The Big Van

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

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

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

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


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


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

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




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

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

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

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

Return of the Hot Box

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

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

The Warm Box

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

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

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

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

The Bath is Finally installed

Spent a long weekend in Morzine with my eldest son. It was quite productive. We managed to finish the kitchen floor complete with tiles, we put in the bath which has been a long time coming and started on the wood panelling in the bedroom.

Thursday was Ascension day and a public holiday here in Switzerland. Nearly everybody decided to take Friday off as well for a long weekend. Surprisingly my sons teachers also decided to take a long weekend also. So I took him along with me to help out in Morzine.

My intention was to get the kitchen floor in, so that next weekend I can start the construction of the kitchen proper. In order to do this I needed tiles for the floor, these I was going to get from Bahaus, a big DIY shop here in Zurich. But (as usual) something went wrong and when I got there at about 18:00 on Wednesday evening they were closed, despite the signs assuring me they opened Monday to Friday 8:00 until 19:00. Apparently they forgot to mention that they close early on Wednesdays or maybe just Wednesdays before public holidays or maybe just Wednesdays before Richard wants to buy tiles, who knows? Anyway they were closed and so I was not going to get the tiles I had been looking at for weeks for my kitchen. Never mind Thursday was not public holiday in France (?) so the shops should still be open, maybe I can get some similar tiles there.

We arrived in Morzine at about 10 ish in the evening, set up home and went to bed. Thursday was big shopping day but first we had to unload the car. I had brought most of the rest of the kitchen and a big chop saw recently purchased in Zurich. The saw is more precisely called an "Sliding Compound Mitre saw" and looks a bit like this:


Basically a new toy! Shiny! The mitre saw Rob has lent me can not cut the wider tongue and groove planks I wanted for the Mezzanine floor so I decide to buy one myself. I will also need it do do the panelling on the out side of the chalet as this will be wide planks also.

That plus most of what was left of the kitchen apart from the fridge, oven and worktops was all unloaded and stacked in the chalet.
We drove down the valley to Thonon and loaded up with electrical and plumbing goodies for the kitchen and bathroom. No luck with the tiles and we had to get back to Morzine. So that afternoon Ohmri and I spent putting insulation in the kitchen floor, cutting around the many cables and running other cables through the false walls I put in last time, cables for lights and cables for power sockets. With all the insulation down I started the carry the sheets of 22mm chipboard up from the garage into the kitchen and lay them. So by the end of the evening we had a kitchen floor all ready for the tiles we did not have yet.

Friday morning and we drove down to Voiron's in the hope that they would have something like the tiles I wanted but no. So back down to Thonon and run around DIY shops until we arrived a Gedimat. Loads of tiles. I found something in my price range that looked a bit like the tiles I had wanted.
Got them and some adhesive. Right, back to the chalet to lay them. Figuring out where to start is not simple. All the books say start in the middle of the room and work out to the edges. Place the middle tile where the cuts will be even on both sides of the room. Well that's all well and good but I have a kitchen to go in on top of these tiles and nobody is going to see 2 of the edges so what's the point in spending ages getting all the cuts evenly all the way round. More to the point they will see the other two sides which will look strange with cuts along them. So discarding the books advice I tried to figure out where the tiles should go to give me full tiles down the two exposed sides and minimal cuts everywhere else. Laying the tiles was fine with Ohmri helping spread out the adhesive and putting the spacers in. We laid one pack of adhesive and quit for the day as we had no way of cutting the tiles and I did not want to mix up the second pack just to waste in. A barbecue in the evening sunshine finished a nice day.
I spent the evening building a frame and support for the bath. The bath which has been leaning up against a wall for months (well probably more like a year actually) has 5 of these spindly plastic adjustable legs under it that allows you to spend hours and hours adjusting them over and over again until you get so pissed off with them you just snap them off and place the bath on a couple of big blocks of timber (offcuts from the mezzanine beams) which works so much better and takes about 30 seconds to level up! A framework along the sides made of the framing timber which magically just happens to fit the gap between the bath and the rim and we are ready to go with the taps. But I will leave the plumbing until tomorrow.

Saturday and a quick visit to Voirons to get a tile cutting machine meant we could lay the last if the tiles ready for grouting Sunday morning. The few cuts we had to do should provide a few thin strips that will act as a skirting on the exposed edge against the wall.
We then started on the panelling in the bedroom but after a noisy hour or so of drilling and fixing the batons on the wall I fixed about a meter of planks on the wall only to realize 2 things. The batons were not deep enough for the light and plug sockets and that I had run out of gaine so I could not wire up the lights or plug sockets anyway! OK so abandon that project! I will have to take down the first meter or so of planks and double up the batons. This will allow the plugs and lights to fit better plus give me an easy way of getting the batons over the gaine that all over the wall.
So that left the bath. Turn off the water, cut through the hot and cold spurs weld on and extension and a screw threaded end. Screw on a long flexy pipe. Fix up a back board for the taps to fix too. This took me three attempts to get right. But finally I had the right combination of small hole to hold the pipe and big holes to allow the joint to do up tightly and enough room behind everything to allow the flexy pipe to actually flex rather than fold and the tap was in. The waste pipe was another nightmare. Plumbing seems to be all about how to get the most complicated tangle of pipes into the smallest least accessible space possible. I spent most of the afternoon fiddling about crammed between the toilet and the bath trying to tighten the plastic fittings on the waste pipe. Eventually it all seemed water tight, which is just as well as the main electricity distribution box is directly below the bath. Something that made me feel distinctly uneasy as I wallowed later that evening in several gallons of water.

Sunday was the last day and we had the grouting of the kitchen to do before we left. Ohmri and I worked quickly to grout all the gaps and clean up all the tiles and by 11:00 we had finished the floor all ready for next weekend and the placing of a few kitchen units!
Quick tidy up, pack the car and off home. Clean (for a change) and tired.

The Burping Builders Brother Builds

So my brother, Eddy came over to Switzerland to help me out for a week. He arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday we loaded up the car with half the kitchen that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so, and drove to the DIY shop. We bought some paint for the bedroom walls and some other bits and pieces and then set off for the chalet. We drove down to Morzine in the brilliant sunshine and arrived about 3 ish. We unloaded the car and set up home. Eddy and I got stuck straight in and started work on the steps.

We screwed timber to the edge of the steps and insulated the gap covering it all in chipboard. The concrete steps were not very even and needed to be levelled off on each step.


The next morning Eddy started in the drying room by plastering the plasterboard joints and filling the joints around all the walls.


Meanwhile I was upstairs at the top of the house fitting blue insulation in the salon. We shifted some of the sheets of 22mm chipboard up to the salon and started to fit the floor.

Stuck together and carefully kept about 10 to 15 mm from the walls of the chalet. The pieces were slotted into place after being chopped to fit with my jigsaw, (thanks Mum!)

Some time or other we did actually confirm that we are connected properly to the sewage. So pigs can actually fly after all! There are 2 manholes. One is just a soak away and is rightly connected to the down pipes of the gutters. The other is definitely a sewer (you can tell!) and
my toilet when flushed, empties into it!

On Monday morning we went to Viorons to order the timber for the mezzanine for Tuesday morning. We picked up a car load of insulation and wood with just enough room for Eddy to squeeze in behind. After Viorons and some food shopping we returned to the chalet and emptied the bedroom in order to get the floor in. We fitted the 40mm blue insulation onto the floor and cut it around the cables.

After the insulation we laid 19mm chipboard on to the floor. I have to be a little careful with the floor height as the balcony doors are at a set height as is the door I fitted. I have 70mm to play with and this needs to include the insulation the chipboard and the actual floor finish. So with 40mm of insulation and 19mm of chipboard I am up to 59mm leaving me a slim 11 mm! for the finish.
With the floor down the next job was to paint the walls. I had bought two types of "paint" for the walls, (you can see a tub in the photo above) It seems so long ago when I painted the test panels in this very room. Those test panels seemed to indicate that an undercoat made very little difference, but the paint had a slightly better finish if applied to a damp surface. Since then I had thought of another way of messing up the paint. I proposed to seal the surface of the concrete with PVA glue in water, and apply the paint to that. Seemed like a idea, so Eddy painted the walls with watered down glue while I finished off upstairs.

The tub of paint went on first and it was quite hard work. It goes on like plaster and has troweled on and troweled smooth. With Eddy slapping on the paint and me finishing the wall it took about three hours to empty the tub (25kg) and we had not done the entire wall! Well no matter we have another type of paint, this was a sack of powder I had to mix. It was 30 kg of powder and I reckoned it would make about the same amount of paint as the tub so into the now empty tub it went, problem, it made more than the tub! OK get another bucket mix the rest in that. Another problem was, once mixed, it was not white, it was grey! porridge coloured. Right, put it on the wall in the drying room Eddy has filled it and it was ready so on the paint went. It was a lot easier than the original tub of paint but it was still grey.

The bucket of extra paint was not needed so I dumped it, interestingly when I tipped it out it was white! This started me thinking maybe the bag of paint had settled and the pigment had settled to one end of the bag (that got mixed in the bucket) and the gravel and stones that make the texture had settled to the other end of the bag and had got mixed first. Well I had another bag but I definitely needed something bigger to mix it in.

So the next day was Tuesday and we were expecting the delivery from Viorons. I started work on the railings I needed to finish in order to complete the insulation in the salon and Eddy began work on the steps for the salon. Around 11 ish the delivery arrived. We unloaded the timber from the truck and I was a bit surprised at the size of the wood. On Monday we had bought 14 joist hangers each 60mm wide and ordered timber beams 60x160mm for the mezzanine. Voirons delivered 80x160 timber.
OK so I had to drive down to Voirons and change the 60's for 80's but no big deal.
When I got back we started work on the mezzanine.

2 temporary timbers screwed to either wall and the joist hangers bolted into the walls,

Slot the beams into the hangers and there it is.

(With Eddy sat on top)

Wednesday morning and Eddy was getting itchy feet, he desperately wanted to go walk up a mountain and he had come all the way here so who was I to stop him. He compromised on a walk down into town for supplies. He set out around 11 and I soon realized that by the time he got to town it would all be shut for the French 2 hour lunch break. Anyway while he was walking into town I started on the ceiling of the hallway.

Eddy got back about 2:30 and I had lit the fire as about 1 o'clock it had started snowing and I was a bit worried Eddy would come back soaked and freezing, well the fire warmed up the salon although Eddy got back warm and dry. I finished the tongue and groove on the ceiling.

Thursday and we decided to use the second bag of paint to finish the bedroom as well as building the two walls I wanted in the kitchen. The kitchen was first and we got started on the two walls

With the frames of the walls built, I decided not to skin the walls just yet as the electrics and plumbing need to go in. This can be done later and will not take 2 people so we moved onto painting the bedroom, for the third time. This time I had bought a big trough, big enough to mix all the paint in at one time in the hope that the paint would this time come out white rather than grey. Unfortunately it was still grey. Ah well I suppose it can all be painted anyway. The bagged stuff is about half the price of the tubs and is just about easier to put on the walls. I will have to check the budget to see how much I estimated for the walls and see if I can afford white paint as well or if the new colour scheme for the chalet is now "porridge"

Well we slapped in on the walls anyway. It went up quite well but there was not quite enough of it to finish the job.

The last thing we did was get all the horrible rock wool insulation Rob had dumped on me and cut it to fit the mezzanine beams.

By the end of the day the grey paint we had put up in the bedroom was beginning to dry and it seemed to me to be going paler (in places) so I still hold out a slim hope that it might be white when I return in May, but I think it will all need painting one way or another.

Friday morning and a quick tidy up (Eddy had tidied up most of the chalet the day of his walk into town) and we drove back to Zurich to a very welcome shower and Eddies plane home.

Thanks Eddy for your help it was a great few days and I really had fun. I might have been a bit obsessed at times but my excuse is that I know how much there is to do and how much time I need to spend doing it all. Thanks Siewling for the curry, it was really good.

All in all a very useful week, we got quite a lot done especially the mezzanine which would have been really difficult on my own. The salon floor is just about finished except for a piece around the fireplace, the salon railings have been started, the mezzanine structure is finished (the electrics need to go in and the floor on top). The kitchen walls are up, although not skinned but they are up. The bedroom floor is in and the walls are painted (three different colours but painted!) the bathroom floor has been relaid with 40 mm, three flights of stairs have been completed. The drying room wall has been painted and I have loads of timber to be getting on with.

So the plan is to return, evening of May 20th (Wednesday) for four days (leave on Sunday) and the list of jobs is as endless as ever but the main points would be (in no order)

• Plumb bath and shower
• Floor in bath room
• Fix small but annoying leaks in bathroom
• Tongue and groove the bedroom wall, with all the electrics
• Electrics in Kitchen
• Electrics in Mezzanine
• Electrics in Salon
• Studding for new bedroom and bathroom
• Doors everywhere
• Kitchen floor
• Kitchen units
• Hall Electrics
• Hall floor
• and on and on and on...
  

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!