Nearly there

I felt distinctly off the pace today. Part of the reason was last night’s thunderstorm which, although it was no way near as violent as we have had from time to time, still succeeded in disturbing my sleep. The other reason was that I had to get up twice in the night to apply cream to insect bites which are still plaguing me, and were keeping me awake. Because it’s still so warm I’m spraying the house every evening but I’m still getting caught with some nasty bites, and even as I type this I can feel another new one on the top of my left arm.

So although the day was fine enough, and especially so in the late afternoon, I once again put the idea of flying to one side. I decided that even though I didn’t feel much like it, I’d continue with the preparatory work for installing my wood burner. Going off on a bit of tangent for a brief moment, some friends who keep up regularly with ‘My Trike’ have told me that they enjoy reading about the work and projects that I’ve undertaken in the house, which is why I continue posting about them. I think that they reflect the kind of problems that anyone coming to France, especially to the kind of area and the kind of house that I’ve chosen, are likely to experience. Many people would, of course, have the kind of budget that would allow them to get professionals in and knock them all off in one go. I don’t enjoy that luxury, unfortunately, but even if I did, I’d probably still be doing much of the work myself anyway. I’m a hard task-master and when I do things myself, I get the kind of job that I want and that I’m happy with and in any case, as I’m retired and have the time available (and the skills), what would I be doing otherwise if someone else was doing all the work?

Anyway, getting back on track again, I’ve mentioned on previous occasions that although the previous resident had blocked off the chimney and had a wood burner of their own, they had installed it on the floor next to the fireplace and had tapped it into the flue via a tube through its side. Before I can install my own wood burner, this had to come out and the hole made good, and that’s what I decided to do today. Like many of my jobs, I didn’t take a ‘before’ picture – the main reason being that as I have done on many occasions, I start the job without realising it. What happened today was that I saw a small bit of the tube sticking out of the side of the chimney that I could grab onto with mole grips, so I did in order to see if it would budge. Before I knew it, I’d pulled half of it out of the stonework, so that was it. Here’s the only ‘before’ pic of the tube that I could find, which I took before I began work on the fireplace several months ago.

And here’s the tube after I’d pulled it right out and taken it outside – as you can see, it was almost a metre long and had been inserted into the flue through solid stonework.

So after I’d taken it out, I then had to make good the hole that was left behind in the side of the fireplace. I decided that I wouldn’t cheat and just make good the outside end that you could see but to make it solid again right through from end-to-end. That way I knew that I wouldn’t have any problems in the future with old stonework collapsing or whatever inside the fireplace, where it would then be difficult to get to. I used ordinary sand and cement mortar for the job and lumps of stone that matched the fireplace stonework that I just picked up around my garden. The main problem I had was having to work in a confined space and some mortar fell out of each end, into the flue (and thence onto the chimney sealing plate, which I’ll soon be having to remove) and onto the floor, but I was eventually successful in finishing the job off to my satisfaction. Here’s a pic showing how it ended up at the room end (chimney end not accessible!)

I used yellow sand and ordinary cement, which I now know will dry out to the wrong colour if used for the whole job including the pointing, so I’ve left plenty of room in the joints for me to finish off by pointing out the joints with mortar made using white cement. I might do that tomorrow, but then again, now the hole is sealed I can do that at any time. So I might take a drive over to Leroy Merlin where I got my kitchen worktops from, who I know stock all of the equipment and fittings that I will need for installing my wood burner ie flue liners, collars and brackets, sealers etc. So I’m just about ready to get my wood burner in, after all this time, and it’s beginning to get quite exciting 🙂