A super lady

In France, in this part anyway, most, if not all, of the chimneys open directly to the sky. This means that when it rains, water would usually just go straight in and find itself eventually in the fireplace at the bottom if it rains long and hard enough. To prevent this happening, the chimneys have either a stone slab placed on their tops mounted on blocks with gaps in, so the smoke can get out, or tiles in a tent-like shape, as you can see are fitted on my neighbour’s house in the first pic of my previous post. My chimney had tiles too, but they were blown away at some time by high winds, allowing the rain to get in, and for some time too by the look of the marks on the back and sides of my ‘cheminée’. I was originally going to get someone to sort the problem out last autumn by capping my chimney and doing some other work on the ridge of the roof, but after saying that they would, they never came back to do the work. So I’ve managed in the meantime by having old tins and plastic containers on the horizontal surface of the new fireplace I made to take my ‘poêle à bois’ to catch any rainwater coming down until such time as I could sort the problem out myself at the same time as installing my wood burner.

That moment came closer with the arrival of my new roof ladder at the beginning of this week, which allowed me to get up onto the roof for preliminary investigations. I now know that so long as I fit a temporary chimney cap that’s heavy enough not to be blown away by winter winds, I can go ahead at full speed and install my wood burner, which will make so much difference this winter compared to last. I’ve decided to ditch the idea of tiles and go for a nice solid stone slab and so I’ve been going to various places to see if I can find a suitable one. I started by going yesterday to Point P, the local builders’ merchants in Montignac where the lady who originally got my floor tiles for me has always been so helpful. There were a few slabs of the right dimensions (60 x 40 cm) from various suppliers but I thought I’d continue looking before making a final decision, so I then went to Brico Depot in Perigueux. That was a waste of time as they had nothing of the correct dimensions, so today I made a visit to Périgord Noir Bricolage to see what they had to offer. Again, the answer was nothing, so I decided to stop wasting time and go back to Point P.

My lady was there behind her desk in the showroom as usual and I explained to her what I was wanting to do. She came outside to view the samples I’d seen but explained that regrettably it isn’t possible to supply a single piece of such items, which are usually purchased in quantity, of course, to pave over fairly large areas. I said that no worry, I could make my own (with some light concrete and a wooden mould) but that it would have been so much easier if I could have just got my hands on a single slab.

She told me to wait a moment while she got her ‘jaunes’ (yellow hi viz jacket) so we could go into the yard, and as we walked together down one side she exclaimed ‘Voilà!’ There was a single slab of the right dimensions and colour lying with some other bits and pieces on a small pile of pallets and she told me I could have it if it was suitable. Naturally, I was delighted! As we walked back towards the office, she told me that she couldn’t charge for it and when I said that that wasn’t necessary, she assured me that it would be ‘un petit cadeau’ (a small gift). I said that I also needed a few small blocks to mount it on, so ended up with initially four, but finally eight small paving blocks that I thought would do the job. So then we went back into the office to total things up. As she said before, the slab was free but that she’d have to charge for the blocks, and the total sum owed came to 2.93€!

What a super lady and she gave me the loveliest smile as she took my cash. I told her, in French of course, that I’d have to add her to my Christmas card list, and she said that she’d prefer a box of chocolates. Ladies are the same everywhere, aren’t they 🙂

Here are a couple of pics of what I got to make my chimney cap out of – all for 2.93€ and all thanks to the super lady at Point P builders’ merchants.

OK, so now where do I get a box of chocolates from? 😉