 | LES GUIS - THE PHOTOS FROM 2009 |
| LES GUIS - THE PHOTOS FROM 2009 |
THE FARM
MY LIFESTYLE
ON MY TRAVELS
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PART FOUR
So my little week of rest now over, it's time to continue.
If you had ever been in my little room downstairs you might have noticed the musty smell. And when I moved some books from there to take upstairs I noticed how damp they were. And when I moved away a pile of plastic boxes from against the wall this was the sight that greeted me.
Some of the plaster and cement has also dissolved itself and I shudder to think what it would have been like if I hadn't bonded the surface with white acrylic paint. It might look pretty depressing but things could have been worse. It's only just over two years ago that I was living in the legendary camp camp and this little room, no matter how damp, had to be an improvement on that.
Starting on the desultory tidying-up, rounding up the missing scaffolding and sorting out the wood that we ripped off the roof, I discovered the reason why my little room is so damp.
The soil has once more banked itself up against the kitchen wall (I keep digging it out every couple of years) and some of the pointing has fallen out from between the stones so water is able to infiltrate between them.
And as I'm trying as much as I can to be self-sufficient one way or another I was impressed with this crop of mushrooms growing amongst the rotten wood that I was clearing away.
I don't intend to eat them until I know whether or not they are safe, that's for sure. I'm reminded far too much of the conversation between Sid James and Peter Butterworth in Carry On Loving
"I see your first wife died"
"Yes, she ate some poisoned mushrooms"
"And your second wife?"
"She died of a fractured skull"
"How was that?"
"She wouldn't eat the mushrooms"
The wood that I salvaged for burning I've been putting in the lean-to. It's full of bricks and wood that I threw in there when I had a tidy-up a couple of years ago and it needs tidying again right now.
You might remember that it was into here that I was planning to move when the idea of coming here full-time was first discussed . But a casual survey of the roof showed that two of the beams had rotted and when I came to replace them it turned out that seven needed to be replaced and while I was taking some of them out part of the wall collapsed. And it was just after having rebuilt the wall that I was taken ill, and that was that.
The current plan is to put my plant-pot beichstuhl on the inside to the left of the door, put all my gardening tools to the right, and fill up the rest with wood that I'll be cutting through the winter. There's tons of that.
I made myself a brazier today out of an old 25-litre chemicals drum. The galvanised steel dustbin, with which I am very impressed, is full of sodden paper and as stuff for burning is piling up so I'll use this, burn stuff in small amounts and then empty the ashes regularly.
I'm a big fan of recycling as you know and where I used to work they used to throw tons of stuff away. I used to salvage as much as I could, including about 20 of these steel drums, because I was sure I could find things to do with them.
I lit a fire in my home-made brassiere this evening. I started off by putting samples of all of the construction material that I had been using in the attic. And I'll tell you - the effect is frightening. The plasterboard took the longest to burn but eventually it did. Everything else was gone in minutes.
No wonder there are so many conflagrations in domestic property. There won't be much left of my place if ever it sets alight.
These next two photos are pretty impressive so make the most of them. The first job now that I am starting back to work inside is to fit some stairs up to my room to replace the ladder. This is going to be pretty messy so I need to clear away all of the mess that fell onto the first floor from the work upstairs
An hour or two with a stiff brush and a shovel makes a world of difference and there is now room to move about.
This work with the stairs involves demolition of the wall just here. It needs room to drop into and it will all create a pile of dust and rubble.
Behind the wall are the stairs up to the attic and I need to rip them out too. The pile of pallets is actually the old floor of the attic and all these are destined to be out of the window before too long.
Stripping off the wallpaper revealed some interesting artefacts, such as this hand-drawn hammer and sickle - the emblems for Communism for those of you whose memories don't stretch back beyond 1989.
When I was uprooting some damaged flooring back a good while ago I found a chicken buried in the concrete - some kind of pagan sacrificial offering I reckon. There must have been all kinds of thing going on here in the past so I'm prepared for anything while working here.
The first part of the wall has now gone and has been brushed up into a corner out of the way. There will eventually be another wall here but moved one roof-beam in towards the camera. I don't want stairs in the bedroom. And if I narrow the stairs (1 metre width is rather excessive) I can fit a U-shaped stairway in going upwards from the left of this image.
The space that will be saved by making my stairs like that will be the bit by the window, at the foot of where the stairs are right now, and it's into that space where I'll be fitting the shower room.
The rest of the wall has now gone, and I took my time to do this as I salvaged about 50 of the bricks from which the wall was made. They are large hollow lightweight bricks and it occurred to me that with having to build retaining walls outside, a supply of large hollow lightweight bricks might come in handy.
You can see the ladder by which I climb into my room, and you'll also notice the original wallpaper. This house is built of stone and then someone plastered over the stone - and then lined the plaster with stone-patterned wallpaper. Why didn't they simply forego the plastering?
A shot up the stairwell shows the sagging staircase. To fix the new horizontal beam on the right back in August I had to unfasten the stairs and the use that I have since made of the staircase has caused the stairs to sag downwards.
I've also fitted some scrap polystyrene offcuts to the stud wall that I built. These have helped with the sound insulation and also contributed to the thermal properties of the attic room by stopping draughts from blowing through the electrical sockets.
Heaven knows what this is. It suddenly sprouted up at the side of one of the footpaths here.
I know it's some kind of mushroom but I haven't a clue what kind it is. Maybe some kind that you can buy mail-order from Denmark judging by its apprearance. Of course I have a close affinity with mushrooms - with one employer where I worked I was treated as a mushroom for several years. I was fed loads of b******t and kept in the dark.
And there's even more Fiat Lux because I now have 2 x 1.2-watt 12-volt LED lights to illluminate the stairwell so that I can work in the dark.
And it works too which is just as well as the nights are now seriously drawing in. I was able to carry on working until 18:30 this evening instead of knocking off early and I'll need this if I'm to finish these stairs by Christmas.
But even with the lighting in the stairwell you can't see the stairs, for the simple reason that they are no longer there. I've taken them out.
It's quite a climb now on a ladder to get into my room but rather like a primitive Celtic fortress I can pull up the stairs behind me and I'll be pretty safe from attack by the local peasantry. All kinds of weird things happen around here as you know.
The treads and risers are no good but the sides seem to be fine so I'm planning to reuse them. The risers are 17mm and the treads are 21mm, which means that for every 1m of height you need 1.26m of footprint. But if I invert the sides so that I have treads of 17mm and risers of 21mm, then for every 1m of height I need 85mm of footprint. It'll make the treads quite narrow but I can put a 3mm overhang to make 20mm and in any case it's not as if the attic will be in daily use once I've completed the rest of the house.
There's a change to the electrical wiring too. At this end of the room it's a temporary system and it needed to be moved to another location now that I've removed the stairs.
I can't fit the wirng here permanently until I've done all of the room dividers on the first floor so it'll be staying like this for a while until it needs to be moved again to take something else into account.
I woke up this morning to the sound of heavy rainstorm cannoning off the roof, the barn, the windows and just about everything else in the vicinity and this was the view from my window.
You've heard me talk about the hanging clouds that sometimes hover right over the mountain. Well, this is one and it was a real good 'un. 7.5mm of rain we had, and badger all electricity too, although not absolute zero like a few weeks ago.
This is the new horizontal beam that I fitted into the floor. This sets the width of the new stairs which will pass to the right. It took ages as you need to very carefully make the lets in the existing beams so that the new beam is a tight fit.
To make the lets you need to
i.... drill out the pattern to the required depth but slightly undersized in all planes
ii... knock them out with a chisel
iii.. file them to perfection
iv... cut the beam to slightly oversize
v.... file it down to perfection
vi... whallop it into the lets with a huge sledgehammer
vii.. drill through the original beams into the new beams with a 3mm drill
viii. whack a pile of 5x200 nails in through the drill holes to hold the new beam in place
I've fitted an upright or vertical into position in the new beam. This is level with the upright that holds the door into my attic on the floor above, and is where the head of the stairs will be for the floor below. It also supports the weight of the beam and flooring from above and keeps the beams at a constant distance apart.
To the right of the upright is where the bathroom is to be fitted. I chose that corner for the bathroom because of the window there
The final beam is now fitted against the wall and this took quite a while to do as well. This was accomplished as follows -
i.... position the hangers and screw them in. It's not possible to cut lets into the transverse beam as there are other beams let into the other side and so the nails are in the way. The hangers have to be millimetre-perfect so that the floor will be level
ii... cut the beam to size and that has to be millimetre-perfect as well. I cut them oversize and file them down
iii.. lower the beam into position. It's quite a heavy beam so doing it on my own was complicated to say the least and I dropped it down to the ground floor twice. Finally I nailed some cantilever outriggers across the gap so I could slide it into position
iv... drill through the beam into the wall in order to mark where the anchor bolts need to go
v.... drill out the holes in the beam to 12mm
vi... roll the beam out of the way so that I could drill the walls for the anchor bolts
vii.. fit the anchor bolts into the beam with just a small amount of the anchor visible
viii. roll the beam back into position
ix... line up the protruding anchors with the holes in the wall
x.... get the beam as close up to the wall as possible
xi... screw the beam to the hangers so that it's in position
xii.. whallop the anchors through the beam into the holes in the wall
It's not tightened up anywhere as yet though because I want to fit the verticals first. It's only when they are in and fastened up that I can tighten the beam fastenings. That way it will all go into tension.
The wall where there was no paint has now been painted white. This is to bind any dust or dry plaster to the wall and cheap acrylic paint is good for that.
There's another vertical that I've put into position. Once again I had to uproot part of the floor so that I could cut a let into the horizontal beam underneath. This is the crucial vertical as the door to the bathroom will pivot around it to the left and the door into the bedroom will pivot around it towards the camera.
This afternoon I cut the lets for the uprights into the new beam and then had a look at where I'll be putting the bedroom wall. That's important as the lower half of the U shape of the stairs up to the attic will be fastened to the verticals that will support the new bedroom wall.
So I measured up where the central pillar will be - the one that the bedroom and bathroom doors will pivot around. The bathroom door will be between this new vertical and the existing one that you can see in the photograph. The shower unit will fit between the existing vertical and the wall. The two new verticals and the bedroom door will be to the left of the newest vertical.
All four verticals for the head of the stairs are now in place and so I've also taken out one of the original uprights. The doorway upstairs in the attic is now totally resting on my two uprights. Much to my surprise they haven't buckled under the weight.
The roll of this space-age insulation stuff to the right in the image is for lining the wall at the head of the stairs before I start to install the stairs on the attic level and the first floor level.
And after much deliberation I've binned the idea of reusing the sides of the existing stairs. The treads and risers aren't equal and they aren't vertical and horizontal either so I'm going to have to think again about this.
Now if I could cut joints as well as this every time, I wouldn't have to do it any more as I would have made so much money that I would be paying people to do them for me. It's a three-way joint as you can see and it's come out perfectly. Even more impressive is the fact that I cut it by hand with not a power tool in sight.
But about 5 minutes after I had fitted that joint, I took it out and replaced it with something else due to a slight change of plan. And that joint wasn't anything like as good - much more to my usual standard - and I now have two stairs fitted thanks to a discovery of a large offcut from when I did the flooring in the barn.
There are now have three stairs into my attic and this stairwell is becoming a Stairway to Heaven. You can see now how I'm going to make my stairs. If the French can build a cantilever viaduct not 30kms away from here then I can build a cantilever staircase in my house.
And seeing as there was 1m92 headroom over the head of the stairs that descend to the ground floor I decided to extend the third step to make a handy shelf for storage. So now I've decided on where I want everything and if my visitors don't mind steps of 29cms then it takes just 10 steps to get into my room with a footprint of just 54.5 cms minus the width of the turn.
That white object by the way is the modem for the wireless internet.
Never mind the snows of winter covering our land
It's not very much but it's snow just the same. And more is forecast for tonight and tomorrow. I'm stocked up with wood and gas and food so I don't much care for now.
The Stairway to Heaven now has five steps and it's now looking much more like a stairway.
Once those were in place I made a start on fitting one of the uprights for the final row - the one where the turn will be in the staircase. However I ran out of light. If I hadn't missed my aim when employing Ashley (my rather large wooden mallet) to fasten one of the beams I might have had some light to see by. Guaranteed for 40,000 hours, these LED lightbulbs, but I'm sure the guarantee must exclude being whallopped to smithereens by a large wooden mallet.
And outside, the reason for the dark and sombre atmosphere is that the sky clouded over quite heavily while I was working and it's starting to snow again. You can see how onimous the clouds are looking and I reckon that this lot means business.
But it's as well to show you this photo because I've been thinking again. I'm planning on moving my vegetable plot from in front of the house and I think that this may well be the best place to put it. But that's going to take an incredible amount of work.
A short while later (about 30 minutes in fact) and this snow is definitely starting to stick. Winter is acumen in.
But I can see that I'm going to have to do something about the front of the house. It's looking rather untidy these days especially after the efforts we went through in the summer to make the place look pretty.
The view next morning from out of the window at the top of the stairs was impressive. We did indeed have a pile of snow last night.
The temperature outside dropped to -7.1°C and in the heat exchanger it plummeted to -10°C. Consequently in order to get through the ice in my water butts so that I could have some water, I went in search of the pickaxe. Luckily I can take the tops off the water butts.
Inside the house I fitted the vertical that I was trying to fit in the dark yesterday and I forgot to take a photo of that.
And as the doom and gloom slowly cleared I went for a wander around to take a few photos of the house and surroundings all covered in snow.
This is a peek out of the window at the top of the stairs over to where I might put my potager.
I wondered why it was dark this morning when the alarm woke me up. The skylights in the roof had about 3cms of snow all over them. And so after breakfast I went for a wander around and a bit of a photography session. You can see how much snow fell during the night, and it was still chucking it down as I was a-wandering.
This is Lieneke's barn. The track to the left is the one that goes to the lane about half a kilometre away. To the right is the track down to the back of the house and the track upon which I'm standing is the track to where I leave Caliburn.
Poor Caliburn is here with a covering of snow. But I bet Strawberry Moose is enjoying himself.
This photograph of the back of the house has come out really well. It was this pic that I used on my e-cards to send to people at Christmas.
Meanwhile, it's now 28 days since we had a day without any kind of precipitation at all. Today was enough snow for the equivalent of 5cms of rain. And apart from that one morning last week it's now been 22 days since I've had a decent amount of solar energy and 6 days since we had any temperature above freezing point.
This is the view of the track that leads up to the lane that goes to Pionsat. The previous photo was taken from this spot.
And this is the view from the back of the house up to the place from where I took the previous photo. That is Lieneke's barn on the left.
I started to fit the turn-round step in the Stairway to Heaven but it seems that I haven't allowed for the height of the extra beam that I fitted. It's not a major issue and I can work round it by having several angled turn-round steps in the corner that will drop me nicely underneath it.
I cut a handful of lets into the horizontal beams and fitted two more uprights as you can see. This is where the turn in the stairs will be. I've also started to fit the rails that carry the treads.
We had a brief change in the weather today. I woke up this morning to a minor heatwave and at one point in the morning the temperature reached 11°C outside. The heavy grey clouds had disappeared and the sun put in a very rare but very welcome appearance. It wasn't quite the alpine day that I had hoped for but pleasant enough just the same.
The one thing about this kind of weather is that usually the atmospheric conditions, light and visibility are excellent for photography so I stuck the Pentax
Of course the conditions didn't last long and the clouds soon came back. One of these heavy rolling clouds that we have around here pushed its way up the valley.
You wouldn't think that this pic was taken from the same point and showing the same viewpoint as the previous one, would you?
At least the bad weather has encouraged me to continue to work inside and the Stairway to Heaven is now finished.
Well, it isn't actually because I haven't bought the wood that I need to make the treads. So what Im doing for now is to use leftover pieces of wood from other projects and I'll replace the treads in due course.
I'm quite impressed with how it looks and how it works. It's completely different from how it was going to be when it started but then most of my projects finish like that.
In fact all of the stairs are now finished. At the top of the stairs to the ground floor I fitted the rails for the lowest of the three permanent steps and then scrounged some wood to make the treads. After that it was a mega-clear-up and then I started on the stringers for this cheap staircase that I bought.
Once I had cut them to size I put them on my temporary workbench to assemble. But once again I threw away the instructions. It's all very well following them if there are two of you but when you are on your own you need to think again. I drilled some screw holes in the sides where the treads would be, then laid one stringer flat on the workbench. I designed a small trestle the width of the stairs width and put that over the top and put the other stringer on top of the trestle. After that I inserted the treads, tacking them in with screws as I was going along, and when I reached the end, I moved the trestle away and clamped everything together with my two large speed clamps.
I then turned the stair assembly over onto the other side, made sure the treads were inserted fully, and then screwed them from that side. I turned it back over, tightened up the screws that I'd tacked in place, released the speed clamps, and that was that.
It took just 15 minutes with a spirit level, the drill with the drill bit, the drill with the screwdriver bit, a handful of screws and some packing pieces, and the stairs were installed.
You can't see very much in this image but this is the way downstairs now. And it's a much better way of descent than an old ladder.
A pic from this position shows the stairs off so much better and I'm quite impressed with how they have turned out.
They are a little ricketty but they won't be here for ever. Once I work out a permanent plan and install the suspended floor on the ground floor level I'll be fitting some permanent stairs.
This morning I checked the batteries - something I haven't done for a while.
There are 10 batteries in the box under where the suspended floor will be, all of which are Hawker 92-amphour sealed gel batteries. 9 of them were all nice and cool and simmering away nicely. The tenth was boiling hot and it you look closely you will see where the case has swollen up.
It's the first battery in the bank and it's quite clear from looking at this that the business of handling 250 amps of current per day during the summer has proved to be too much. It's boiled so the plates have swollen and made a short circuit inside. The short circuit has created resistance to the charge and that resistance is being dissipated into heat and hence the battery is warm and why the charge in the rest of the batteries is down.
I've replaced it with another (I have a few hanging around here) and immediately the battery voltage went up 0.4 of a volt.
I've rerouted the cables so the positive lead goes into one battery and the negative lead goes into another and that will help to circulate the current a little better but the sooner I build my diversion load - a 12-volt water immersion heater - the better. All of the overcharge will then be diverted into that and won't build up in the batteries as the charge controllers waits to close down.
But now I have my stairs in position the next task of course is to rig up some kind of temporary lighting in the stairwell so I don't fall down and break my neck.
There's a two-way switch at the top and bottom of the stairs (and I have even managed to wire it up correctly) and two of these 12-volt LED lights from LIDL - one for the stairs up to the attic and one for the stairs between the first floor and ground floor - which illuminate the stairwell sufficiently for me to go uo and down in the dark.
But even with having light up and down the stairwell I still needed a torch to move around the house as the living room is in darkness.
So with the free half of the switch at the foot of the stairs and an old redundant light switch by the door into the kitchen I fitted a light by the front door over the control panel and I can now happily move around torchless.
You might think that this light isn't all that bright. But firstly, it's plenty bright enough to move around with and secondly, it's only 1.2 watts, believe it or not. Yes, these 12-volt LED lights from LIDL, at €4.49 a shot, they are definitely the way to go.
Happy New Year to you all. And I wish for you for 2010 everything that you wished on everyone else for 2009.
You can keep up-to-date with my antics on a more-or-less daily basis by reading my blog
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