NAME REDACTED

Rob has revamped his web site (about time) and I must say it looks really good. He seems to be marketing the whole Morzine experience. So check it out at LINK REMOVED.

He also mentioned I should get a move on and finish my chalet so I can earn some money. Well Yes that is the general idea.

On a more related note the kitchen arrived on Friday, 83 boxes of stuff (and that not everything) I have sorted it all out and need to decide what I can take with us next week. God my brother and I have a load of work to do!

Easter Holiday

So the family spent Easter at the chalet in a camper van. It was small and cramped but we managed. I took my eldest son snowboarding and even got some work done on the chalet! The main point of this trip was to order some of the materials Eddy and I will need at the end of April, not only that but also to get a little boarding in as I haven't been out on the mountain for ages and what is the point in having a chalet in the mountains if you spend all your time in the chalet and never actually get out into the mountains!

So I was a little worried about the camper van and where we would park it. I was a little concerned we would not get it up the drive and onto the flat bit at the top. Typically, it was not this aspect of parking the camper van that caused the problems!

Strangely I had not thought to ask Slow Chalets if I could park there. A bit inconsiderate of me I think but I was to be honest more worried about actually getting the van up the drive and I really did not consider getting permission to have it there. This was to cause some problems during the weekend.

So on Thursday evening we pulled up at the chalet and easily parked at the to of the drive in front of Robs chalet, noticing as we did that they had some clients or rather that Slow Chalets had some clients, as their car was parked out side. Well we plugged in the camper van and went to sleep. The next morning we moved the van back so that slow chalets guests could get out with their car. (embarrassingly It had still not occurred to me that anybody would mind us parking out side Robs chalet.)
We came back from snowboarding on Friday evening to Slow Chalets asking about what we were doing here and that we were not expected until the end of April and could we move the camper van as this was not the kind of thing their clients expected. Well maybe I was tired or just stupid but I still did not get what they were really talking about. We shifted the van back a few meters so the clients could get in and out past us.
Saturday I spent fixing the toilet. Breaking a hole in the hot room wall, digging a trench along side the chalet to the box and connecting the two together. I also discovered that I have no idea where the sewage goes after it leaves the box out side my chalet. The out let goes off in a completely wrong direction towards the old septic tank and not towards what I think is the sewage connection.
The sewage connection or what I think is the sewage connection has two pipes coming in to it one appears to be from my roof down pipes and was happily dribbling the last of the melted snow from my roof into the chamber and the other comes from the general direction of the what was the septic tank that Rob installed....

Actually I have just had a look back at some of the photos I took when Rob and I discovered the connection, here and this hole does not look like the hole I was looking at so maybe I was looking at a soak away and my sewage is actually going the right way after all. (yeah and pigs fly south for the winter!) I need to check when there is less snow about and I can see the other manhole cover.

I also started on the stairs to see if my design would work. It seems to be suitable so I will continue when I have more material.

Sunday We went snowboarding again and my son and I had a great time in the sunshine on the mountain. Came back to urgent texts and phone calls with Rob who Slow chalets had talked to demanding I get my camper van off the drive, well I was tried and hungry and by now understood the problem and realized I was in the wrong but slightly embarrassed by the whole thing for not thinking it through properly So I moved the van on to my own drive (which slopes) I could not figure out how to jack the van level (if indeed it would have gone that far) so we all slept on the slope and the van stayed there until the guests left on Monday afternoon.
Monday I was doing electrics in the kitchen and figuring out what stuff I had not ordered. Tuesday We were waiting for the order to be delivered from Voirons and at 14:30 my wife advised I go down to the shop and find out what was going on. I was sceptical that this would in fact do any good but as usual my wife turns out to be correct (I must remember, my wife is always correct!) Voirons had misplaced my order and needed reminding to deliver. So at four o'clock my wood and flooring turned up and had to be shifted into the chalet ready for Eddy and I to shift it in a couple of weekends. In the mean time I had been tidying up I had even opened up the garage door in anticipation of the delivery.

I am looking forward to the end of April with Eddy.

My kitchen arrives on Friday 17th, should be fun and a lot of boxes!

I Just Ordered A Kitchen

Well I dropped in to IKEA this evening and ordered my kitchen!

It will be a bit like this:

IKEA have to look at my design and will quote me for it and then can have it delivered in about 2 to 3 weeks. It will be delivered to Zürich and I will have to transport it down to Morzine but that should be Ok.







Yes and the under floor heating arrived a week or so ago, 2 large boxes and three large rolls of foam underlay. Looks good.

We are looking forward to spending Easter in the chalet. We are renting a camper van for about 5 days and will be living in that cos the chalet is not quite livable in yet. Then a week or so later at the end of April my brother is coming down for a week and we will try to put the mezzanine up.

Under Floor Movement

The underfloor heating guys have taken their money and we are receiving phone calls from "Die Post" asking about 2 packages. Seems they want to know how much its worth. I think they are going to tax me on importing foreign goods into the country.
I wonder how much that will cost me?
Oh well at least the packages are "in transit" I was beginning to wonder if they had actually got lost or even if they had been dispatched. Never mind I imagine in the next few days all will be revealed.

Civilization At Last

Friday night and it was snowing gently as I left Zürich. The snow got heavier and heavier and the traffic got slower and slower (I am not complaining, I am one of those people who slow down when they can not see anything on a motorway!) At one stage hundreds of us travellers were stuck behind 2 snow ploughs churning down the motorway. Once into Evian the snow stopped and I drove up through Thonon and up the valley towards Morzine, only to be deviated at the roundabout at the bottom of the valley. Off I went towards Chatel, which is in the valley next to Morzine and the only connection I knew about is the Col du Corbier. This pass is not recommended in the snow. This I knew and I was a little apprehensive about crossing this pass tonight after all the snow we had had. Coming up the pass, three snow ploughs passed me coming down. OK so the road should not be too bad and it was not a problem until I started to go down the other side. I had expected that going up would be a problem and never thought that actually going down is much more tricky, especially when the snow ploughs seemed to have forgotten the route down into Morzine and only ploughing the route up!
Well the road down was about 100 mm of snow and ice. This made driving/sliding down the pass very interesting!

Well I arrived and unpacked and after digging out the electricity box from a meter of new snow, I went to see if the water was still running or if it was frozen up. The water was still liquid and judging from the huge puddle on the floor it was still dripping out of the drain tap! OK no big disaster just a bit of a puddle.
So with the heaters on and the water turned back on I went to bed.
Next morning after a quick shop for food and the trip to confirm that Viorons is closed now on Saturdays (that will make things interesting) I returned and began work on the hot water. The big red tool from Switzerland was the closest I could get to a Stilson but it proved effective and I had the the leaking joint open when I eventually figured out the best placement for the jaws. Lots of PVC tape and re tighten the joint, fix all the other pipes and joints making sure they are all the right way round and that the have washers etc. and then fill the tank and pray the joints dont leak any more. The joints held! Wow. Right, power. Cable and gaine and boxes wire it all into the distribution box, flick the switch and yes the small light comes on on the bottom of the water heater. Right I now have to wait a few hours for the thing to heat up then we shall see!


In the mean time I need to plumb up the hot water feed to the tap upstairs so get all the plumbing stuff and solder joints for a while until I can finally turn the taps and wow! water comes out the tap! Not Hot water yet but I suppose I need to give it a while.


OK next job is to measure up the kitchen so I can design and order it from Ikea. I measure the kitchen and measure the mezzanine as well just in case I need to design something later. I measured the doors to the downstairs bedrooms to ensure I know how they are going to work too.


Still no hot water.


I wire up the bedroom heater, fixing the gaine into the chiselled out grooves I made last time. Wire up the switch and the extension that will power the heater in the next room. I haven't connected the power in the distribution box yet.


Still no hot water.


I tear out the insulation in one of my studding walls and add another feed from the light switch to what will be the overhead lights for the bedroom.


Is that water "not cold" or is it my imagination?


I have bought a camping gas stove, 2 rings and a grill. This I fire up (literally) and have a hot meal.

I HAVE HOT WATER, great I can do the washing up!

CIVILISATION has arrived! I read somewhere or heard somewhere that Ice is civilization, well who ever said that had never been to Morzine in the winter. There is plenty of ice. Well I think hot water is a positive mark of civilization and now my Chalet has it. HOORAY!

Sunday I spent basically cleaning up. Upstairs the salon was a mess wire, tools, insulation, wood, dust, crap everywhere. So I cleaned all this up and sorted it out even hoovering! Did a quick tidy up elsewhere and started the "turn the house off" list. Drain the water tank, all that lovely hot water has got to go, set al the drains open turn off the main water feed and this time close the little drain cap which made a big mess before. After that just pack up and turn off all the power and away I go.

Got back around 3:30 after a boring trip only noting that there was a large amount of trees and snow all up the road that had previously been blocked. Presumably some avalanche or maybe a tree collapsed across the road.

Frustration

Spent a long weekend in the chalet and got very dusty tired and frustrated about the whole thing. Managed to get the big heater swapped in the store for another one quite easily, bought a load of other bits and pieces.

When I arrived the water was still frozen, no surprise there. So I hung the door and turned the heater on. The next morning I was surprised to find that the water had thawed enough to flow and fill my pipes. All was well the joints all held up. I was just trying to fill the hot water tank when I noticed a small arrow pointing the wrong way. After a quick study of the diagram I find that although I have installed all the bits as per the drawing, the drawing is in fact back to front and I need to swap it all about. The cold water is going in to the hot water outlet and the hot water supply was connected to the cold water inlet. Great to all those joints that were holding now have to moved about, undone and redone. So I spend most of the day under the hot water tank fiddling about with all the joints and the more you fiddle the worse all the other joints start to get. By the end of the day I was a little pissed off and needed bits! Saturday discovers that Vourons is now closed on Saturdays, great. OK the other store has some bits and after complex explanations and detailed examination of the existing bits I get some more bits and head home with the new knowledge that the kit you buy when you get a hot water heater is made up of specially sized screw threads and nuts that are very much non standard so that if any bit gets lost or breaks or needs replacing, you have to buy the whole kit again!

SO now Saturday lunch time and I decide to abandon the hot water for now as there is one leak I cant fix as I cant get the joint open, I need some stilsons which tighten up the harder you push on them. Any way I dont have any so it will have to wait. In the mean time I will make do with cold water. So I run the water up to the bathroom plumb in the toilet and bring the water up to sink. I fit the sink and the new sink tap fit the toilet, fit the trap under the sink fit the waste pipe for the sink, stop up all the loose ends open all the valves and hey presto we have running water.
Easy! Right!

So I can now wash my hands, its a bit cold but okay. My next discovery is a bit more serious. I have often wondered why the waste pipe for the toilet has never smelt at all of drains. Well today I found out. Its because that pipe is not actually connected to the sewer. It is only connected to the storm drain for rain water. Fantastic. After all this time I finally connect up the toilet and it is still unusable.

Bugger. I really dont know how to fix this. Major surgery required outside with a digger and pipes and fun for everyone. May be I could run the pipe out side and connect up somehow at the drain, I really do not know what to do about it.

So I get on with some electrics. Something else to mess up. I wire up the sockets in the Salon, about 5 sockets in all all chained together and really hard to get the wires up through the gaine and into the sockets. The plastic surround things will not clip in properly and stick out on one corner.
With this wiring done I could put some floor down. So down goes 2 layers of 50mm blue insulation, loads of it, I have to carve it up around the cables on the floor but it goes down all right.

Sorry no photos as the big disk drive here at home appears to have failed and I cant get to any of my music or photos. (that will be a disaster if I cant get it working)

Came home to noisy children, a loving wife and a long hot bath. Feel frustrated and annoyed at French builders and French building supplies.

Underfloor embarrassment

I have recently ordered the underfloor heating from an English company. Put the purchase on my French debit card and made sure the money was in the account. Great.

Heard back from Rayotec last week, The delivery is on its way but your card was refused. Oh no not again more trouble ! OK shot off an email to the bank, turns out there is a 1200 Euro limit on the card (that can not be changed) my heating was 1522.75 GBP !

So now, a little embarrassed I have to work out how to pay Rayotec there money. They are very nice about it and have even dispatched the 2 boxes to me here in Switzerland, but still its a bit embarrassing.

This is not the first time either. It seems like when ever I try to buy something slightly out of the ordinary something weird happens to mess it up. God knows what will happen when I want to buy my kitchen !

Fire and Ice

Friday evening I rushed out the house and drove the three and a half hours (nearer four) to Morzine. The temperature dropped as I got further and further away from Zurich. Morzine was a balmy -10 when I arrived around 9ish. Rob was due to arrive on Saturday and I had arranged to stay in his chalet on Friday night. So the first problem was finding the secret key! Now without telling the world where the secret key is located I will say that There is about a meter of snow and the key was right at the bottom of it all. After warming up and a cup of tea I settled in amd went to bed. Saturday morning and a quick look around the chalet measure a few things make a list, all the usual. Drove into town spoke to the bank about the debit card I had forgotten the PIN for and then drove to Voirons. Horror it was closed! oh well Maco is just down the road - yes but despite there fine selection they dont have what I need. So there is nothing for it but to drive all the way back down the mountain to Thonon and the DIY superstores there.
Bought lots of tubes of different sizes some big and some small.
Drove back and put the big tubes on the stove and poked the end up the chimney. Then with mounting excitement I lit the fire!

After a few nervous minutes thinking the fire was leaking but it wasnt I mooched about staring at my new fireplace. I love the huge big window and it gets hot really quick. Unfortunately it did not really warm up the chalet, but that is a bit on the optimistic side. It was 10 below and there is not insulation on the floors which being concrete, would just soak up the heat.







OK that seemed to be working so I moved onto the plumbing. Disappointingly, with Voirons being closed I was unable to get exactly what I needed but had to suffice with just most of it. My aim was to connect the mains to the house, try out the joints in my plumbing and try and plumb in as much of the toilet as possible. It didint quite work out that way as the big black plastic pipe was completly frozen solid. Moving it slightly produced a scary sound like pieces of gless being crunched together. It was really deep frozen. So testing any joints or even turning the tap was out for the weekend! Any way I connected it up

I have reservations about some of these joints but we shall see. I only hope it will be sooner rather than later that the mains thaws and I can actually see if it all works. I drilled holes in the ceiling/bathroom floor and brought the pipework up into the bathroom T'ing off for other connections, taps and the toilet. My solder joints are pretty good although I sometimes get the pipework too hot and ruin the whole thing. We shall see how good they are when the water turns on!








Sunday rolled on and without being able to finish the plumbing I thought the next important thing to do was finish the hot room walls and door

I studded out the wall plaster boarded and insulated the wall. Installed the door frame and would have glued the frame in but all my glue had frozen and gone strange so that can all be done next time. A light inside finished the job.












Not bad for a day and a half.

Got back to Zurich around 7:00 in the evening and got busy getting quotes for the underfloor heating. Next trip is in February for 4 days should make some more progress then! might even get out before that.

The Dalek Sleeps

Late Friday and I set off from Zürich, I would not be in Morzine until 11:00pm and apart from some strange metal cage things lying all over the road just outside Montreux, it was a quite trip. It had been raining all the way and just out side of Thonon the rain turned to snow. By the time I got to Morzine it was falling thickly and I was worried about making it up the road to the chalet. But it was OK thank heavens for traction control and ABS brakes. The car was sliding and spinning all over the place but was OK until I tried to turn in to the drive of the chalet, luckily it had been cleared of snow recently but there was still 20 cm of new snow to get over. I needed to at least get the car off the road as the snowploughs are a little unforgiving when it comes to parked cars. Managed to reverse the car up far enough to clear the road. Emptied the car in a couple of trips and set up to sleep the night in a very cold chalet. The thermometer said it was zero in the room at one point that night but I was pretty warm, wearing a t shirt and fleece and woolly hat, in a sleeping bag under a blanket with a duvet on top! It was heavy but warm.

Anyway Saturday morning and the usual trip down to Viourons to get stuff. The big plan this trip was to insulate the hot room wall and get the hot water heater up on the wall and do as much plumbing as possible.

Plumbing is not easy. There are literally hundreds of bits all different sizes, all different shapes and all do different things. They all join in different ways to other different pieces. Its like a huge jigsaw puzzle were you have far to many pieces and don't know which pieces you don't need!

At least I had a plan. I have, for the past year or so, carried around a note book in which I scribble down ideas and plans for the chalet. One of these was a long time ago a plan for the plumbing. It involves valves and T junctions and should basically mean a plentiful supply of hot and cold water to the chalet while being able to turn off and drain the pipes when required.

With this in mind I stared at the bewildering range of connectors and plumbing bits. OK I need valves, a huge vista of valves opens before me Oh dear this might take some time.

Well about an hour and half later I had a basket full of bits and pieces, these plus some wood was all driven home. One major problem was no where in Morzine could I find a 150mm diameter pipe for the fire. So on this occasion the dalek sleeps.

Back at the chalet, I framed out the hot room wall,

This exposed another potential disaster. In the past we have spent money on groceries and got points. Each month or so because of the huge numbers of points we get we are sent about 50 swiss francs in vouchers. I spend these on stuff for the chalet like screws and nails and small tools, stuff like that, Well I had thought my self real clever as I bought a box of long screw suitable for fixing these batons to the wall. I was very careful to get cross head screws cos I have loads of screw drivers and all sorts of bits for the drill that would screw them in. So imagine my surprise when I open the box to discover the screws are in fact star headed. Great I have one drill bit that might fit.









OK it seems to work, something to put on my Christmas list. So fit the frame to the wall, insulate the frame
Blue insulation cut to fit.


















Board out over the insulation to give me something to fix on to.

The try to lift a really heavy hot water tank. Oops this is going to be interesting. The tank is heavy not so heavy I can not lift it but heavy enough to be awkward. The tank is large, too large to reach all the way round so handling it is awkward. Right drill the walls and install 4 massive bolts. Then build a platform (from blue insulation) get the tank up onto the platform sling a wire around the bottom supports and lift the tank using the wire then wobble it towards the wall and with a bit of luck the tank and the bolts should all line up.




There you are! Tighten up the bolts and hope it stays on the wall when its got 200 liters of water in it!

There is then the jigsaw to do with all the other bits and pieces.













34 pieces all have to go together and (not leak) Then I realized I did not have a vital connection that would allow me to actually get water into the tank! Probably just as well as I dont think my joints are tight enough. I need another wrench.

Any way the taps at the bottom allow the water to drain, the taps at the top will have more pipe added and lead up to the bathroom above, hot water on the left and cold on the right.


Did a bit of finishing of the plaster board in the bedroom when it got cold.

Came home a bit early on Sunday evening.

A Bit of Heavy Lifting

I wanted to buy an wood burning stove for the chalet but I knew it was going to be heavy so I arranged with Rob to come down on Friday (yesterday) and get him to help with the heavy lifting.

The trip down on Friday morning was terrible. It was raining hard and the windscreen wipers on the car started playing up just as I got out of Zurich. Sure enough a bit further down the motorway the wipers jammed and I could not see anything. I pulled over on to the hard shoulder and freed them, had a look to see if it was fixable but it would require a spanner to remove the blade. Well there is a services a bit further down the road surely I can fix it there, after all it is a service station, that's what they do. Yes? Well the blades jammed up again before I made the services, I freed it up and carried on. Got to the services to find or rather not find a single piece of mechanical help available. You could buy clothes and garden furniture but a simple spanner No. Right desperate times apply some pressure and oops the wiper just came off in my hands. Oh well that will cost me! Still thank goodness its the passenger side not the drivers or I really would be in trouble!
It rained all the way up to Morzine. Arrived about 14.00 and after a cup of tea Rob and I went back down the mountain to Thonon to get the wood burning stove and a hot water heater. Drama in the DIY store, my credit card was refused and we had to make other arrangements much embarrassment but sorted. Any way the stove and boiler only just fit in the car we had to strip the packing off the water heater to get it to fit.

Still it drove back OK. We left it until Saturday morning to unload As handling heavy stuff in the dark and snow sounded a bit dodgy even for us!

It snowed over night even more and when we came to unload the car we decided the Stove was just too heavy to lift so what about a sledge?

Dropped the crate onto a pieces of blue insulation and dragged and pushed our sledge about 20 meters until it was at the foot of the entrance stairs to the chalet.





We heaved the crate containing the stove up the stairs on runners made from a ladder. Up ended it through the door and in to the chalet. The crate decided it had had enough and disintegrated allowing us to discover that the stove actually came to pieces and we removed about 100kg of iron from inside of it! Moving it into its final position was a lot easier now it was a bit lighter.

It looks like a Dalek!

Cant light it up yet as the chimney needs 150 mm tubing and I only have 125mm so I t will have to wait until next time.




The other heavy piece of kit was the hot water heater and associated plumbing stuff

I was worried the heater would not fit on the wall but it seems OK. There is a load of plumbing that needs attaching to the bottom of it.










All this fun for next time. Well thanks to Rob cos I couldn't have done it on my own.

Heat and doors

Friday rolled round and at about 3:30 I left work and went straight to the DIY shop on the outskirts of Zürich. I had already scoped out the place and knew what I wanted, I knew where it was and I knew how much it was going to be. It still took an hour to get three doors and three door frames off the shelves and into my car. They only just fit, but once again the car was great and has taken all the stuff I cram into it. So I drive home to eat a quick dinner then off towards Morzine at about 6 in the evening. Before I left I found a letter from the bank, just a statement but it showed that the loan was up and running and that money was available. Very reassuring just before I go and spend it! Taking the slightly longer way round in order to avoid the mess we got into last time. Arrive at the chalet just before 10. Wow, Robs chalet has been done over! He has given control of the bookings etc to a management agency called Slow Chalets They have been in and changed all the furniture! That might not sound too bad but some on the decoration is a bit disturbing. The large wall in the front room has been covered in about twenty or so skulls complete with antlers. Apparently Rob had to ask them to remove the moose head and the boars head from the walls! Very strange.
Any way I unloaded the car and got straight to it, plaster boarding, I had to stop at midnight as I had to get up the next morning to go shopping.
Saturday morning, drive down to Thonon, to one of the big DIY shops there and loaded up with heaters and electrics and loads of other stuff, about 900 Euro's worth!
Back to the chalet and unload then on with the job. Install the big heater at the bottom of the stairs.















After a few false starts with the electricity and blowing the trip switch a few times I finally wired the fancy switch the right way round and the heater came to life!

OK then on to the door. Lots of plaster boarding. It takes ages to get that all done and It was Saturday evening by the time the door finally went up.

Looks quite smart from the photo, doesn't quite close properly but it can be adjusted. Right just time to put the heater in the hot room and then bed time.











Sunday morning and into the bedroom the door here was going to be a pain as I had constructed the walls without knowing exactly how or what kind of doors I would be using so as expected the doors I had bought were not going to be simple. I was going to have to make some adjustments.

All in all it went up fairly easily once I had worked out which bits to chop off. The plaster boarding took forever but then the door went in pretty quick after so many trial fittings to make sure it was the right size.

I had to adjust the sides quite a bit to get it to fit but all in all it looks OK.













I should be back at the end of the month with the intention of putting in the hot water boiler and the wood burning stove!

Signed, Sealed and well, pending...

Took another day trip to Morzine to see the Notaire. Drive down was a nightmare diversions all over the place. Drove to Chatel and was going to go over the Col du Corbier but that was closed, OK, instead of going over the mountain we can drive down this valley and back up the next one, only adds about 15 minutes. As we drive down the valley there is another diversion. So we end up driving all the way back down to the lake at Thonon to come back up the valley for Morzine. Horrible.

Anyway we signed the documents at the Notaire and gave him his enormous fee. Over a thousand Euros for a few signatures! God what else does he do? What else does he need to do?

Anyway we then drove up the road to Morzine to see the bank. Turns out my bank manager is on holiday (again) and will not be back until the middle of next month. Good job we came here in person rather than emailed these invoices in. They would have sat in her in box for 2 weeks!

We shall see what happens, I gave the bank a few thousand in invoices from the past few months which should cover the Notiares cheque. Now I can get back to working out how to spend it all!

Again the Bank needs watching

I should have known better, I spent so long uming and ahing about calling the Notaire, when I finally did it, they dont have the papers from the bank!
So I call the bank and Oh yes I will get head office to send the papers!

The bank said they would send all the papers when I signed them. So what happened?

Aahrrrggg this makes me mad - mostly at my self for dicking about and not calling the Notaire when I should have done. Why do I put this stuff off only to find that something or someone else else was waiting about to be pushed into doing something !!

Later
Well it turns out the bank did send the papers and the notaire had just misplaced them!
After a confusing call to the notaire I now have my appointment. I just have to get there with my wife. The kids are back in school so that's another problem. O well I have my appointment the rest will have to be sorted around it!

Electricity

Received a bill from the EDF last night, seems they have read the meter and I was charged 174 Euros for my electricity. No big deal until I remembered I am paying 90 Euro's per month and the EDF now Owe me nearly 700 Euro's I wonder If I can get that back? or just stop paying them for a bit!

Quick trip to the bank

Saturday was a long day, after trying to arrange an appointment with the bank to sign the loan agreement I received an email on Friday evening with a very official looking invite to a meeting at 11:00 o'clock on Saturday.
This meant getting the whole family up and out of the house by 7 for a 4 hour drive down to Morzine for a half hour meeting where my wife and I signed the required document multiple times and then a four hour drive home again!
The kids got to watch too much TV in the car and I just got really tired!

The bank requires a "cooling off" period so the document will not actually get sent to head office until the 27th, then the notaire is notified and I need to arrange a meeting with him to sign the guarantee. This probably means another long day sometime the beginning of October.

My head is full of shopping lists, I cant wait to see how fast I can spend 50,000 Euros!

Paperwork, paperwork

Finally got the document from the bank that was wrong, some health questionnaire. Received it last night along with a strange letter from the electrical supplier EDF. As far as I can understand it the temporary electricity supply I have has expired and I can only renew it for three months. That would make things difficult to say the least. Need to get some one else's opinion.

Beading on the Barge Boards

Well I dont have a long holiday as yet and I dont have the money as yet, but I took four days roughing it in my chalet to see what could be done without spending any money.

Roughing it is right, there is no heating so dress up warm, there is no toilet so trips to the public lavatory in town need to planned! There is no kitchen so barbecue time! There is no running water but the river is pretty close. It was very primitive.
At least I had a bed and was warm enough during the night. It wasnt that cold it only got down to 13 degrees which is a bit chilly but not as cold as the night Rob and I spent in his chalet while we built his bathroom now that was cold minus 10 and all we had was one small blow heater! Anyway another story or perhaps one for Rob.

So build chalet but spend no money. Arrived on Wednesday night, just after it had got dark of course, I was planning on arriving while it was still light but got delayed at home and did not leave as planned. So its dark and I set up my bed and crash out for the night. I actually slept quite well and in the morning although a bit chilly went to town as usual. Shopping for some food and then back to decide what to do.

Basically the place was a mess, there was beer cans and wine bottles and rubbish everywhere, the garage was a tip ( I think Rob had been repairing something down there) so the first few hours I spent tidying up. Whilst clearing up i was thinking about the jobs I could do. Basically I had made a list of stuff that I could do with the stuff I knew I had already in the chalet. One of these jobs is to break a big hole in the wall. So I set to it and a couple of real dusty dirty hours later I had my hole.










This will allow the waste from the toilet and shower to flow out as the builders kindly forgot one of the connections. So this is where eventually the waste will go down through the floor and through the wall to the out let. In pipes of course!

OK I was covered in dust and rubble so lets try the river for washing. Stroll over the road and get down to the river. It was cold! straight of the mountain refreshing but still cold. I didnt want to use soap or pollute the river any more than I had to so a brisk scrub up and I was feeling good. Time for dinner.

Cooking dinner was a campfire in what I hope will one day be a garden of sorts, may be decking. My earlier clear up had provided lots opf wood so that burnt and burgers fried and were eaten. Then as it got dark I went to bed.

After a warm enough night I discovered it was raining, a situation due to last all day. At least it proved the varnishing work of the last few weekends was working because as you can see the rain was beading on the barge boards

This is a good thing it means that the varnish is protecting the wood! all that hard work was paying off!







Looking around a bit further I could see The white bits that the rollers had missed. In the corners and crevices the wood was still white.


Well its not a great picture but you might be able to see at all the angles the roller cant get in to the corners and the wood is still white.

Well there is nothing to be done now so ignore it for now maybe I can fix it later.


Well today was electric day I had been thinking about the bathroom and the bedroom and what they required and after a quick consultation of the book I knew I needed an extra plug socket in the bedroom. The other challenge was to sort out the lights for both the bathroom and the bedroom. In my enthusiasm for putting up walls I had forgotten to think about the electrics so I needed to sort them now. The bedroom was not too bad as only only side of plaster board was in so out comes all the insulation and then I realize I dont have a drill. Well I have an SDS drill for breaking concrete but nothing really for wood which I am going to need if I want to finish the electrics. Of course they are in Robs chalet but I dont have a key. After many text messages and phone calls I get Robs lovely property manager, who agrees to call round in a few hours and let me in. Meanwhile I drill through the timber with the SDS drill its messy and hard work but it works (kind of) I install the light in the bedroom and the switch, doubling the nu,ber of working light bulbs in the chalet! I also put in an extra plug socket remebering just in time to turn everything off before cutting the live cable to slice into the plug.

Wonderful I spent the afternoon switching the light on and off, on and off on and off like primitive mans first encounter with electricity!






Robs property manager called round and let me in. I grabbed an armfull of powertools and legged it back to my place. I am sure she thought I was stealing them all but never mind Rob knows where they are.

With the rain the barbecue was out so a cold dinner and bed hoping for better weather tomorrow

The morning dawned (Saturday) bright and clear. Right the bathroom lights, these will be provided by a bathroom cabinet fitting hung on the wall with integral florescent strip light, or thats the plan anyway. The light needs a swith so I need to cut a groove in my new plaster board wall and put a switch in. I dont have a switch so I will just cut a hole and fit the cable. Cutting the groove was quite easy so easy in fact I would consider it for some other electrics if I do the same thing again. For cable I was using the three individual strands of 1.5mm wire and it works really well at least with shorter pieces of gaine, dont bother with the horrible wire in the middle just pull that straight out. In fact I had no choice as little wire had dissapeared from one end but threading the three wires was not a problem. Put the wire filled gaine in the groove and fill the groove with plaster. Done.

Came out quite nice I think.

Right next was to relay the bathroom floor insulation to allow for the new cable and two others. The cable for the bathroom towel heater and a cable to get power to the lights for the other bedroom and the shower room.



Still with electrics on my mind I had turned up three more yellow boxes for embedding in walls these I fitted into the salon upstairs after cutting neat (ish) holes in the timber.

One more job today and that was another dusty one. Break a socket in the wall of the salon for plugs and probably the phone or TV cable. This was fine apart from the steel bars inside the concrete which took some cutting but nothing too difficult.










Well that was about it for Saturday and after another fine barbecue I went for a wash in the river. By this stage after three days of dusty work I was a bit grimy . I am not really bothered most of the time about personnel appearance but my hair was horrible it was dry and dusty and like twigs. I just had to wash my hair. Feeding the river just where you can go down to it is a big culvert nicknamed the hungry drain and this was flowing so standing under it I got what can only be described as a really cold shower! It did not do much for the state of my hair but I felt cleaner.

Sunday rolled round and I packed up and began the drive home. During the summer the mountain communities do all the major road repairs ands this results in diversions all over the place. I was on my third diversion which led eventually to the Col du Cobier. It wound though a few little villages one of whicvh was holding some market or festival or something. Anyway the whole of France had decided to go to this festival and had parked, as the french do, everywhere. All down the side of the narrow road leading up to and through the village there were cars parked. Soon enough we ground to a halt as cars coming the other way could not pass. Some cars turned around, some cars reversed back God only knows how far. But cars were backing up. This was the only route over the pass and once you are on it there is no way off. 2 hours of squeezing past cars and waiting for other cars to squeeze past me and I made it through the village to the clear road. Waiting just the other side of the village were 2 of the biggest camper vans, huge things that normally would have no problem getting through but today no chance. I pity them and the problems they had. It must have been horrible for them. After taht the trip home was not eventful.
I was looking forward to getting back and having a long hot bath.

Painting painting painting

OK so its been a while since I last posted anything but things have been happening. I have been trying to get lots of money from the bank which although agreed is taking forever. I had planned on taking a holiday and spending the money but with no money yet it has not been possible. So I have resorted to travelling down for the weekend and finishing off the painting.
This turned out to be slightly more epic than it should have been, after all I paid Mat to paint the chalet! Well that was a bit of a waste. Last weekend Rob and I painted all but a few square meters of the chalet and this weekend we did it again! So how did it take Mat a week to not paint the chalet even once!

We used a revolutionary new technique in house painting called "brush on a six foot stick" this allowed us to slap varnish on most everywhere. Even so we were at some points piling up blocks of insulation and furniture to reach some of the highest bits.
When I say slap on I do mean slap on. It is really hard to achieve an even finish when you are reaching up with a paintbrush at full extension trying to cover as much as possible without a) falling off what ever you are perched on and b) trying to avoid huge globs of varnish landing on you.

So by the end of last weekend we had clear varnished the place all over bar a small section on the front.

I came back this weekend to apply the second coat.
I was varnishing the house with a clear varnish that "retains the beauty of the wood" well thats fine and I was OK with the result but it was very bleached from its year in the sun and snow.
For the second coat I was in 2 minds as to what to use, whether to stick with the clear varnish that you cant see or go with a slight stain that you can. The clear varnish would have the problem of not knowing exactly what I had painted where as the coloured varnish meant I would have to paint the entire chalet or end up with a patchwork effect.

I went with the slight stain and am quite happy with the result.
This time we improved on the brush on a stick slightly by replacing the brush with a roller. The roller on a stick method is far more effective but cant get quite into all the nooks and crannies around the chalet and there are a lot of nooks and a lot or crannies!

The chalet certainly looks better for the couple of weekends it took to do it. All I need now is the lots of money from the bank and s long holiday to get some serious work done inside!

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....