C’est fini!

Yup, I’ve now finished the work on my fireplace. Having applied the glossy coating onto the tiles a few days ago, this morning I thought I might as well finish off the job completely. So I nipped down to Les Briconautes just before they closed and picked up a can of ‘Lait de brillance’. This is a final coating that you apply to seal in and maintain the gloss and according to the can, the less you dilute it, the deeper the gloss is when it dries. I decided not to make it too strong as the new tiles would then look totally out of place with the originals, which are ‘aged’, with a shine but without having a ‘just polished’ look to them.

And I’m very pleased with the final results. Things haven’t turned out perfectly, but how often is that the case, and there are a couple of things that I’d have done differently if I’d known then what I know now. For example, the plain red hand-made tiles that I’ve used on the wood-burner platform had surfaces with ‘open pores’ on them that attracted adhesive and grout and proved to be almost impossible to get clean again. So as a result, quite a few of them have a greyish patina. I’d hoped that the cleaner that I’d bought would have done the trick, but it didn’t and that was what I meant when I said previously that it didn’t seem to have done very much after I’d used it 😐 However, I don’t think that this is a serious problem as in a way it adds to their ‘aged’ look and I’m sure that as time passes and everything becomes more used, it will become less and less noticeable. Anyway, here are some final pics of the finished job.

So it’s job done. It’s not the end, but it is the end of the beginning. As the tiles are now sealed, I don’t need to worry about rain dripping down the chimney and can start to plan the opening up of the flue and the installation of my new wood-burner which has been standing in my kitchen since the beginning of this year. But that can wait for a little while. Starting tomorrow, I can now turn my attention back to the X-Air so I can get it back together and ready to fly again. I have an appointment with my new French doctor in Rouffignac on Thursday afternoon to arrange for my ‘Certificat d’apptitude a la pratique d’ULM’. This is a medical sign-off that I need in order to fly a French microlight. It’s similar to the UK medical declaration but whereas in the UK there’s the usual burdensome overkill of having to complete a complicated ‘official’ form and have it signed (at your cost) and stamped every year when you’re my age by your GP, here in France it consists just of a single letter from my French doctor which will last me for life. One of the many cost-saving advantages of flying microlights in France compared to the UK. How refreshing. I could begin to enjoy this 😀