to spend the money and what would order to do things in.

Bugger.

I still have to go over my figures to see where I went wrong but the bank says there is only 2500 left and an invoice of 7500 to pay.

Oh well.

Strange Money ?

I have been trying to work out exactly how much money I have left in the mortgage after the latest bills are paid. I get about 17000 Euros. IF this is true then this is very good news indeed. Thats a lot of work. A lot of timber. A kitchen. Heating. Floors.
Cool. I thought I had run out and would have to stump up the balance for these latest bills.

Now all I have to do is confirm that really is the sum available and figure out the best way to spend it!

Weekend in Morzine

I went this weekend, primarily to try and get as much "paint" on the chalet as possible. Rob was going to be there and he had offered his help in painting. I knew I only had a very limited time, about one day of actual working so I would have to be quick. For this reason I bought a spray gun. Its a big hair drier really.



I need to paint the entire chalet in three coats. First a wood preservative against termites and fungus, then two coats (at least) of varnish. All the wood. Even the hard to reach bits up under the eaves of the roof.

I went down to Viourons, intending to buy 25liters of fungicide/pesticide to put on the timber of the chalet before varnishing. They only had 5 litres. OK no idea how long it will take to put 5lt on so lets have that and see what happens.
According to the can, 1 lt of preservative should cover 5 square meters. OK so I load up the spry gun with 1lt and mentally work out an area of timber that’s about 5 square meters and spray. About a minute later the area is covered and I have a bit left so I continue on. Great this 5lt Can is going to last about 20 minutes including refills!
This was not the main problem however, by spraying the stuff on I was creating a cloud of noxious vapour (with me in the middle of it) I had a dust mask on but that was useless and by the time I had finished the 5 litres I was really quite ill, nose and eyes streaming, coughing and spluttering. Horrible.

OK so I am not going to get much more of this stuff on the chalet this weekend, not without a vapour mask.
Something like this:

Any how with that out of the picture Rob and I decided to try and get the electricity cable in, maybe the two of us could achieve what I had failed on my own. No luck, we pushed and pulled but got no further than I had before. We even employed the kids to reach down the pipe the cable was going to appear from to see if they could touch it. No luck.






I decided to try and chase back the gaine under the floor in order to determine where the problem was. So with a huge breaker I start smashing up my garage floor! Only to find to my dismay that the gaine is actually leading in almost completely the wrong direction! It must do a huge loop and come back round out the front. No wonder the cable gets stuck. Garage door and electric post are on the left, cable duct is going right!



That evening we went out to a restaurant for dinner and met up with Leon from next door. We all got talking to the proprietor of the restaurant. Leon announced that he had just the tool for getting cable through gaine. Great we will try tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning and Leon is up and about holding a very thin length of wire which has no chance of helping at all. Never mind he quickly decided what we need is lubricant and as we all know "there is always time for lubricant!" Vigorous sprays of lube all over the cable and down into the gaine it goes, a bit of fishing around and up it comes!!





Hurray! Fantastic. The weekend is worth it just for this. I quickly wire up the distribution box and include the earth cable and like magic I have a plug socket in my Chalet! Electricity. Power. Finally.
I am very happy.

Other good news is that we have water as well. Who every it was has attached a tap and meter and water comes out. Wow.



And even more good news, the town has been busy and they have brought a sewage pipe all the way up the road to just outside my chalet. All that remains is to connect from the septic tank to the sewer and we all have mains sewerage.



Good weekend, marred only by the fact that I have no money left and some huge bills to pay.
The final (I hope it the final) bills from the carpenters and the concrete, earthwork guys. and the planning permission bill and another tax bill that I find out Rob has been paying for me up to now.
Lots of bills.

Mind you the inside of the chalet looks nice now that they have put all the timber on the walls. I suppose all that will need varnishing too!

Bathroom Building

I spent the last week in Morzine, camping out in my chalet. Not the sanest idea I have ever had but it was fun (and cheaper than a hotel) but with no running water in the chalet yet it was a bit on the dirty and dusty side.

I arrived on Sunday night, around 8 ish, about an hour or so before it got dark. Just enough time to have a look around and set up camp.



I have tiles ! I have a chimney!



I was not staying at Robs place this time as he had paying guests in for a couple of weeks. I waved my hello's to Leon, the neighbor and considered introducing myself to Robs guests, no it was a little late, tomorrow would be fine. About midnight Leon, led by Robs intrepid guest, came looking for suspected burglars! Quite what Leon though was lost on me as I hastily introduced my self with assurances that I did in fact own this chalet and I was not a burglar.

Monday
Woke up later than I intended after a much colder night than I anticipated. Bright sunshine. Drove down to Thonon, about 30/40 minutes away to the big DIY shop. Asked for some cable 16mm2 red 16mm blue and some 25mm2 earth, It took the assistant nearly an hour to coil up these three bits of cable and I pottered about looking patient, collected odd bits of electrical goodies. Then off to the plumbing section and load up with a toilet. Nice suspended one, exactly the same one Rob and I had installed in his chalet all those months ago when we built his first bathroom. Now with a few bits of wood and some other stuff the trolley was rather unwieldy so I decided to check out this lot and come straight back in for the bath and sink. Check out OK load the car, come back to the shop to find it has closed for lunch! Will not open for another 2 hours!. Fine I have enough stuff I will come back tomorrow. So drive back to Morzine.
Its now about 1 ish by the time I get back and I make a start on the bathroom to be. Well just the toilet is not going to get me very far and it is obvious that the hole in the floor intended for the toilet is in completely the wrong place without major pipework. So in order to keep it simple I decide to break another hole in the floor to get the toilet waste pipe through. Having already decided on the layout of the bathroom, bath against the wall on the right toilet against the out side wall in the middle and sink opposite the door against the outside wall. I took the plunge and started to break a hole in the floor. Relatively straight forward, no major reinforcement issues. But I could not position the toilet finally without the bath. So that would have to wait. What now?
OK what about electricity. One of the tasks I wanted to do this week was finally get that big cable through the gaine and bring the power inside. No joy. I spent an hour or so heaving around the cable and messing about. It was having none of it. The carpenters have rigged up a plug wired into the temporary supply so extension leads will have to do for now. OK, if the main cable will not go then maybe the 16mm and earth will. Bit luckier this time and I was able to thread the cables through this bit of gaine.



You can see the earth cable coming through the hole in wall there.
No luck with the big cable though. OK I bought some stuff to remake the door in the garage, so I set about rebuilding that. I have gone from a super heavy weight piece of removable wall to a light weight door that actually opens on real hinges!

Tuesday
Woken up at 8:00 by the carpenter poking about checking that his guys had been working, he informed my that I had left my car windows open all night and that it was raining, great. I drove back down to Thonon in a damp seat in the pouring rain, bough my sink and bath, which was very difficult to maneuver through the check out. My car passed its design criteria with flying colours, a bath can fit comfortably inside (with all the seats removed) Back to Morzine, off load and head down to the local DIY store to get some timber.
I obviously bought the most expensive timber in the entire world and some blue insulation. The timber I wanted would be described in the UK as rough sawn, which I now believe the DIY shop provided on the other side of the road (the shop is split in to 2 sections one on either side of the road) what I got was planed timber, not really the sort you hide away in a stud partition wall. Never mind it was wood it was going to be fine.

Arriving back at the chalet I noticed a strange damp patch on my drive. It had stopped raining but this patch was spreading from beneath the rock walls that have been newly installed. The problem was it was not water. It was sewage. Sewage from Robs chalet bubbling up from under the wall and running down my drive. Great, another problem. Hervè was going to have to sort this one.

So with the bath in place, I could work out where the toilet should go and fix it to the wall (surprisingly close to directly over the hole I had broken in the floor!)



So I started on the stud walls.




I laid out and screwed down the sole plates first, apparently you should do the roof plates first but with one person this is impossible. So I opted for the more practical approach which meant the floor first then screw the uprights to the walls.

Wednesday
Visit to Hervè and he assures me that some one will come out to check the leaky sewage, sure enough in the afternoon a guy comes along assures me that yes it is merdè, and that he will be along with a digger to fix it tomorrow.
Also asked Hervè about the water, when is it going to be turned on? He will ask the mayor and get back to me.

With the uprights on the walls using some temporary braces and chocks I manages to wedge the roof beams/plates up long enough to screw them in place then I was able to install the other uprights. With these in place the noggins can be cut and nailed in.




Some of the noggins are a bit wonky but everything was plumb and pretty sturdy.
I then had a go at the floor of the bathroom. The blue insulation is 50mm thick and the timber is 70mm thick. It is actually finished floor level, so the bits under where the doors will go may have to come out or maybe I will raise the floor level a touch to go over these bits. The blue insulation went down really well once I had got the right technique for getting round the cables. Rather than trying to cut grooves in a single piece just cut the piece and then the groove is just a notch in one side. works well.

While I was busy with all this the carpenters had arrived and were busy inside prepping the walls for the layer of T & G. A lot of preparation. The also put in the chimney.




Thursday
Still raining, so I finished the stud walls and started on the support for the sink. Using the only wood I had It turned into quite a monster.



Still, it works, although I am not sure the sink it quite right.
Back to the local DIY shop for some more bits of pipe work and I managed to plumb in the toilet.



Rains all day, no digger to fix the sewage and no water guy although Hervè says he night be out on Friday or Monday, we shall see.

Friday
My last day, The water guy tuns up, now, Rob and I have always disputed with Herve that that the builders actually installed a stop tap for my chalet. Hervè insists that they did but we have never been able to turn it. We know where is should be, there are 2 plates in the road one for Robs chalet and supposedly one for mine but mine has nothing under it. We have told Hervè this but he assures us its OK. So the water guy comes around and after putting a tap on the water pipe in my chalet spends about 45 minutes fishing around with this enormous key on a pole trying to turn a stop tap (that might not be there) at least 2 meters down a narrow pipe. Eventually he gives up declare that its "impossible" and disappears. What?? What now?
I have to leave and everything is still up in the air.

OK so I have half a bathroom, but still no electricity and no water.
But I now have a roof and I have keys to my front door!

Tiling

Rob (who is visiting his chalet today) reports that the carpenters are in and applying insulation to my roof! They have gerry rigged the electricity cable by just slinging a cable across the drive and they are away!
Maybe I will have tiles by the time I get there in August.

Blasted, Bastille Day

Friday afternoon, we left Zurich at a very respectable 3 o'clock, motered on down to France over the pas de Morgins, over the col du Corbier, arrive in Morzine at 7:30 (ish) fantastic, 4 hour driving with a half hour break along the way. Right, we need some food, go to the supermarket. The supermarket is open. Result. Siew Ling goes in and gets busy buying food. I see this big notice on the door and translate it to mean "This shop will be CLOSED Saturday 14th July" That's tomorrow, why is the shop closed? OK "Siew Ling we need to get more food, this shop is closed tomorrow" Fine no problem.
As we are leaving my brain has reached a conclusion that it now provides: 14th July why does that ring a bell? what does that remind me of? Bastille Day! France's National Holiday! Everything will be closed on Saturday. All the supermarkets, all the shops, all the DIY shops! Arse!

We arrived at the chalet to find a bit of a transformation, the chalet no longer has a big hole all round it. It has been back filled and landscaped.



I now have a driveway! with a drain out side my garage! More surprises, I have a earth cable, in a weird place but I have an earth, not connected to the consumer unit, but its an earth! I have a temporary supply box, all connected to the overhead wires, with a meter and everything, just what he EDF billed me for!



But no connection to my Chalet. OK I can do that, I just need 20 metres of 16mm four ply cable and an earth cable to connect the consumer unit up and all this was planned, I can go to the DIY shop on Saturday and buy all of what I need and get my power on.

But no, tomorrow is Bastille day and everything is closed!

So Saturday came round and sure enough everything was closed, except, embarrassingly enough the supermarket, I had misread the sign which said "This shop will be OPEN 14th July" Oh well everything I need to be open was closed.

Any way It probably saved me money as I had to improvise. I scrapped my original idea of how to block up the garage and went with a new off the cuff design (as usual) The door turned into a removable section of wall rather than the elegant doorway I had planned but it will function. No hinges mean the door doesn't really open rather it falls!



Oh it was so hot. The sun was burning hot all weekend, absolutely fantastic weather, maybe not for working out side but great sunshine.

With the garage blocked up I could move some (nearly all) of Robs tools into my garage so as not to disturb his guests next time I am there (4th August I hope).

As the garage doors/wall went up I was thinking about the electricity, how best to connect it. In the end I removed the cable I put in last time from the entrance to the consumer unit. This cable is the one the builders donated. Its not bad and I am sure its fine, its just I don't trust it as part of the permanent fixtures so I will use this cable to go from the pylon to the garage and then some spare 10mm from the garage to the consumer unit. The builders cable is the only bit of cable I had available that would reach without cannibalising the already installed 10mm in the kitchen.

So I tried all Sunday morning to thread this big ugly cable down the ducts from the pylon to the garage. Funny thing is the duct changes colour, the duct at the pylon is orange and has a smooth interior, the duct at the garage is red and has a horrible ribbed interior just right for catching cables on. This is a bad sign, I was not convinced they were actually the same duct but some listening and shouting and wobbling cable around indicated they were possible connected. Anyway I tried all morning, I carefully prepared the end, I pushed and pulled, I pulled it all out and laid it all out and twisted the kinks out of it I let it warm up in the sun, I pushed and pulled from both ends, I couldn't get the thing through! It would go about as far as the chalet then no further! bad sign! but the other way it would go a lot further and then stop.
For some reason I am relatively convinced that the ducts do actually join up, why I am not sure when everything points to the fact that the are not joined. Maybe it the hard work involved in digging them up to prove it that I am avoiding!

So no electricity for me this weekend, but I have block the garage up.

A New Electric Dimension

Surprise, I got a bill from the EDF last night, 250 Euros. Not certain quite what for but it is a good sign. It should mean the temporary electricity box is installed under the pylon. I may not quite have power to the house and I might not have an earth but I think I might be connected to the mains !!


The title is from some song that keeps going round in my head, I think its by Dreadzone, I think the song is called "Third Wave"

Planning a visit

I am going to Morzine on Friday and I hope to seal up the garage doors. Hopefully I can put a door in as well because without the keys to the front door I will not be able to get in!

This trip is also a recon. mission to determine just what has been done and what hasn't. Hervè tells me the electricity is in, but quite what this means I don't know. I hope it means the consumer unit is wired up to get power rather than the earth spike has been put in. That and the water, Hervè doesn't seem to know quite what is going on as regards the water supply but he has said he will find out.
Apparently Leon (the next door neighbour) has started to connect his sewerage up to the mains that stopped down the road a bit. This means we might be able to piggy back his pipe and have a real connection soon!

My plan is to go out this weekend and block up the garage doors, this will make the place relatively secure and I can leave stuff in there. As it is at the moment anything in the garage is in plain sight from the road, so not ideal. Once the garage doors are sealed I can move my stuff out of Robs garage and into my own. I plan on going down for a whole week in August and Rob has guests in his chalet so my usual ploy of running an extension lead from his garage into my chalet wont be too popular. Also raiding his tools might arouse suspicion! So this weekend I will move what ever I need out of Robs garage and into mine.

My First Consumer Unit

The backfilling has begun! A big yellow JCB type machine has been busy slinging mud around, generally in the direction of the hole around the chalet. One slight disappointment is the absence of any earth cable, although this is not the end of the world (it can be installed as a 2 meter spike in the ground) I was told that this would be done before the backfilling. Well some things don't change. In order to avoid any complications when or if the electrics are installed I decided I needed a consumer unit on the wall so the carpenters can use extension leads to power their power tools. So this weekend my son and I drove down to Morzine and met up with Rob and his family who are staying in their chalet for a week. Rob and I went down to the DIY shop at the edge of town and I bought this:

A consumer unit. This was priced at over 300 euros but I was charged 192 ?? I think it was Robs account that got us a discount. Sounds well worth getting an account !







So I slapped this on the wall round about where the final consumer unit will go
and wired in one of the breakers to one of the plug sockets. Then as that had taken all of 10 minutes I threaded the big three phase cable generously donated by the builders through the red ducting from the garage door to the consumer unit and wired it up.

Very nice !

I bought the power in at the top because, most likely this is a temporary fitting and I wanted to be certain that I would have enough length of cable to allow me to move the consumer unit around if I have to.




The other end of the cable comes out by the door:

The three phase cable has four cables running in it, three phase and one neutral. It is very heavy.

Now when the electrician turns up to provide a temporary electric supply he should be bright enough to connect up this cable as long as we have an earth as well. With no earth the plugs will be very dangerous to use. I bet that wont stop them!


Just to the right of this photo you can see the temporary supply box. This contains some electric stuff and will eventually sit below the power pole on the other side of the drive and connect up to the overhead wires. Then a cable will run from the white box through the other red duct and can be connected to my cable and that will give me electricity ! Simple huh !

The backfilling has started and they have connected up the sewage pipes to Robs septic tank, well I think maybe it is half mine as I paid enormous amounts to have it moved, any way the sewage appears to be connected. The drains running at the bottom of the back fill connect in to the down pipes from the gutters. I didn't know this before but it seems stupid not to really.


This is the back corner of the garage the 2 90 degree bends one will be turned up and connect to the down pipe from the roof the other will direct the flow across in front of the garage and out presumably under the road ?





It is the end of May and although, yes the backfilling has begun, nothing else has. The backfilling will take about 2 weeks to finish according to M Bergoend (the concrete guy) He was up at Robs place this week trying to persuade Rob to get his drive tarmacked. He was saying apparently that I am going to have my drive done and that Rob should get his done at the same time. Well I am not getting my drive done. That is so low on the priority list as to be off the scale.

I will have to watch what is going on other wise they will spend all my mortgage on stuff I don't want (yet)