And neither did I say it would be precision engineering (sorry Victor 🙂 ). I’m talking about the repair I had in mind for the ridge piece of the damaged ‘tonnelle’ that I want to repair and, hopefully, bring back into use. To start off with it looked as shown in the image below (this is actually the ridge piece from the ‘tonnelle’ that was destroyed by the wind in 2021 but the damage was identical, funny that).

I planned on using narrow strips of thin metal for the repair and found exactly what I wanted at Leroy Merlin in the form of a small sheet of 0.8mm thick galvanised steel for only 4.95€. All that I then needed to do was cut the strips and use them to re-join the broken pieces to the ridge-piece proper using pop rivets. Here’s how it came out.

The end result seems to be surprisingly strong and rigid but the proof will be tomorrow when I finally set about reassembling the ‘tonnelle’. All I now have to do is run a file over the repairs to remove the sharp edges and corners and give them a flash over with matte black paint. Like I say, it still won’t be pretty but if it works, that’ll do me 😉

I’ve had another very productive, but tiring week-end and as I sit here enjoying a wonderful cool late spring evening after a scorchingly hot day, I feel that I deserve the cup of tea that I’m also enjoying. For the past few weeks I’ve been focused solely on one thing, namely to deal with everything that would create external demands on me so when the time comes I can concentrate exclusively on my house.

That’s why I fitted a new floor in my large trailer, so I can take it to Bordeaux to pick up the two Ikea fitted units for bedrooms 1 and 2 in a week or so’s time. It’s why I gave my car a thorough clean inside and out after something like a year and it’s why I cut the grass when I did, although it’ll need to be done again this week. And it’s why I completed all the work on the outside lighting and the satellite dish so all of my exterior jobs are done for now leaving me free to concentrate on the interior.

In the same vein I had some specific tasks planned for this week-end, starting with the trailer. Although the new floor will be perfect, the mudguards that had been damaged and in one instance, wrenched off by careless Brico Depot staff, still needed repairing. I received the materials for this a week or so ago in the form of some clear epoxy resin and some fibreglass mat and I wanted to do the work now while the weather is warm and dry.

My idea was the straighten out the damaged fixing points and epoxy large metal washers over the gaps where the mounting holes should have been and then add more mat and epoxy on the backs of the wings to make the mounting points even stronger. It seems to have worked well. The resin is now glass-like and the wings now seem to be very strongly attached, possibly more strongly than they were originally. The following shots show what I mean.

That just left one small final job to be done on the trailer – namely fitting the four internal tie-down eyes in its corners. These are essential, especially for preventing large, heavy loads, like a ride-on mower, from shifting around and being damaged. They’ll also be needed when I pick up the cabinets from Ikea. It’s a pity that I didn’t have any Hammerite paint handy. I have a can in the storage but it’s not accessible right now, so maybe I’ll paint them later when I can get to it.

But now onto the week-end’s star job. The framework of the last ‘tonnelle’ that blew over in the winter high winds had been lying upturned outside my caravan door ever since it happened. I’d removed the fabric walls and roof at the time and as far I can recall, I don’t think they’d suffered any great damage, although I’ll need to check. The same didn’t go for the tubular metal framework though.

Fortunately I’d never got around to disposing of the framework of the first ‘tonnelle’ that blew over back in 2021 and although much of it had been destroyed, there were adequate undamaged parts left over to make the current one good. The ridge pieces of both ‘tonnelles’ were broken due to appallingly weak welds (Chinese, so you get what you pay for I guess) but I think I’ll be able to repair the current one with some narrow strips of thin sheet metal and a few pop rivets.

So today’s main job was to begin resurrecting the damaged ‘tonnelle’ starting with getting the main framework back upright, complete and back in position. This needed its original contents, my large glass-topped garden table and chairs, to be moved and the area cleared of all mess and rubbish and here’s where I’d got to by the early evening.

The weather forecast for the next couple of days is for highs of 28 degrees Celsius and fairly light winds, so with a bit of luck I should be able to get the main work done and possibly have the ‘tonnelle’ standing again by the end of the day. I’m not quite sure where to source the thin metal from for now but I think that strips from an old tin can might do the job perfectly.

That just left the other job that I needed to do today, although actually I did it first. Ever since the plasterboard guys installed the interior walls and partitions back in February the house’s interior doors had been stored in my last remaining ‘tonnelle’, often in appalling weather conditions. In fact its roof was ripped off by the wind and before I could get a chance to repair it, it was open to the sky and rain fell for some time onto the doors, which I’d wrapped in a waterproof plastic tarp.

Waterproof doesn’t always mean waterproof, though, and I’d been wanting to get the doors back into the house for some time. The wild-card was that I couldn’t do it, though, without my large trailer. You can see where this is heading…

When I pulled them out this morning and uncovered them I was delighted and relieved to find that the waterproof tarp had done its job perfectly and the doors were totally unmarked and as dry as a bone. They were a bit unwieldy to get on and off the trailer single-handedly but I succeeded and here they are safely stored in bedroom 2 where they can stay until the floor tiles have been laid in the house.

I think it was getting the ‘tonnelle’ framework back upright and back in position that did it, but in a way I feel that the the pressure that had been hanging over me, for some time actually, is now beginning to recede. If I can get the repair work that’s needed on the ‘tonnelle’ framework done tomorrow, that really will put the cherry on top of the cake and I’ll be able to focus just on the interior of the house. Well, after I’ve cut the grass that is 😕

I had quite a good Freesat signal at my old house at Plazac, until the pine trees next door began to block out the signal that is. I want to have Freesat back again in my new house and mounted the satellite dish that I sourced from the UK on the wall in readiness a few weeks ago. I haven’t been able to try it out though, because of other priorities and anyway, when I checked the socket that the electrician installed in the living room I found that I needed to buy a new cable with a female connector plug.

The cable arrived today and late this afternoon I took my satellite finder up to the top of my ladder and aligned the dish as best I could. I then had to take my TV and Humax box into my new living room and run a power cable as well because the house hasn’t yet been connected to electricity. When I connected the system up, it appeared that the channels that were previously stored in the Humax box were still there but with all of the tweaking and fiddling I lost them and had to perform another channel search after I’d got the best signal that I could from the 28.2E satellite that hosts Freesat along with Sky and various other channels.

Lo and behold, although it was almost impossible to find the optimum alignment because my satellite finder was just too variable and unstable, Freesat came up as before on my TV.

I don’t think that I’ve got the optimum dish alignment because although all of the standard radio and TV stations are present and working, only the BBC HD channels have been recognized whereas I’m sure that I had them at Plazac. But I’m going to leave things be for now and probably won’t do any more fiddling until after I’ve moved in as I have other things to attend to. If what I have now is the best signal possible, though, unfortunately I think I’ll need to go for a bigger diameter dish. Anyway, I’ll have to wait and see..

We’ve had one of the worst springs since I’ve been here, with long periods of rainy days, and when it hasn’t been raining, high winds. The latter have made me fearful of losing my last ‘tonnelle’ (garden gazebo tent) as not only have we had gale force gusts but also many days when they have persisted for 24 hours or more. So the number of days when I could go flying have been few and far between.

But yesterday I seized the opportunity, not because it was a good flying day, far from it actually, but because if I failed to take advantage of what was a small window I didn’t know when the next chance would arise. The morning started off with light winds and a fairly calm sky but before I could take off I first had to prepare my flight and then clean the Savannah which, although not having been flown since the last time it was cleaned, was covered in a goodly layer of brown dust and pollen.

Only then was I ready to go, at something after 1.30 pm, by which time the wind from the north-west had picked up a bit and from the look of the solidly defined low-level cumulus cloud that had formed, flying conditions had become a lot more bumpy. However, although not ideal, conditions were still far from unflyable and with rain and even thunder forecast to move in from the north by 4.00-5.00 pm the weather window was just too good to miss.

Here’s the route that I had planned – outbound with touch-and-goes at Sarlat and Figeac and another at Fumel after skirting by Cahors before heading inbound back to Malbec. In fact, it didn’t work out like that because the conditions deteriorated and I cut the southern part and roughly followed the track indicated by the red line. Actually, I went a little bit further south than shown but the red line gives a good idea of the decision that I took while in the air.

Now the flight itself. I had two GoPros set up, one on the right wing and the other in the cabin, but as usual their batteries gave out after I’d left Figeac, long before the end of the flight. Although I had power-banks connected, I now know that you have to remove the GoPro batteries for them to actually work. I also had the one in the cabin connected up to record my voice and the radio, but this was the first time that I’ve had it working and the results left a bit to be desired.

So I’ve decided not to make a video of the flight but instead have lifted still images from the footage that I obtained from the two GoPros. Many of the images are in ‘pairs’ with the shots from both GoPros having been taken at about the same time showing the view from the cabin and the same view from outside. First the take off from Malbec.

Heading down towards Sarlat flying over the River Dordogne and passing by the small town of Domme.

Turning final for runway 28 at Sarlat.

Final to land at Sarlat.

The landing at Sarlat.

Climbing out from Sarlat on a heading of 280 prior to a long right-hand turn to head south-east towards Figeac.

Approaching to join left-hand downwind for runway 29 at Figeac. I didn’t like the look of the murky weather off to the east but Figeac seems prone to this and I think it has to do with the high ground off in that direction. Figeac is at an elevation of 1100 metres but the high ground at about 90 kms to the east tops out at about 4700.

But in any case, I didn’t much like the look of the murk so as there was no other traffic, I decided to do a quick, tight, low-level circuit and approach and get out of there as fast as possible. This was turning base leg at around about 300 feet above ground level, a couple of hundred feet lower than I would normally have done it. I’d not seen that little area with the lake so close up before!

Turning final for runway 29 at Figeac.

Final to land, runway 29 at Figeac.

Landing, runway 29 at Figeac.

Climbing out on a heading of 290 at Figeac.

The last shot was taken as I was turning left to head south down towards Cahors, which I eventually decided not to do because the murkiness down there was increasing and flying conditions were becoming more and more bumpy. I thought the shot shows why flying in south-west France, in this case in the Lot, is not everyone’s cup of tea. With all of those trees down there it’s not a good place to have an engine failure 🙁

After turning to head back to Malbec I ended up joining the return track that I’d prepared at Belves. Amazingly, because of the deep shadow that was being cast by the cloud, I never saw the airfield there even though it was right on my nose.

The same happened again at Malbec and I was right on top of the airfield by the time I found it. But not to worry, a quick circuit to the north and back again squeezing between the airfield and Fleurac and although I had been concerned that landing back at Malbec would be tricky in those conditions, I enjoyed the most benign landing of the whole flight. Just shows you, you never can tell 😉

Videos covering days 29,30 and 31 leading up to the work finally being done to resolve my new house’s roof issues in the first week of February 2023.

The second one was tricky and took a while to do. I’ve got material stored on my computer bringing the build right up to the present day. Hopefully from now on in things will be much simpler and I’ll be able to get new videos done quicker to get up to date again.

This post is aimed at everyone who thinks that life in rural France is just one long holiday, like that TV programme Escape to the Sun, but on steroids. Well, it isn’t, not all of the time anyway.

A couple of posts back I explained how mainly due to a long period of wet weather, but also because of the work that’s been going on on my land putting in a new septic tank with all that that entails, the grass had grown incredibly long. Usually by this time of the year my grass cutting programme using my trusty Jonsered ride-on mower is well underway but by the time all of the fates had aligned sufficiently for me to be able to cut the grass for the first time it was much too long for that.

So I had no alternative other than to attack it by hand – or more correctly, using my hand-held brush cutter. This had two results. Firstly, the work was so tough that it broke my old machine and I had to order a new one, and secondly, the long grass that I cut down was left lying on the ground. Before the new machine arrived I had to finish the initial cut using my ride-on mower whether I liked it or not. I didn’t and neither did my machine due to the volume of grass I was forcing it to cut but although its cutting belt screamed and smoked a few times, I got the job done without it snapping.

But that still left the problem of the grass left lying on the ground, a problem compounded by a bit more rain in the meantime. We’ve had a few dry days since and this morning I thought I’d check the grass, which is rapidly turning into hay, to see whether it was dry enough to be lifted, and it was. The farmers around here will soon be cutting all the local fields for hay and they get the job done in a trice using machinery. I have no such luxury and the only way I could get rid of the grass was by raking it up using my lawn rake and taking it away and dumping it in the woods.

Cutting the grass, which usually takes me just a couple of hours or so, had already taken three days of back-breaking work. Today, if I was lucky and worked hard, I thought that I might get rid of the grass in a day which I did, making the total four days for the whole job. But boy, as I type this, don’t I know I’ve done a days’ work… 🙁

I originally thought about taking the grass away in my wheelbarrow but it didn’t take long for me to realise that if I did, I’d end up walking miles and be more knackered from that than from collecting the grass. So I decided to use my small trailer, which turned out to be an excellent decision. Here’s the first load with some of the raked heaps of grass in the background.

I ended up filling three trailer loads of grass in what was a very blustery day with the wind coming from all directions, seemingly at the same time on occasions. But I got the job done and although it was a shame to dump perfectly good, clean hay in the woods, I can still get to it and hopefully it’ll make good compost when I get to plant trees and shrubs later on. The area of the land that I had to rake was about 2000 sq. metres, so not that small an area, and here’s how it looked in the early evening after I’d finished the job.

So the grass is now in about the same condition as it would have been after an initial cut with my mower. The weather forecast for tomorrow is very good – still a bit windy but sunny and a high of 18 degrees C – so I’ll aim to get out there and give it a proper mow, this time leaving a few stripes behind 😉

After my efforts of yesterday I didn’t want to push myself too hard today so all I did in the house was put up the last of the ceiling lights in the bathroom and utility room. One of them is missing a small part – the sealing ring that holds the bulb in the body – and I’m waiting for a reply from the supplier to see if they can send me one if I place an order, as I need to, for two more units.

After I’d finished I took all the empty cardboard boxes that the lamps had arrived in to the ‘poubelle’ (waste bin) just up the road and then I treated myself to a well-deserved beer 😉

After my exertions of yesterday I originally intended to put the two ceiling lights up in my house’s corridor and then take the rest of the day off. Things snowballed, however, because after I’d done that I thought I’d seal them in the plastic bags in which they came prior to fully masking them and their connection cables ready for when I paint the ceiling.

Then, having done that I thought that I might as well do the same with all of the other ceiling lights that I’d put up previously in the living room.

After that I couldn’t stop. I thought that If I put more lights up and masked them prior to rubbing the ceilings down it would be better and save a lot of time compared to waiting until after I’d painted all the ceilings as the bare connection cables would have to be masked up anyway. So I went ahead and started putting more lights up and masking them as I went, starting with bedroom three.

Then I moved on to bedroom one.

And then the kitchen.

And I finished off by doing bedroom two.

I’ve now put up a total of 33 ceiling spots. In the process I found that I’d miscounted when I ordered them as I don’t have 41, I have 43! How I did that I don’t know, but I’ll need to order a couple more complete with bulbs. I also found I’d received one that was incomplete, so I’ll have to ask the supplier to send the missing part when they despatch my follow-up order.

So that ended up being a day well spent. I’m quite tired now having been up and down my steps umpteen times today, but it was worth it 😉

My intention was to spend this week-end putting up the ceiling coving in my living room and corridor but when I checked an email that I’d received from Brico-Depot I found that they were offering ‘10% off all purchases’ today in the form of ‘Bons d’Achat’ (vouchers) against store loyalty cards. So as I intended to spend around 2000€ on kitchen units and furniture it seemed like a good idea to make the purchase today, bring all of the units back to the house and store them in the main bedroom with the other stuff I’ve dropped in there.

I haven’t finished repairing my large trailer yet and both wings were only held on by two out of their four bolts, but I had no choice but to go with it as it was. I thought that if I took it easy it would be OK, and it would have been if one of the guys who helped me load the trailer hadn’t leant too hard on the weakest of the two and snapped one of its two remaining securing bolts out of the metal that was holding it on. So on top of everything else I had to do an emergency repair to get me home without the wing detaching completely.

Here’s everything that I bought loaded on the trailer ready for the drive home. In fact compared to what I’ve carried previously it wasn’t all that much really.

Here’s the emergency repair that I made to the wing. In fact I had to re-do it a couple of times on the way home because the ropes came loose and allowed the wing to drop down onto the tyre.

I had help loading the trailer at Brico-Depot from a couple of young guys, one of whom I think was another customer, so I was very grateful for that. The worst part though was unloading everything by myself at the house, especially the two 300cm worktops that were very heavy for just one person. But having damaged a long worktop at my hold house as a result of carrying it single-handed I took extra care and managed to get them into the bedroom without damaging them.

I had one disappointment when I received my ‘Bons d’Achat’ from Brico Depot after making my purchase. I expected to receive 200€ worth but the total only came to 100€. When I queried this I was told that this was the maximum per card no matter if the total purchase was more than 1000€ and sure enough, when I checked the email that I’d received there was some very small print saying as such, which I regard as very sneaky.

And in fact Brico-Depot won’t be giving too much away because there’s also a time-limit in which the ‘Bons’ have to be spent. I’ll spend all mine as there are lots of things that I need for the house, but I bet a lot of customers will not have read the small print and will allow their ‘Bons’ to lapse. Although the 100€ that I’ve received is nice I think that this Brico-Depot ‘promotion’ is a bit petty and very sneaky and for me it hasn’t enhanced their image one jot 😐

I had to go over to Le Bugue this morning as I had a 10€ Brico Marché voucher that had to be used by tomorrow. I put it towards a mitre joint cutting set to use when I start on the ceiling coving in my house. I tried it out when I got back and I wasn’t too impressed with the results, but I mustn’t be too hasty and will have to experiment with it a little bit more.

I was expecting the masking film that I ordered a few days ago to be delivered by UPS this afternoon so I thought it would be a good idea to be in the house when it arrived so it wasn’t ‘undelivered’ and taken away again. It struck me that now would be a good time to start on installing my LED ceiling lights in the living room and corridor as I’d prepped the ceilings in those areas a few days back, so I got cracking on them straight away.

After I’d got the hang of it, I was surprised by how quick and easy they were to fit. They have non-screw electrical connectors which I have to confess I’ve not had much luck with previously but these ones turned out to be a doddle to use and surprisingly effective. Here are the first two lights that went up, in the dining area of the living room.

Here’s the complete dining area with its four LED lights all in place.

I pressed on and by the late afternoon I’d managed to put up all 12 LED lights in the living room area which I didn’t think when I’d started I’d be able to do.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off the last two that I can put up, in the corridor, and then I’ll get back onto the ceiling coving. I wondered previously if I’d need to seal the walls before putting it up but the adhesive is described as ‘to be used on all kinds of porous surfaces’ with plaster being specifically mentioned. So I’m pleased that I can go ahead with the walls as they are.

I haven’t decided yet whether to mask the floor before I start. I think I will because otherwise I’ll have to pick up all of the tiny polystyrene fragments that result when the coving is cut before I then mask for sealing and painting of the ceilings. If I mask beforehand I can then get on with the painting straight away after masking up the windows and doorways. Who knows, I might even have the coving and ceilings in the living room and corridor finished by the end of the week-end 🙂

I sent the builder of my house an email yesterday saying that I needed to know what their plans are and when they expect the completion of my house will be. I received a long and thoughtful message back and the news it contained was not good.

The bottle neck is being created by my floor tiles as nothing can go ahead until they’ve been laid. The latest news is that the tiles should be delivered next week but there’s no guarantee that the plinths will arrive at the same time. The plinths go atop the tiles around the base of the walls as there will be no wooden skirting boards like we’re used to having in the UK.

But the worst news is that the matching mosaic tiles that will form the base of the ‘douche italienne’ (walk-in shower) are subject to a further month’s delay, which will make it impossible to go ahead with the installation of the bathroom.

The reason is that the floor tiles have to be laid before the wall tiles can go up and the latter have to go up before the WC, handbasin and shower can be installed. So on the basis of this information, it looks by my reckoning as though my house’s completion won’t be possible until at least late June and more likely July or even later.

I therefore sent another email off this morning saying that I’ve now got to make the best of a bad situation and as the builder can do little or nothing for a couple of weeks or so, I propose to start work immediately doing interior decorative work, prepping all of the walls and prepping and painting all of the ceilings throughout the whole house. The latter will be advantageous as it will then permit me to install the light fittings the cables for which are all still hanging out of the ceilings.

Today I ordered a large quantity of the plastic film that is used to mask up vehicles for painting. I intend to use that to mask all of the floors in the house room by room so I can prevent dirt and plaster dust contaminating the surface of the screed and once that arrives, possibly tomorrow, I can crack straight on getting the living room and corridor ready for fitting the ceiling coving.

I’ll then decide whether to put the coving up in the rest of the house or to finish off the living room and corridor ceilings beforehand. I fancy the latter as that will allow me to install a major part of the lighting in the house, 12 out of the 41 LED spots.

So the situation is not good but there’s nothing I or the builder can do about it and at least my plan will mean that the whole project will not be grinding to a halt and I’ll be cracking on with work that I’d have to do anyway in the normal way of things, after completion.

On a different topic, my new ‘débroussailleuse’ (brush cutter) arrived to day. It looks the part and although a bit heavier than my old one, is better balanced and more comfortable to use.

It started very easily and a brief test using the cutting head containing the nylon line showed that it works fine. I do have one slight reservation, however. Although it comes from a German manufacturer, the engine, although bigger and more powerful, looks like a dead ringer for the one on my old machine that has just packed up.

Maybe all of the machines like this one in the lower to medium price bracket (I can’t justify the cost of a Stihl, say, given the amount I will use it) use cheap Chinese motors, I don’t know. If so, I hope that the German manufacturer has asked for the screws used in its assembly to be Loctited as I don’t want this one to shake itself to bits while I’m using it 😐

Another long day but at the end of it I managed to get everything done that I wanted to this week-end, starting with my porch light. It didn’t take that long to put up but I do wonder if the people who design these things ever try installing them?

Connecting the earth was fiddly but OK because it was accessible and its screw meaty enough to take a decent size screwdriver. The same couldn’t be said for the other two connectors though, which were at the ends of two deep holes and with screw slots that no normal size Philips screwdriver could fit into.

The problem with that is it’s then easy to mash the slots up so badly when you’re trying to tighten the screws that you end up being unable to because then no screwdriver will fit into them. Luckily I had a suitable mini driver set and with patience and a stiff neck from having to bend over backwards to be able to look up and see what I was doing, I got the job done.

When I was asked by the gutter men, who fitted the soffit boards, if I wanted the light in the ‘middle’ of the porch I said that I didn’t. Because of the shape of the porch, its ‘middle’ is difficult to define, but anyway, I said I wanted it in the centre of the door and positioned mid-way between the front and back walls as I want it to light up the doorway. I think it turned out pretty well.

So that’s all of the exterior lights up now. I took quite a while choosing what styles to go for and I’m very pleased with how they’ve turned out as I think they complement each other and the style of the house very well. And as I also fitted the satellite dish a few days ago there’s now no more that I can do outside and I’ll be looking to start work inside doing what I can as soon as possible before the house is finished.

As a footnote, I also managed to clean my car as well today. It took longer (much longer!) than it did to put the porch light up and at the end the final result wasn’t half as good. The main problem, apart from I’ve left it too long between car-cleans, is that it has spent too long parked under the trees in the hot summer months and as a result its horizontal surfaces, its roof especially, are covered with tree sap.

I tried snow-foaming it a couple of times followed by pressure washing but that didn’t shift it and I also tried spraying on Kercher standard cleaning solution a couple of times and pressure washing, but to no avail. I’ll have to look for another solution but even so, after several very tiring hours of work, the car does look much better than it did 🙂

It’s raining gently as I type this but so far we seem to have avoided the thunderstorms that were forecast. My main goal when I got up this morning was to get the rest of the grass on my land cut before the rain arrived and to be honest, given the amount that I still had to do, I was pessimistic that I’d be able to do so.

Nevertheless, although I was getting tired after the effort of the past few days and had some aching muscles, I set to with a will to do my best and my old ‘débroussailleuse’ decided that it would also do its best to help me out.

It started pretty easily and was soon chomping its way through the grass on either side of my land where I drive in and out and the grass was brushing the underside of my car. But the signs were not good because when I stopped to refuel the machine and add more nylon line to its cutting head, when I went to restart it had locked solid just as it did before.

I thought I’d remove the starter pull mechanism to see if I could see anything obvious that was preventing it turning but there wasn’t, except when I went to turn the crankcase nut with my fingers, it did so easily again. Look, I know I’m on borrowed time with this machine and I have a new one on the way anyway, so there’s no point wondering about the why’s and wherefores, so I seized the opportunity, got it running again and went back to work.

But it wasn’t to last because the next time I stopped to refuel and add more nylon line, it did exactly the same thing again, and this time I couldn’t get it to turn. So that left me with two alternatives – either I could leave things and wait until my new machine arrives next week or I could get my ride-on mower out and see what I could do with that. I chose the latter.

It was tough work. The grass is very thick at its base and I had to go very slowly, start off with a very high cut and gradually keep trying to lower it with each pass. Even so, with the amount of grass going through the cutters the cutting belt keep screaming and smoking which was just what I was trying to avoid. But succeed I did even though it took a couple of hours or so to do what was left in the centre of the land. And by keep going back and attacking the very long, heavy stalks until they’d gone, it didn’t even end up looking too bad.

So that was a big relief. After the amount of work that I’ve done over the past few days I think I might take tomorrow off. Monday is another bank holiday here so I think I’ll use it to fit my new porch light and then give the car a good clean. Take my word for it, it needs it – inside and out 😐

I was thinking about putting my porch light up today but quite honestly, cutting the grass is far more pressing. Since I’ve been here, I don’t think I can remember seeing it grow as quickly as it is doing right now. Grass that I cut yesterday already looks to have put nearly 2″ (5cm) of growth back on again and if I don’t keep hacking it down, by the time I’ve finished the grass that I’ve already cut will be too long again for my ride-on mower.

So I forgot about the porch light and decided that I’d get cracking on the grass at the bottom of my land all around the caravan, which was rapidly making getting to the caravan like wading through a jungle – and not very nice when it’s wet! As the space behind the caravan is fairly restricted I thought I’d start with my Black and Decker electric strimmer which is a good, solid, heavy duty model which I’ve loaded with 2.4mm nylon line. I was so impressed with its performance that I continued with it for quite a while before thinking about transferring to my old motorised ‘débroussailleuse’.

Previously I’d been using that machine with its triple metal bladed cutter because the area up at the top where they’re building now has a lot of surface stone on it which would go through the nylon line like butter. However, as the Black and Decker with its nylon line was proving so effective on plain grass and weeds where there was no stone, I thought I’d try changing over from the blade to its nylon head.

And what a change! The machine was initially a bit reluctant to start today but once it got going it ran faultlessly again and did a fine job with the nylon line ripping the grass and weeds much faster than the blade had done. It’s heavier and more unwieldy than the Black and Decker but given the length of the grass at the bottom compared to at the top, it was very satisfying to see how quickly it munched its way through it.

There’s still quite a bit left to do – at least another day’s work, probably more – but here are some shots that I took before I went off for an outdoor shower.

The final shot, below, shows how much is still left to do and also gives an idea of just how long the grass has become in what has only been a very short time.

We have another fine day forecast for tomorrow with the temperature getting up to 25 degrees C by late afternoon, so with a bit of luck I should be able to make a good dent in the grass that’s left. Unfortunately, however, they’re then forecasting thunderstorms followed by rain for much of next week – just what I need as I’ll be unable to cut it while it’s wet and the rain will encourage it to keep growing as fast as it is now… or possibly even faster 🙁

Mmm… I don’t think so. Much to my surprise, I managed to get hold of some exact replacement screws this morning for my ‘débroussailleuse’ from les Briconautes in Montignac. Usually whenever I go there for almost anything I come out empty-handed because they don’t have the item I want or they’ve run out of stock, but today they came up trumps.

To be fair, they’ve always had a good range of nuts and bolts (what’s called ‘quincaillerie’ in France) and I think it may even have got better as the company seems to have been given a good shake-out to make them more competitive. Anyway, I got 100 each of screws and washers for 7€ which I didn’t think was too bad at all.

I couldn’t wait to give my machine another go after I’d replaced the missing screws and when I pulled the starter cord it made a bit of a clanking noise. After a couple of pulls some bits fell out but the machine started and continued running as before. As can be seen in the following image, there was a screw (yes, another screw…) and some bits of casting.

The larger piece was curved so I’d say that they were something to do with the crankcase area around the starter pull which would explain why the machine had appeared to be locked if they were preventing the starter pull rotor from turning. But anyway, the machine continued running perfectly so they can’t have been critical.

But of course, I’m living on borrowed time. I can’t in all honesty now sell the machine on for anything less than a give-away price even though it’s running because who knows how long it will continue doing so? It did run perfectly with no problems whatsoever for a couple of hours while I cut the grass between the house and the road as I’d intended to do yesterday but although I can’t be bothered to take it apart again to find out what’s broken, for all I know the crankcase could break apart at any time.

The new machine that I ordered yesterday from Germany is already on its way and I suppose I’ll now end up with the two of them. While I’m waiting I’ll continue using this old one on the grass at the back of my house, which I’m thinking may take me at least two or three days to get down to a height where I can use my ride-on by which time the new machine should have arrived. I’ll then just keep the old one in reserve or for doing really rough work but if the new one comes up to my expectations, I can’t see much point in hanging onto it 😕

After my last post about repairing my trailer I tried buying epoxy resin and fibreglass mat locally, but after driving around everywhere I eventually gave up. It seems that such items are unknown in this part of the world, or as rare as hens’ teeth anyway. Some places sold fibreglass mat but I couldn’t find anywhere selling either fibreglass (polyester) or epoxy resin, so it seems the sellers (or the buyers at least) at those places have no clue how it’s used.

As usual I ended up ordering what I wanted on the internet – from Germany for goodness sake as no suitable French supplier could be found – so it’ll be days before I get the materials and am able to finish my trailer repair. As this wasn’t wholly unexpected, I already had my next job identified – to hack my grass down to a manageable level so I can use my ride-on mower on it, which is impossible right now as it’s up to thigh height at least ie my waist height, in places!

For this I needed my ‘débroussailleuse’ (brush cutter) which has been waiting to be used again in my tool shed ever since I last used it when I first came onto my land in mid-2021 – I think that was the last time I used it, anyway. And it all started off so well.

I originally bought the machine when I was in my old house and as I knew it was going to get a pasting doing some heavy grass and weed cutting, I didn’t pay a huge amount for it – around 100€ I think at the time. It worked as well as you expect these cheap Chinese machines to ie OK until it stops, and began to prove difficult to start. That was until I swapped out the Chinese spark plug for a high quality one after which the machine actually ran extraordinarily (and unexpectedly) well.

Even today, after putting fresh fuel in its tank and priming its carburettor, it sprang into life after surprisingly few pulls on the starter cord and I spent longer trying to sort out my over-the-shoulder carrying harness than I did getting the engine to run. In no time at all I’d done a fairish area at the bottom of my land adjacent to the caravan and was well pleased with my efforts when I stopped for some lunch.

After lunch I thought that I’d do the area in front of the house facing the road just to make the site look tidier and I’d just started when the machine suddenly and unexpectedly stopped. When I took a closer look I could see that its carburettor was hanging off and that one of its securing screws was missing. That’s the trouble with these high-revving Chinese 2-stroke machines – they don’t Loctite their securing screws and the machines end up shaking themselves to bits.

The first thing that I had to do was remove the air cleaner and the associated parts that covered the screws holding the carburettor on.

Then I could get to the carburettor itself and the one securing screw that remained.

Temporarily I nicked a screw out of the machine’s handlebars just so I could get it back together and ensure that it was still running OK. It all went back together perfectly and soon I was ready to restart it. But would you believe it, when I pulled the starter cord the machine was as solid as a rock. I thought that it had probably seized up from running too lean when the carburettor was in the process of falling off, or that a piston ring had broken.

In any case, I took it all apart again and from the limited amount that I could see through the inlet port, nothing in the cylinder looked to be amiss.

So I put it all back together again and gave the starter cord another pull, but with the same result. The machine was still locked up. Now what to do? Nobody is interested in repairing these cheapoe machines and after what, eight or nine years at least, it didn’t owe me much, so I went into the caravan, did an internet search and ordered another one, this time from a German manufacturer (at least they say so). Trouble is, it’ll take at least a week to be delivered so I’m scuppered with my grass cutting until then.

Afterwards I went back to my existing machine and decided to see if I could turn its crank using a socket on the crankshaft bolt. To do that I had to remove the pull cord mechanism which I noted had also lost two of its securing screws. And what did I find? The crank turned easily and smoothly in both directions and there was also compression.

I couldn’t try starting it as by then I’d drained its tank ready to dispose of the machine at the ‘déchetterie’ but I will do of course, before taking such drastic action. The first thing though, is that I’ll have to get hold of some allen screws of the right size.

Then, who knows, I might be able to continue using it until the new machine arrives. It’ll be handy if I can but I won’t then need to have two of them. I’ll just give this one a clean up and put it up for sale on LeBonCoin where it’ll sell pretty quickly if it’s in full working order as it still looks great for its age 😉

One of the things that’s absolutely essential down here is a trailer. You need them for picking up goods for the house and garden, getting rid of house, garden and building waste, picking up wood for your wood-burner, transporting your ride-on mower and all manner of other things. Just about everyone has one and I’ve got two, actually, a smaller two-wheeler and a larger one with four wheels on two axles. The pair of them have been god-sends over the years.

When I acquired the larger of the two, new to me but not new, it had a marine plywood floor. Given how I use my trailers I didn’t think that this was a very good idea at the time, but I have to say that it gave me six years of good use before the problems began to become serious enough to warrant some kind of attention. And wouldn’t you just know it, things came to a head when I needed the trailer the most to help me move out of my old house.

I had to take an old ride-on mower to the ‘déchetterie’ (the local tip) and as I loaded it onto the trailer, it’s floor finally began to give in. I made it there and back but emergency action was required and I saved the day by cutting up some part-used roofing sheets that I had in my garden shed and nailing them in.

I knew that this could only be a temporary solution at best and kept my fingers crossed that I’d be able to transport the heavy items that I needed to construct a concrete base for the new tool store that I had planned for my land at Fleurac before the floor finally gave out. And it almost made it, but not quite.

While I was returning from Brico Depot with a big-bag of sand the weight proved too heavy for it and the bag fell through the floor. Luckily it was prevented from falling right through by wedging on an angle against one of the trailer’s horizontal floor supports and I made it back without further incident.

I still needed more heavy items for the concrete base and I had the brainwave of laying the reinforcing steel I needed in the floor of the trailer with other stuff on top of it, so the steel acted as a kind of temporary floor. It worked fine and I managed to pick up everything that I needed for the job.

It was then time to take a closer look at the floor of the trailer and the results were not good. Not only was the original flooring totally rotten but the roofing sheets that I’d put in as a temporary measure to help me move out of my old house just weren’t up to the job of supporting anything of any significant weight whatsoever.

So to all intents and purposes my large trailer has been out of commission since the middle of 2021, shortly after I moved onto my land at Fleurac. I couldn’t allow this to continue because as soon as the house is ready for me to move in, not only am I going to need to pick up all kinds of building and other materials but I’ll also have to start acquiring things for the garden – plants, small trees, bushes and so on, and these definitely will require the use of my large trailer.

So with this in mind I had to decide how to go about repairing its floor. I looked at two alternatives – just replacing the original marine plywood floor or upgrading it and going for galvanised steel. Surprisingly, the costs were not hugely different. Yes, 1mm galvanised steel plate was more expensive but not unduly so, and performance-wise it will far out-perform wood, so for me the choice was a no-brainer.

An internet search even found me a supplier who could deliver the sheets I needed already cut to the required dimensions and after arriving a week or so ago, today was the day to do the job, starting by ripping out all of the old wood.

It wasn’t my idea to make this into some kind of a ‘how-to’ so I didn’t take lots of photographs as the work proceeded. The sheets had been pre-cut to the width of the trailer and the spaces between its floor cross-member supports so it was just a matter of laying them onto the bare bed of the trailer, lining them up so they fitted square on the bed and tightly together, making one small adjustment with a grinding wheel and pop-riveting them all to the frame.

A total of 72 pop-rivets were used, 18 per sheet, which I hope will help in giving the floor maximum rigidity. Then it was just a matter of refitting the front and side panels and the rear tailgate

The job isn’t quite finished. I’ve got to drill two holes in each corner to take internal tie-downs and also repair a bolt hole on each wing which has split out. I originally bought some stout aluminium strip to do that but the more I think about it, the more I feel that a repair consisting of large washers (or pieces of the ali strip) bonded to the underside of the wing using fibreglass mat and epoxy resin would give a far better repair.

Trouble is, that means I can’t get hold of the necessary materials until Tuesday, after the bank holiday, so the job will have to wait until then. I found a few loose pop-rivets on one of the tailgate latches, so at least I can replace them tomorrow. After that I guess I’ll take the day off. I’d like to have gone flying but yet again the weather looks like being unsuitable. Typical 🙁

My new satellite dish. Just look at the colour match!

The electrician kindly fed lots of cable through the wall for me and left plenty for me to play with to make the connection to the dish. However, one of the idiots in the ‘Crépi’ gang cut all of it off, and more, without telling me leaving only a shortened tail sticking out of the wall. I was worried if there was going to be enough but only by luck and pulling as much more as I could out from inside was there just enough cable to connect the LNB.

I don’t think I pulled too hard to disconnect the cable from the living room wall socket but I’ll be sweating a bit until I can test the system and confirm that it works. Luckily I was able to hide the cable where it emerges through the wall behind the dish bracket and I sealed the hole with a generous blob of white mastic to keep water out.

The dish is also approximately lined up to connect to the Astra 2E satellite (Satellite Name: 28.2E ASTRA 2E | ASTRA 2F | ASTRA 2G, Distance: 38476km, Dish Setup Elevation: 31.6° Azimuth (true): 144.0° Azimuth (magn.): 142°) but I’ll complete the setup either once I’ve got my meter out of storage or I can borrow my friend Victor’s 🙂

Now I’m just waiting for the porch light to arrive. Once I’ve got that fitted that’ll be all that I’ve got to do, for the time being at least, on the outside of the house. My plans now are to move inside and start by sealing and undercoating the angles where the walls meet the ceiling in the living room and corridor. Then I can mount the coving in those areas by which time, if not before, the floor tiles should be down inside the whole house.

If the coving is then only partially up, it won’t matter because it’s a job that can be done at any time, even after I’ve moved in. The priority once the floor tiles are down and the plumbing connections are available will be to install the kitchen, a job which I thoroughly enjoy doing actually 😀

Not quite, because the house hasn’t yet been connected to the mains supply but after today the wall-mounted outdoor lighting is all up and ready to be switched on when the time comes. This is the first lamp that went up onto the wall, over the front double-doors facing the road.

Next was the one on the front of the house at the bedroom end.

Then the one on the gable at the living room end facing south.

Then the one on the back of the house at the living room end, facing east, followed by the one on the back at the bedroom end.

Now a couple of shots of the front facades.

Finally two shots to finish off showing the living room end and the back of the house.

It took me a long time to decide on what lights to go for and I think by going for a trad-modern design I made the right choice. I also think going for white was a good idea. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the satellite dish up tomorrow and who knows, if the porch light arrives I’ll be able to fit that as well. Then I’ll be able to move inside, although what’s holding everything up are the floor tiles and I still have no idea when they’ll be going down.

This weather is now beyond a joke. At a time when we’re usually getting warm, dry days with the temperature climbing through the 20s, instead we’ve got cold, wet ones often starting with mist, like this morning. So clearly not a day for working outside, meaning that putting up the outside lights on the house, repairing the floor of my large trailer and cutting the grass, which is now thick and knee-deep, would have to wait.

But I had things that I could do indoors, so the day would not be completely wasted. I had to go around the house’s interior walls with some fine filler where the plasterers had left nail holes showing and some rough bits, mainly around the corners of the window frames, and there was also a large patch needed where the electrician had initially positioned the heating thermostat too high and had then lowered it. It should really have been a job for the builder but what the heck.

I then moved onto another job that I couldn’t do until I knew exactly what colour the ‘Crépi’ would turn out to be. The satellite dish that I sourced from the UK because its design is much better than the comparable French versions that are available came in the usual matt black, or anthracite if you’re fussy. That didn’t matter when I fitted a similar one to my old house in Plazac but I didn’t much like the idea of hanging such an eyesore on my new one. So I decided to paint it to match.

I bought the paint that I needed the last time I was at Leroy Merlin – white undercoat and a fetching shade of ‘melon’ that looks like a dead ringer for the colour that my walls have now become. So I took everything I needed into the house’s living room, including two large sheets of packing cardboard that I laid on the floor, and did the job this afternoon. And it turned out pretty well as the following photographs show.

Très chic – very stylish. So now as soon as the weather allows I can put up the five wall-mounted outdoor lights and the satellite dish all at the same time, making the outside nearly complete. I’ve also now ordered a ceiling mounted light for the porch and with that up that should be it for me for a while.

As I mentioned at the time, the gang that applied the ‘Crépi’ annoyingly cut and shortened the satellite cable without telling me, so I just hope that the electrician left enough in the roof space to compensate. I should soon be able to find out … 😐

Three examples, one of which shows how NOT to do it. Yes, I know that I’ve talked about this before but it doesn’t do any harm to call out poor or badly done customer service when it happens because if nobody did, things would never get better.

I was expecting two deliveries to my house today, well at least one in the afternoon anyway. The first one I wasn’t too sure about. I ordered some exterior wall mounted lamps a few days ago and although it said that the delivery might happen today, the order confirmation gave a small range of possible delivery dates. I decided to go and check if any post had arrived approaching midday and to my surprise I spotted a box that had been left on my house’s doorstep.

This has happened a few times now and I don’t mind as things don’t get pinched too often in these parts and I’d rather get a delivery than a note in my post-box saying that as there was no reply the delivery couldn’t be made. It also helps to know most of the delivery drivers who are happy to leave boxes without a signature as they also know me. So good customer service in my book.

The box contained the 5 lamps that I’d ordered and here are a couple of shots of one of them.

They are the Philips ‘Creek’ model and I like them because they are made out of powder coated aluminium so should last well. I also think that their neo-traditional design and their colour will go well with the house and I’m looking forward to putting them up this week if the weather allows.

I’d already received confirmation that Geodis would be dropping by with a delivery later today, several actually. The first message said that it would be between 1.30 and 4.30pm and the second said that it would be between 3.15 and 4.15. I’ve always been very pleased with Geodis’s service as they’ve made several deliveries over the past couple of years all without any hitches. And, more surprisingly, all by the same driver who, having arrived early, at about 1.30pm this afternoon, took the trouble to walk down to my caravan to let me know he’d arrived.

He’d brought with him a delivery of galvanized sheet metal that I’d ordered to repair the floor of my large trailer which has been unusable for the best part of two years since its original wooden floor rotted through. I’ll be needing it more and more over the coming months to collect stuff needed for the house and garden, so I was pleased when it arrived.

And what great service by the Geodis driver who had already unloaded the demi-pallet and left it outside my tool store, which coincidentally he’d also delivered when I had first moved into my caravan. And he was very complimentary about my house too 😉

Now onto the last customer service shocker. I mentioned in a recent post that when I unloaded the pallet of items that I picked up from Leroy Merlin a week ago, I found that two cartons of wall tiles were smashed. Five minutes after I’d dashed off a message together with some photographs I received a call from LR customer services to drop back into their SAV (‘service après vente’, after sales department) where I would receive replacements or a refund. So far so very, very good.

After I’d received the Geodis delivery I thought it would be a good idea to go back to LR today as there was nothing doing either in or on the house and I needed a couple of things as well. My first stop was in the LR SAV where things began to go wrong almost immediately.

I gave them a copy of the message that I’d received from client services, a copy of the original order and photographs of the broken cartons and the smashed tiles. The young lady said OK, I should get a trolley, which I did returning with it empty. She asked where the tiles were. At my house, of course, I replied to which she said that she couldn’t do anything without the broken cartons and tiles.

I looked at her dumbstruck… well, not quite as anyone who knows me will understand. I asked her what she wanted to do with all of the pieces, and as she couldn’t give me any kind of meaningful reply, I said that I refused to go away to get the pieces and come back again and expected to receive replacements as nobody had told me previously that all the broken tile fragments were required.

I further suggested that given the amount that I’d spent at LR over the last couple of months, a not inconsiderable sum, I didn’t need to steal a couple of cartons of tiles and that perhaps it would be a good idea to refer the matter to someone a bit higher up.

I don’t mind making a fuss that everyone can overhear in a French customer services because firstly they are not used to it and everyone listens intently to what’s going on and secondly, because they expect compliance, the customer service agents are always more intimidated by the situation than I am.

I got my tiles, but shame on Leroy Merlin for allowing such a situation to arise. I have to say that after their impeccable record to date, it has somewhat dented my attitude towards them and I hope that it’s just a one-off occurrence 🙁

I’ve got plenty of work ahead of me, both in the garden and indoors, when my house is ready. The grass is way, way overdue for cutting and although the unpredictable weather hasn’t helped, the main problem stopping me getting my ride-on mower out and doing the job has been the amount of stone that was left behind after they’d finished installing the septic tank. Some of the pieces were quite large and as I found to my cost in my old house at Plazac, if you leave them and they go through the mower blades they can do quite a bit of damage. In fact I lost two mowers for just that reason.

So the day before yesterday I spent quite a bit of time clearing away as much as I could. It took quite a bit of effort too as I had to rake the stone pieces into a heap, some of which had to be prised out of the ground as they were sticking up to just the right height to hit the mower blades, shovel them into a bucket and then carry them away to dispose of them. And after I’d done that I did a bit of essential hand landscaping to remove the worst of the humps they’d left in the ground and contour the land a bit around the tank access covers and so on.

As I’ve not done much heavy work for going on a couple of years, I’m trying to build myself up again at a reasonable speed and to not overdo it. So yesterday I took it easy with the aim of getting stuck in a bit more today, which I did in the form of rubbing down walls and ceilings inside the house ready for painting. As I’ve got a lot of preparation work and painting to do, I wanted to use today as an exercise if you like, to see how much I could get done in a given amount of time.

And I was pleasantly surprised. Starting in the late morning and working right through non-stop, except for occasional rest breaks, I got the walls and ceilings done in the whole of the living room and corridor. And this was in spite of having to use the ghastly Stanley rubbing down tool with the extension handle. In fact despite my attempts to try to prevent it, it did cause some minor damage when its stupidly designed head kept flipping over which I’ll have to go back and repair so I’d recommend to anyone reading this, avoid the wretched tool like the plague.

The amount of space that I prepared today is by far and away the largest in the whole house so the rooms that I do later will be a doddle in comparison. The living room and hall are now ready for spraying with surface sealer, a job that I’m really looking forward to doing. Beforehand, though, I have to mask up the windows and doors which I think could take some time to do properly. I think also that on the evidence of the following photo, I’ll need to acquire some more protective clothing and equipment because the items that I already have are inaccessible in my storage.

I’ve cleaned myself off a bit now but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t somewhat knackered after I’d finished. In fact I took a little nap after which I felt much better. I’m hoping that they’ll be along very soon to lay the floor tiles in the house but one thing I’m sure is a racing certainty. We’ve got a forecast for rain the whole of this week which will mean that inevitably, as usual, they’ll be along to fit the shutters to the outside 🙁

After having done the long drive to Biganos on Sunday I did it again yesterday to pick up another 6 cartons of Frosty ‘wave’ pattern tiles.

The reason was that I’d been thinking about my wall design. Previously I’d settled on having a single row of ‘wave’ pattern tiles right around the bathroom as Leroy Merlin showed in one of their promotional images, below.

This was OK for the bathroom and the separate WC but as I want to have the same theme in the kitchen and a part of the ‘cellier’ as well, I was always less sure that it worked in those spaces. In both the kitchen and the cellier I will have worktops with storage underneath and wall cupboards above. The space between the worktop surfaces and the bottoms of the wall cupboards will be exactly the height of two tiles only one of which was to have been ‘wave’ pattern.

The more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve leaned towards having the whole space between the worktop surfaces and the bottoms of the wall cupboards tiled in the ‘wave’ pattern as shown in the following image.

I think it makes more sense and I didn’t have too much time to make up my mind. There’s no stock of the ‘wave’ pattern tiles in any Leroy Merlin store locally, which is why I had to go to Biganos, and I’m of the opinion that the product is going to be dropped. When I went to Biganos last Sunday, the stock there was over 80 cartons and as I write this the figure is down to just over 40, so it looks as though others are doing the same as me and going there especially while stocks last.

The decision means that I will need twice the quantity as previously. It also means that I’ll now have too many plain tiles, but that doesn’t matter as I can return those afterwards for a full refund. On the other hand, if I’d dithered over the ‘wave’ tiles, I think I could have ended up being disappointed. Anyway, the decision is made and that’s it – I’ve other things to think about!

I timed my departure yesterday until after a delivery I was expecting had arrived and sure enough the local postman drove his little yellow van down to my caravan and beeped his horn right on cue. The item I was expecting was an airless spray gun.

I didn’t even know such things existed until I began to research wall and ceiling painting on the internet when it became very clear that with the amount of painting I’ve got to do, not just walls and ceilings but all the shutters as well, I really needed one of these as it’ll probably more than halve the time that I’ll need to complete all the work.

These machines work at very high pressure, so high that if you put your hand in front of the nozzle while it’s working, the spray can penetrate your skin.

They come with a pistol and an extension tube, at least mine did, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to spray all of my ceilings using it from floor level without the need to use steps.

I’ll write more about it when I actually get to use it, but the principle is fairly simple. You dip the ‘supply’ tube into the container of whatever it is you’re wanting to spray together with a ‘return’ tube as the pump delivers more product than is sprayed out of the nozzle. Then you just switch on and start spraying until either you’ve finished or the container empties.

I just hope that it will be easier to use and more successful than another tool that I’ll be using to prepare the walls and ceilings, a Stanley sander on a long pole.

The concept is simple. As it’s on a pole, you can reach up to the ceiling without needing to balance on steps or whatever and then you can just use the sander like a floor mop to get a smooth surface ready for painting. Or at least you’d think so. But no, what they don’t tell you before you buy it is that the wizard designer at Stanley has given its head a universal joint.

So what’s wrong with that you ask? What you find in reality is as you’re ‘mopping’ from side to side, the joint flips over and you end up dragging the back of the head on the surface that you’re trying to make smooth, with the real danger of digging into it and making tram lines. Crazy. If this isn’t the worst, most over-engineered, tool that I’ve ever bought, it certainly must come pretty close to it.

My collection of tools and materials on the floor of bedroom three is growing by the day. Now that the floor screed is down, I was looking forward to being able to empty the storage that I’m paying for monthly and bring all of its contents into the bedrooms. At the rate things are going, though, there soon won’t be enough space.

In order to use the airless sprayer, things have to be carefully masked up. I’m going to fit coving around the tops of the walls throughout the whole house that will be painted white, the same as the ceilings. The walls, though, will be mainly coloured differently and so the coving and edges of the ceilings will have to be masked up before the walls are sprayed. This would be a tedious and time-consuming chore and in the hope of making the process less so, I’ve treated myself to a 3M professional masking machine.

The machine comes with a ‘starter’ roll of plastic film but I’ve already purchased extra rolls of masking paper to use with it as I imagine that I’ll be needing quite a lot of it.

Also shown in the above pic is a Stanley hand plasterboard sander that I purchased at the same time as the version with the extension handle. Luckily it’s so simple that apparently the Stanley design wizard couldn’t think of any way to over-engineer it and make it as difficult to use as the other one 😐

A bigger one this time, but from much closer to home, from Leroy Merlin in Chancelade to the west of Périgueux. As last time when I picked up the interior doors for my house from there, I decided that the best course of action was to hire a van from Leclerc at Trelissac, and just as well that I did because the whole pallet, that fitted nicely inside the van, must have been well over 800 kg in weight with the tiles alone coming in at just under 700 kg. My car would never have taken the load!

After my experience last week-end when picking up 6 cartons of tiles from Biganos and one of them was damaged, I thought that as there were 36 this time that I couldn’t check because they were wrapped on a pallet, it’d be a good idea to take a close look and some photographs before I left the warehouse.

As shown above, several cartons looked a bit suspicious and were worth having pictures of in advance of unpacking them. I found one more while I was unloading them, that someone had stepped on for goodness sake, although as far as I could tell the contents were undamaged.

But a couple or cartons weren’t so lucky as the next few shots show.

Here they are after I’d set them to one side while I carefully unloaded and stacked the rest on the floor of bedroom three.

The next shot shows the polystyrene coving (‘moulure’) that I’ll be putting up around all the tops of the walls throughout the whole house (50 x 2 metre lengths) and the plinths that will eventually go around the bottoms of the bedroom walls after I’ve laid the laminate floors. I put those in bedroom one.

And here’s the floor of bedroom three as the volume of stuff being stored in there gradually grows. I want to get the interior doors in there as soon as I can as well so I know they’ll be safely indoors, but I’ll need to get some help because when I carried them all down to the ‘tonnelle’ where they now are I strained my elbow which still hasn’t fully recovered.

Here’s some bright news to finish off . I sent a message to Leroy Merlin with a couple of photos showing the two damaged cartons of tiles. Within about 5 minutes my phone rang and a lady from SAV (‘Service Après Vente’, after-sales service) told me that if I’d like to pop back to the store they’ll either replace them or refund me. Now that’s what I call excellent customer service!

Biganos is to the south-west of Bordeaux on the edge of the Bay of Arcachon. It’s on the road to San Sebastien just over the border in northern Spain and during the summer holiday season the road is packed with traffic heading to the north of Spain and beyond. Although still busy, there was far less on it at this time of the year, though.

Nevertheless it was a really beautiful spring day, except for the chill in the wind that’s taking a while to shake off this year, and the day had a holiday feel to it with quite a few vehicles heading south from Belgium and Switzerland. But not, so far, from Holland.

I always say that you can tell when spring has arrived by the ‘grues’ (cranes) heading north from wintering in southern Spain and North Africa and the Dutch heading south after wintering in Holland, but so far they’re notable by their absence. But not for much longer I’ll wager 😉

When I arrived at the huge, sprawling commercial area in Biganos in which the Leroy Merlin store is located it had a surreal look to it. Apart from Leroy Merlin and a few small eateries, everywhere else was closed, so there were hectare on hectare of empty car parks bordered by hundreds of attractively designed, modern, low-rise stores of all types and of every colour you can think of. The French do these places so well, but not surprisingly given the weather in this part of the country.

As usual, I found the Leroy Merlin store very easily using Waze on my mobile phone and parked in a bay in its pick-up area. After queuing to register my arrival I went outside to wait for my tiles to be delivered. Maybe the weather had brought people out, but the car park was very busy and I took the following photo while I was waiting.

My six cartons arrived on a pallet on a small forklift and the young driver gave me a hand to lift them into the back of my car. The last one obviously contained some loose pieces so he said that if I wanted I could keep the pack, in case any of the broken tiles could be used for cut pieces, and he’d get me a replacement, which he did. I then left for home and left off checking until I got the packs unloaded and placed safely on the floor in bedroom three.

The next shot shows that the damaged carton contained 5 broken and 2 undamaged tiles, so a win for me as each tile costs just over 3€.

Here’s a shot of a carton that the tiles come in.

Just before leaving for Biganos a delivery from Leroy Merlin that I’d been waiting for arrived in a white van. I’ve not heard of Sunday deliveries before but Leroy Merlin uses a delivery service called Colisweb that delivers within 24 hours seven days a week using independent delivery agents. I think it’s great and the two items in the delivery that were out of stock and unavailable for pick-up next week with several other items I’ve ordered arrived next-day, on time and with no hassle, so no complaints from me.

You might be wondering why it was so important for me to go to Biganos today. The reason was that Biganos was the closest store to Fleurac that still had stocks of the tile I wanted with the wave motif. Others said that more would be available but on no specific date and one Leroy Merlin store said that the item was no longer available. As another supplier had told me the same thing, I couldn’t take the risk of placing an order, waiting for delivery and then being told that the product had been dropped, so I thought it best to seize the opportunity while I could.

The other reason for going today was that Didier told me last week that men would be along tomorrow to fit the shutters and if I could, I really wanted to be here while they were doing it. And now after clearing my decks today, I will be 🙂

The floor levelling screed went down over Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, so by today had had three days to cure. Typically for my house-build, we’ve had terrible weather since then, while the team was applying the ‘Crépi’ finish to the outside walls and it’s a huge surprise that they managed to end up with such a fantastic result.

It took them two days and by the time they’d finished on the second day it was raining hard so unfortunately they didn’t spend as much time as maybe they might have, clearing things up afterwards. One result of this was that they’d left a slab of hard Crépi in front of the main entrance that was up to the height of the doorstep. The problem with that was that if it was left, at times of really heavy rainfall, the water could flow down the entrance roadway and straight onto the doorstep.

I did go into the house yesterday, in my socks in case the floor screed was not fully hard enough to take my weight (it was), and because of the weather, the water coming out of the screed as it dried was causing a great deal of condensation inside the house, as the first image below shows.

Today was windy but dry with some bright spells, so I wanted to go inside, sweep the floor throughout the whole house to remove the many small concrete fragments that were left on its surface and in the corners and open all of the doors and windows to get some air passing through. Before I could do that though, I needed to remove the slab of Crépi in front of the main entrance, which I had to do with a pickaxe, and clear it away.

I also replaced the bridge that the builders had been using previously to enter the house so as to prevent as much muck as possible being walked into the house when work resumes next week.

Now shots of the interior as it now is with the new levelling screed down starting, as usual, with the living room. The house’s true proportions are now much more apparent.

Now the kitchen.

Looking across the living room towards the main entrance door, the separate WC and what will eventually be the cloaks cupboard.

Looking up the corridor towards the bedrooms.

The ‘cellier’ (utility room).

The bathroom.

Bedroom two. Now that the floor screed’s down, all of the windows are at a much more comfortable height, as they were planned to be, than previously.

Bedroom one.

The alcove in bedroom one that will be fitted out with an Ikea full height storage cupboard with mirror doors. Bedroom two has a similar alcove that will be fitted out in the same way.

Bedroom three. As can be seen in these final shots, I’ve already begun to use this bedroom for storage, at the moment the bathroom handbasin, its column, its mixer tap and two special keyless door locks for the bathroom and WC.

I was pleased to see that some good progress was made last week because it means that I’ll soon be able to start doing work inside the house myself. Because of this I needed to place a large order on Leroy Merlin for collection next week when the floor screed will be good and hard so I can store the items inside the house. They will include the wall tiles for the bathroom which will need to be available when the tiler arrives and so are very important.

I tried placing the order last night several times and to my astonishment, it was declined on each occasion. My bank, Crédit Agricole, operates a ceiling system for my account debit card and bank transfers and when I looked into it, I found that the problem was that due to the number of orders I’ve been placing recently for things to do with my house, I’d hit my debit card ceiling.

This was annoying but there was also another problem. I ordered the goods some time ago but left them in my Leroy Merlin pannier and now that I was trying to process the order, I found that there were no ‘wave’ motif wall tiles available at Périgueux. And I need 6 cartons. More worryingly, when I checked around other Leroy Merlin stores in the area, in the whole of Nouvelle Aquitaine actually, not only were there none locally but one store stated that the product was no longer available.

Bearing in mind that the supplier that I’d originally chosen for the same, or a similar, tile had told me the same thing, this was a cause of some concern. I searched further afield and lo and behold, I found that 80 cartons of the tile I need are available at Biganos, which is on the other side of Bordeaux. But there was another problem. If I couldn’t use my debit card to snap up the 6 cartons that I need, they might also sell out and I’d be left with a hole in my plans.

I dashed off a message to my bank asking for my ceiling to be raised thinking that nothing would happen until Monday at the earliest, or probably Tuesday as banks here are closed on Mondays. So imagine my surprise when I received a call from a customer service agent about the problem who arranged for the increase in ceiling that I’d asked for.

But that wasn’t the end of it. When I again placed the order it was declined yet again and when I logged into my bank account I found that the ceiling increase hadn’t gone through. While I was logged in I noticed that the CA customer service department is available until 5.30 pm on Saturdays and as it was around 5.00 pm I began ringing. All I kept getting after several tries was a ‘leave a message’ message so I was just about to give up when, at about 5.25 pm I got through.

It transpired that the previous customer service agent had increased my limit for bank transfers, not debit card transactions, and after the second one had taken the appropriate action I was at last able to place the Leroy Merlin order.

Two actually. The first one was for items that I will collect from Périgueux/Chancelade next week which had to exclude the tiles that that store could not supply. The next one was for six cartons of those tiles that I’ll be picking up – from Biganos. Tomorrow, so I hope the weather will be nice, because I’ll be making a trip towards the west coast 🙂

As expected, the ‘Crépi team’ were back on site this morning all set to finish the job off. Yesterday I noticed a small area at the bottom of the bedroom end wall where I thought they could have taken the level of the Crépi a bit lower and before they’d started I asked if they could add a little bit more by hand. Later on I noticed one of them doing just that and I found later when I put my drone up that he’d not only done what I asked but also a little bit more, so kudos to the team!

It didn’t take them long to get a coat of Crépi on and after that, like yesterday, it was all about getting the right finish. The weather started off dullish but chilly but went downhill from there and at times there were periods of quite heavy rain. Under the circumstances I think they did very well to produce such a fine quality job yet again.

I had to go out early on in the afternoon and by the time I returned at about 5.00 pm they’d cleared up and left. I took some shots but it was in the pouring rain, so not the best conditions in which to see the finished job for the first time.

To finish off with, here’s a close-up shot of the edge of the wall near the front door that shows the texture of the Crépi and also how clean and sharp this and all of the other edges on the building look.

They’d left a couple of unused sacks on the step of the living room front doors and of course they were soaking wet. I don’t know whether they contain a plastic sack inside the paper one. I hope they do, but in any case I moved them into the porch where the rain couldn’t reach them.

There’s an awful lot of mess left on the ground in front of the house which will all walk inside if it stays this wet, so it’ll have to be cleared away as best as possible. Quite a lot of sand has been left over after the ‘screed guys’ finished yesterday so I think I’ll see if I can put that into a ‘big-bag’ over the week-end rather than just let it be lost in the earth.

There’s a big-bag of crushed stone ‘gravillons’ left over as well and if I can get the builder to leave that too, it and the sand will go a long way towards being what will be needed for a new concrete base when I can get around to moving my tool store. It seems silly to waste them as it’ll only mean that I have to bring some more in and as I know from the last time, full big-bags weigh quite a bit when being towed in my trailer 😉

Right at the start of my house-build project, just after work began on the foundations, it rained. It bucketed down. When they were putting up the walls, it not only rained but snowed as well and when they put the roof on, it poured down. When the window sills and door thresholds were installed it rained and when the windows and doors were fitted, the weather was so appalling that afterwards, because the roof still wasn’t finished, the house ended up half-flooded inside.

The team who were laying the floor-levelling screed turned up to continue their work this morning, augmented by an additional member who would help speed up the process. And then this lot also showed up out of the blue.

I knew they’d be along some time, I expected next week, but they were a team of four who’d come to apply the ‘Crépi’ to the house’s exterior walls. And guess what, after a week or more of lovely, warm weather that would have been perfect in which to do the job, today it rained.

But they persisted and got the end gables and the whole back of the house done and as I type this, they are still working away giving the walls the rough finish that I asked for. Luckily, for now at least, although it’s windy, it isn’t raining and I just hope that it holds off for long enough so the walls can dry enough for their surfaces not to be damaged if it starts up again.

They started by adding metal corner profiles to all of the window and door edges and masking up all around to protect every surface except the walls.

This was the scene in the front of the house with the ‘screed crew’ busy using their cement mixer just before the ‘Crépi team’ fired up their machine to get going on the walls.

The ‘Crépi’ mix is poured straight out of the bag into the mixing hopper of the machine where it is mixed to the right consistency with water. Then the mixing hopper is tipped up through 180 degrees so the mix pours into the machine’s pump hopper from where it is pumped down a tube to a nozzle that is used to spray the mix onto the wall. While one batch is being pumped a further one can be mixed and added to the pump hopper before it empties thus making it a continuous process.

Here’s what it looks like as it’s applied to the walls. The nozzle operator sprays the mix onto the wall to the required thickness and as he moves on, a second worker follows screeding it down flat with a long straight edge.

Here’s a shot of the mixer man who was also responsible for moving the tube at the other end near the wall from time to time as the nozzle operator moved along.

While two men were working on the wall, the last member of the team was busy masking up the areas that would be covered next.

In the next shot, the whole of the back of the house had been coated and while one of the men screeded and then trowelled it off, the nozzle operator got ready to move onto the southern end of the house.

In the next shot he was clearing the gun ready to start and in the following one he was applying the ‘Crépi’ in earnest.

The task now on the back of the house was all about getting the surface right. It was to take a lot of time and was not helped by the weather which became showery and quite windy.

Here’s another shot of the mixer man.

The same two then repeated what they’d done on the back of the house on the southern gable and then on the gable on the bedroom end.

In the meantime, the screed crew were moving ahead at a brisk pace as they had one man mixing non-stop and the second running the screed mix in to be laid by the third. When I popped my head in at around 11.00 am they’d already finished the corridor, were working on the kitchen floor and were already running in mortar for the living room.

This meant that whereas I thought they’d be coming back tomorrow, they were able to finish the job around mid-afternoon before I’d finished typing this post. This meant, unfortunately, that I didn’t want to go inside the house to take a look in case there was some kind of accident and the screed they’d laid got damaged in some way. Also, when I went to look, the whole of the front of the house was sealed and masked up ready for tomorrow.

So the ‘Crépi’ team will be back tomorrow to finish off the front of the house. I’ve been very impressed by their work as they’ve spent as long, if not longer, finishing the wall surfaces as they did applying the ‘Crépi’ and I think it shows in the results.

Notice the smooth band with a sharp edge that they’ve applied all along the bottom of the walls.

I like that 😉

I was in the garden late this morning and beginning to think that today was going to be yet another lost day when a large truck came round the bend. As it was lumbering up the road I was wondering if there was any possibility that it might be heading for my place and it turned out that it was.

When I went up to investigate I found that it was a load of sand and the driver confirmed that it was for my house’s floor-levelling screed. First he unloaded a pallet of cement using the Hiab hoist on the back of his truck and then he moved the truck a bit so he could drop the sand to one side where it would be convenient to mix concrete and close enough for it to be manually barrowed into the house.

Just as he was getting ready to leave a white van carrying two workmen and towing a concrete mixer arrived and it turned out that they were the ones who would be mixing and laying the concrete.

After the truck had left they moved their van and got themselves ready to start work.

A while later, I went up to see how they were doing. It turned out that they’d started by attaching protective plastic tape all around the bottoms of the walls to prevent them being wetted and damaged by the concrete. Having completed the floor in bedroom two, they were busy in bedroom one and while the younger man was mixing and barrowing the concrete in, the older of the two was painstakingly laying the screed by hand.

They’d finished and gone just after 5.00 pm leaving the site clean and tidy and their concrete mixer and tools behind ready for tomorrow.

Here are a couple of shots of the protective plastic tape that they had attached to the bottoms of all of the walls.

Today they completed the floors in all three bedrooms and the bathroom and had made a start on the top end of the corridor.

It’s a very labour-intensive job and I think that it’ll take them at least a couple more days to complete the whole house as there’s a heck of a lot more to do. I’ve seen floor screeds being laid on Youtube and they’ve been made much wetter and allowed to find their own level using a vibrator.

It’s slower and must be more difficult to do it by hand and get the level right (the original floor slab was much lower at the bedroom end, especially in the far corner of bedroom one) and it will be admirable if this workman gets a perfect level throughout. I’m sure he will…

Three more videos that bring my house-build project into the new year. Some progress being made but still not much closer to getting the roof problem sorted out.

More instalments coming soon.