Disaster struck

My priority today was to try and see if the problem concerning the mis-positioning of my kitchen walls could be resolved without tearing them down and rebuilding them. My plan was to drive to Brico-Depot before they closed at 1.00 pm to take detailed measurements of their base units as I’d done yesterday at Brico-Marché in Le Bugue and pick up any other information that might help. But it was to be thwarted.

I was quietly drinking a cup of tea mid-morning and thinking about my plan of action when there was an almighty thump and when I looked up I couldn’t see out of my caravan window because it was blocked by the roof of one of my ‘tonnelles’. I knew that high winds had been forecast for today with strong gusts so I’d made preparations accordingly by opening the curtains of my ‘tonnelles’ so the wind could blow through them rather than against them. But it appeared that this wasn’t enough this time.

Moments before there had been a huge gust which had snapped the ties of the ‘tonnelle’ concerned, picked it up, turned it over and hurled it against the side of my caravan. When I tried to get out to see what was going on I couldn’t because the force of the wind was so great blowing the ‘tonnelle’ against the outside of my caravan door that I couldn’t open it.

I managed to however, when the wind dropped slightly and this is what I found although the pictures were taken after I’d removed the ‘tonnelle’s’ side curtains which were being blown in the wind and risked being further damaged and moved the framework away from my caravan.

As can be seen, several parts of the framework have been broken exactly as had occurred almost a year ago when the same thing happened with my original ‘tonnelle’. However, I’m a ‘glass-half-full’ kind of a person and as I’ve never got around to disposing of the parts, damaged and otherwise, of the original ‘tonnelle’ I decided to go and see what I could find. Here’s what I managed to salvage.

The bundle shown above contains just about everything I need to repair this ‘tonnelle’. Some of the parts are a little bit rusty from where they’ve been left outside for so long but that won’t matter. There’s also a part of this damaged ‘tonnelle’ that I don’t have a replacement for. However, it’s straight and the damage it’s suffered is only slight in the form of a crack in one of its welds. The crack is actually a bit rusty so it might have been there before today’s incident, so I don’t think it will be important.

It’s still blowing a hooley out there so I’ve added another extra strong tie-down to the second ‘tonnelle’ which is weathering the storm quite well despite the wind trying to rip its roof off. I can’t do anything more for now until the wind drops fully after which I’ll have a go at getting the damaged one back into some kind of shape as although I think there may be a few nicks in its fabric, its condition otherwise doesn’t look too bad. Getting the framework upright again without doing any more damage will be quite a challenge, though.

I didn’t end up making it to Brico-Depot of course, which means that I’ll have to ‘wing’ my decision about the mis-positioned kitchen walls. However, this afternoon I’ve been carefully checking the geometry by drawing a series of very detailed drawings and I think that I can get around the problem when I fit my kitchen units without too much effort. I hope I’m right because after tomorrow I doubt there’ll be another opportunity to return to the issue 🙁