Rendering and wood cladding

As we are now only 4 weeks away from the arrival of our first guests and the weather has turned particularly Spring like we felt it about time we made the exterior of the house presentable and waterproof.

We decided to wood clad the top triangular part of the gable ends to add a little more character and to try and blend the house in a little more with it's surroundings. We researched the different wood available and suitable. Although red cedar is beautiful we are not great fans of the "grey" aged look of the wood but we were very aware of the need for a hard wood and one not particularly attractive to wood boring insects (we have had a 15 metre fence eaten this year by long horned beetles!!!) Consistently Douglas Fir rated very highly as being naturally resistant to fungal and insect attacks and also retaining it's red colouring with an annual protection coat. So that decided and ordered the frame was built with an under lay of breathable membrane.










The rendering was a little more back breaking!!! The scratch coat was applied with a "multibat" mix (a mixture of lime and cement) with sand and the final coat with a hydraulic lime and sand mix. We added a fantastic waterproofer to the scratch coat which also contained a plasticiser (normally impossible to find in France), unfortunately, the builders merchants had no further stock and with the typical French shrug of shoulders by way of response as to when the next stocks would arrive we had to resort to another brand which sadly did not contain a placticiser. However, our good friend and ever patient goat expert bought us a great replacement known as washing up liquid and that happily did the job!!!


So now the house is waterproof we can start on building the internal walls and adding insulation. We are currently researching the best options for insulation. Regulations are very stringent and demand that we have a minimum of 260 mm of rockwool in the roof. Trouble is, we really want to expose the rafters (and having painstakingly sanded them are not very keen to give up on it!) but to squeeze 260 mm of rockwool into 100mm gap which would be left between each rafter maybe pushing it a bit...we don't want the slates popping off under the pressure!


"Building Control!"

Flooring

We're working for a bit on the inside....hooray!


Flooring, flooring, flooring! We created our own race as Tony laid the floorboards on the first floor and I tiled the ground floor...it wasn't a fair fight but he won!!! At least, however, tiling one large space was easier than waiting until the dividing walls were built, saved a lot of time messing around with cutting. As ever though, the grouting also took an age but we are pleased with the finish. Once all the flooring was complete we started to fit the staircase. We always knew the staircase would be too tall for the rise between the floors but in the end it was only 10 cims out...very frustrating as we had to cut off one comeplete step from the timber staircase and build our own concrete step!


Now the weather is warming up, it's onto the rendering...yippee!!!

Doors and windows

Another stage closer to making the house watertight was to fit the doors and windows. This went fairly smoothly (bit of a miracle!) and certainly stopped the draughts! The masking tape isn't in case of hurricane damage...we have always fed wild birds around the house and read that wild birds will instinctively fly towards doors and windows where there is no clear obstacles, so with that in mind the book suggested adding tape to the openings until the little birds worked out it would hurt if they flew into it!

Laying the mains electricity cable

And now.... to try and connect the main services to the new house. The house is 60 metres from the roadside and, therefore, the 60 metres from the new electricity meter...a very long trench to dig! To begin with, we dug by hand (with a shovel!) around the areas we knew there maybe existing service pipes and cables. Giving that up as a bad idea, we borrowed a mini digger from a good friend and started to seriously dig. A very big mess we have made which hasn't been helped by heavy rain and clay soil.

The trench has to be 60 cm deep where laid under garden and 80 cm deep under pathways and 50 cm wide. 60 metres of 2 x 35mm2 cable is very, very heavy and trying to pull this through the conduit was a nightmare not to mention extremely tiring. The conduit was laid in a bed of sand and covered with warning tape (for the next time we dig up the courtyard...that will not be anytime soon!!!!). The most frustrating part was trying to refill the trenches, the soil that had been excavated was very rocky and nicely glued together with soaking wet clay soil. We couldn't get the digger to move it without making even more mess so we elected to move it by hand.....

So the electricity cable in now in place and we have started on the trenches for the water and drains. After that it will be digging the drains to evacuate the water from the gutters into the field. We can't wait until we can start putting some things back together, at the moment, it feels as if we are just tearing everything up!

The Roof is on!

The roof is on!!!

Having battled the elements (not to mention fitting vents and velux windows) we now have a roof over our heads!

We bought 5400 slates and have 40 spare so not bad estimating. The zinc "Nantaise" gutters were very expensive but we think worth the expense and are guaranteed for 30 years so will probably outlive us!

We now leave the house for the next project which is digging up the courtyard to lay the trench for the mains electrcity. We are able to lay it at a depth of 50 cm so not too bad but the courtyard is compacted to a concrete state after years of heavy agricultural machinery using it.

The biggest obstacle with the trench is that it will need to pass two mains water pipes, at least one drainage pipe, and another mains electric cable. We hoped we would be able to dig it by hand to help us avoid tearing up the existing networrk but after two solid days of digging we only managed 5 or 6 metres and with a trench of 60 metres to dig and needing to keep our back muscles intact we have decided to borrow a friend's digger. We will have to use the digger very carefully to avoid any mishaps...watch this space!!!

Felting, battening and slating!

Very frustrated wiating for a relatively windless day to start laying the felt we eventually managed to get started. The weather has been relentless, either snow and ice or wind and rain makes working on a roof very uncomfortable! Once the felt was in place we started what seemed like the endless process of nailing on the battens....lots of them.

Battens in place, we have now made a start on the slates. We are hanging the slates on hooks and not nailing and are very pleased with the rustic look of the beautiful slate. The amount of weight the roof is supporting is worrying! First velux window is in now just the rest of the roof and the other four velux windows!!!

The start of the roof!

The house is beginning to look like a house! With the floor joists securely in place we could at last make a start on the actual roof timbers. A good friend spent a couple of days with us to "show us the ropes" of roof construction - thank goodness for good friends! Having completed what seemed like a taxing mathmatical equation, we eventually arrived at the angles we needed to cut for the rafters to fit to the ridge board and for the "birdsmouth cut" where the rafters would meet the wall plate. Our aim was to try and have a sufficient number of rafters in place to have the ridge board secured across the length of the house. This would make it much easier for us to complete the remainder of the roof with just two pairs of hands.

By the end of the two days with the help of our friend (and saviour!) we managed to complete our goal.

We continued just the two of us, albeit much slower, to add the remaining pairs of beams. A few days later (a couple of them very wet!) we completed the rafters.

Our next tasks are to build up the gable end walls, concrete in a steel reinforced ring beam on the gable ends and fix "outriggers" for the overhang.