La Darnoire

So that’s it. We now have an indoor bathroom which is not a kitchen. I spent the past week sweating copper pipes (technical term meaning joining copper pipes together with solder). One advantage to doing things yourself is that you can install things the way you like them. In this case, it means that every water outlet is fitted with a stop tap. Unlike our house in Reading, where if you had a leaking sink tap, you had to switch off the entire house supply at the mains. With the installation here, if there is a leaky sink tap, you can just isolate that tap to change the washer; the rest of the house is unaffected. Speaking of taps, we actually chose a kitchen sink mixer tap for the bath. We didn’t want two separate taps for hot and cold water, and in France all the bath taps we looked at had a shower-head attachment. Because we have a separate shower, we didn’t need this combination facility. But it does the job, and actually looks quite good.

Of course there were a couple of minor leaks when I turned the water supply on again, but these were easily fixed. And there was a slight leak from the bath waste pipe, which was cured with the application of a smear of silicone sealant.

Due to the completely overcast weather on Wednesday, we had to light the boiler stove; but the rest of the time we have been using solar-heated water. Today it’s cloudy again.

This week I also broke through the end wall of the corridor, so we can now enter the barn without having to go outside or through the bedroom. Cat was very surprised to find an opening instead of a solid wall, and lost no time in inspecting my workmanship. Obviously it’s unlikely that the barn will be fully insulated by this winter, so I therefore installed a temporary door by reusing the old kitchen door which we removed when we first moved in. I had to construct a new doorframe though, so I made this out of pallet wood. Hopefully by this time next year this door will be replaced with an archway.

We have not seen the ducks for a week now, although we did notice a scattering of feathers at the back of the pond. We suspect there may have been a fox passing through. We have seen a couple of hares running around in the field opposite the house, so I think it’s unlikely that the fox is resident nearby. We were also surprised to see a female pheasant strutting about on the farmhouse roof this morning. It’s the first time I’ve seen a pheasant on a roof. The hens were all clustered together at their gate, watching. They weren’t too sure whether this bird was a threat or not. Or maybe they were thinking, “Ooh, isn’t she high up! I wonder how we can get up there?”

The garage at the aged FIL is now built, with the entrance correctly orientated. Well, I say built. The walls are up. They’re now waiting for the roofer to install the roof timbers.

And finally, there’s less than a week to go before my sister arrives. We’re looking forward to it – so I suspect this will be my last blog post for a while.

Well, we hadn’t heard anything regarding our planning permission to install the new windows in the barn, so LSS called the Mairie. As I suspected, the lack of news just meant that everything was fine; so we can now go ahead. I will be constructing some reinforced concrete lintels first, but this work will start after my sister’s visit. At least I have now installed the electricity supply to the barn, and as a temporary measure have fixed a fluorescent light to a beam above the new bathtub.

To support the feet of the bath on the new floor, I laid some old tiles in a bed of lime mortar. Next week will see the start of the plumbing work, and by the end of the week we should have a fully functioning bathroom.

I dug a trench leading from the reedbed solar panel installation to the house, and laid sections of 16mm plastic pipe containing two electrical wires. This will bring 12V power to our Separett composting toilet, and should trim a minuscule amount from our electricity consumption! The required holes have also been drilled through the barn wall for the Separett installation; 20mm for the 12V power supply, 33mm for the urine waste pipe, and 86mm for the Separett ventilation pipe. I’m very glad I own a rotary hammer;  it made short work of these.

Next to the bathroom is an opening in the end wall of the house leading to an unused space above the pantry. There’s not really much room to swing a cat up there, not that we indulge in any cat-swinging, of course. But it could be a handy storage area, and I think it could also be the new location for the VMC (house ventilation extractor fan). However, this area had probably not been cleaned since the house was built in 18xx. I therefore set up the stepladder, and took out a full wheelbarrow load of dust, sand, straw, mouse-droppings, dead insects, bits of wood, and old bricks.

We also fetched another 700kg of sand with the trailer; we now have sufficient for any lime rendering I feel like doing. I must admit rendering is not a job I enjoy.

The horsefly trap has been reinstated in the garden, and is already functioning nicely.

The final section of limecrete has now been poured, bringing the total of cement-mixer loads to 124. The other half of the barn will need to wait for a while; the bathroom section is the important bit!

On Tuesday we paid yet another visit to BricoDepot. And guess what? We now have a brand-new bathtub. In our bathroom. All right, it’s not installed yet, but that will start next week. I made the customary blood sacrifice by slicing my finger on the edge of the bath whilst loading it onto the trailer. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it bled profusely. And of course there were no plasters to be had anywhere. As usual, LSS had her handbag with her. This thing is a Tardis in that it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. Anyway, she found some tissue, and wrapped the offending digit in this, holding the bandage in place with some sellotape, also extracted from the depths of the Tardis handbag.

Hubert the hedgehog has made a reappearance. We’ve seen him next to the hedge (unsurprisingly; that’s probably why they were called hedgehogs), and he later scurried into my workshop, where he short-sightedly bumped into a stack of wood before reversing and scurrying off under some shelving. I’ve no idea what he thinks he’ll find in there other than spiders.

LSS took me to a local charity shop to see if there was anything interesting. I actually found a brand-new pair of shoes – in my size – with steel toecaps! They were only a fiver. Now I can drop bricks onto my feet without worrying.

Another load of wood has been brought back from the pile of semi-burnt timbers at the aged FIL. The builders have started the construction of the replacement garage by pouring the foundations. Unfortunately they’ve orientated the entrance incorrectly, so they’ll need to move some of the reinforcing.

I also reattached the brushcutter to the tractor, ready for cutting the grass around the property – which, thanks to all the rain – is now waist-high.

Oh – and we’re still eating strawberries…

It seems I’ve lost the habit of making daily posts. Apparently this has now become a weekly event. Mind you, I was never much good at keeping a daily diary. Perhaps it’s just a lack of discipline. Or motivation. Or both. Anyway, although I do make short daily notes, it wouldn’t be very legible to just reproduce them here verbatim. For example: “18/05. Dead bunny. Strawberries.” Doesn’t really explain very much, does it?

So instead I’ll just summarise the past week’s events.

The elder trees at Neighbour J are now fully in flower, so the fermentation of this year’s batch of elderflower champagne has commenced. LSS has also started making elderflower cordial and has produced 8 litres so far. On the husbandry front, one of the female rabbits died, so we’re now down to five. Still, looking on the bright side it means that the humane dispatcher will not have to be used quite as often. One of the youngest hens has become broody, so we’re having to keep an eye on her. If they’re broody they stop laying; and as they’re occupying a nest this can apparently affect the other hens too.

The strawberry plants in the garden have been producing abundantly, so we’ve had strawberries for dessert every evening this week. And very nice they are too. We’ve also discovered that we still have about 10kg of last year’s raspberries in the freezer, so LSS has started making raspberry cheesecakes. Other fruity news: the gooseberries are ripening nicely, and the peach tree near the kitchen has done very well, so as long as we don’t have any strange weather, we should be getting a lot of peaches this year. The tree has tripled in size since we’ve been here. We may also get some apples and pears – fingers crossed.

Although Mrs Duck was unsuccessful in raising a brood this year, she is still visiting the pond with the two male ducks. They have also taken to strolling around the garden; we’re keeping an eagle eye on the lettuces but so far they have not shown any interest in eating our produce! However, LSS has put an old saucepan near the pond, containing some pieces of bread soaked in water. They like that.

The limecrete floor is spreading slowly across the barn. We fetched another 650kg of sand and ten bags of lime this week, so all this material is obviously going somewhere! By the end of next week floor-laying operations will cease for a while; half the barn will be complete. (The other half is still full of not-yet-unpacked removal boxes.) I can then turn my attention to the installation of plumbing and electricity. By the time my sister arrives in June we should have a fully-functioning bathroom. Of course there won’t be any actual walls, but at least it will be indoors! As we’re going to be laying a limestone floor on top of the limecrete, I’d like to get the floor laid before erecting the partition walls. I’d rather install a partition wall on top of a finished floor, than install the wall and then try and lay the floor around it. It’s probably not how a builder would do things, but that’s how I want to do it. I have the timbers already as we visited BricoDepot this week. Next week we’ll be making another trip there, this time to get the bath and other sundry plumbing items.

Once the bathroom is functioning, I’ll probably stop writing this blog. Unless there is a tremendous demand that I continue, of course! What do you think? Leave a comment below.

By the way, I don’t think I’ve given any details of the limecrete mixing procedure yet. Apparently using a cement mixer is not the best procedure, but I haven’t found any problems with this method. The mix I’m using is a 1:2:3 ratio. 1 part NHL 3.5 lime, 2 parts sand, 3 parts coarse gravel, and about 6 litres of water. In order to get an even mix, I first pour about 3 litres of water into the cement mixer, and half the gravel. The mixer is then switched on, and I add all of the sand. I’ve found that with practice (and as I’ve now mixed 98 loads, I think that qualifies) one can hear whether there is enough water in the mix. There should be a swishing sloshing sound, but more swish than slosh! I then take a deep breath, and stop breathing before adding the lime (there’s a lot of airborne dust!). I then trickle more water into the cement mixer until it stops producing dust, by which time the desire to breathe is extremely strong indeed! Yes, I suppose I should use a mask. Too bad.

I then add the remaining gravel. The mixture is quite wet (which is apparently a bad thing) but it’s much easier to pour into the wheelbarrow, and I haven’t found any problems strength-wise. After all, it’s not Portland cement-based concrete. I know that if you use normal concrete which is too wet, it’s not very strong. With the limecrete though, after a week one can walk on it without leaving a mark. I believe full strength is only attained after six months or so.

On Sunday Friend L came around for lunch. In the afternoon another friend arrived with her young son, and the afternoon was spent fishing. A total of 14 carp were removed from the pond. I later put these into a bucket and took a walk to the neighbour’s pond where they were released. This had been planned previously – he doesn’t have enough fish, and we have too many!

Finally, the bill for my hospital visit arrived; a grand total of €18. We’re obviously very pleased with the French health service.

Well, it’s possible that summer is finally on its way. We’ve had several days in a row without rain. Of course this means the plants in the garden will need watering, but you can’t have everything! We’ve also been able to use the solar-heated external shower again. The advantage of that is that the waste water drains into the reedbed; we don’t have to manually empty it!

As night-time temperatures are now staying above five degrees, work on the barn floor has started again. As far as the subfloor is concerned, the actual bathroom area is now complete, and LSS has started excavating the next section (to the right of the photo below). It’s hard to believe, but this little lot is what 62 concrete-mixer-loads looks like. Well, it is 10cm thick!

Earlier in the week we took the trailer to the local quarry and fetched another 700kg sand. The price has gone up; it’s now €9.50. For 700kg. Still a bargain! For storing the sand, I made a box out of pallets, and lined it with a tarpaulin. Two corrugated-iron sheets cover the top to keep the rain off:We have also made a massive stride forwards regarding what we’re going to put on top of the limecrete base. You see, it’s all very well having a floor made of breathable limecrete, but if you then slap down an impermeable covering like ceramic tiles on it, you may just as well have constructed the entire floor out of concrete. And in an old building like this one, an impermeable floor means that any moisture in the ground will rise up in the walls. So after some more research, we’ve hit on the idea of using limestone tiles, which are, like the limecrete, breathable. Now the next task is to source a supplier. For the bathroom, it may be cheaper to get off-cuts, and construct a sort of crazy-paving effect. It could look quite nice! The shower floor will still be tadelakt, but I think I’ll probably tile the wall with ceramic tiles.

Last Saturday we went to the market fair in St. Viatre, where we popped in at the bakery. LSS teaches English to the baker’s daughter, and we came away with two great big bags of stale bread for the hens/bunnies at the bargain price of €0. Speaking of bunnies, last week we took Mrs. Bunny to visit Mr. Bunny at neighbour J, so hopefully the next batch of future bunny stews has been started. Unfortunately we’ve lost two male bunnies over the past two days. This morning’s victim had a bloody nose, so diagnosis of death was fairly easy. It’s a disease fairly common here, and known locally as “the blood drop”. It’s caused by the calicivirus, and the disease is known as RHD (Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease). It only affects rabbits; the meat is still safe to eat – so both bunnies are currently in the freezer (as are the rabbit skins). They really are extremely delicate creatures.

Rabbit pelt tanning is also continuing; the latest batch of four brings the total to 19. Another 31 and we may have just enough for a blanket.

The batch of Irish Stout is now ready for bottling. I’ve decided to call it Gwyn Ness, after the Scottish loch visited frequently by Charles II. Next up: elderflower champagne.

LSS has asked me to make some planters for the greenhouse. I’m constructing these out of dismantled pallets. Four done, two to go! Oh, and speaking of pallets, my “PalletXploder” exploded. The old oak pick-axe handle split. I have now replaced it with a steel scaffold-tube, so it is operational again.

It’s been raining constantly since Friday. The public road at the bottom corner of the property is now impassable to ordinary vehicles; the ditches just can’t cope with the amount of rainfall. I believe we’ve had over 80mm over the past two days.

Early yesterday evening LSS took the Renault 5 to the aged FIL in order to clear one of the ditches there. You see, when they flattened the burnt-out garage, they had somehow failed to notice the large ditch which ran behind it. The result of their building-flattening manoeuvres was that they blocked up the entrance of the drainage pipe running under the entrance of the courtyard.  Well, the water couldn’t go anywhere, and had started backing up into the courtyard:
The aged FIL would probably have been all right because his medical bed is fairly high off the floor; but LSS thought it would be prudent to try and prevent the high tide from entering the house if at all possible.

Unfortunately she stopped half-way to clear another overflowing ditch (due to another blocked pipe under the road). I say unfortunately, because the car wouldn’t start again. Surprisingly, there was a mobile phone signal in that spot, so I responded to the distress call by rescuing her with the Hyundai. As it was fairly late in the day, we simply left the Renault where it was.

Today we returned with the tractor and towed the still-unresponsive Renault all the way to the aged FIL. This was simply because it was facing the wrong way, and the road was too narrow to turn it around. Once at the aged FIL, we found the water was now lapping at the sill of the back door. We cleared the blocked pipe by using lengths of chimney sweeping rods with a steel brush on one end; and the water level started dropping almost immediately. We then reattached the towrope to the tractor, and towed the Renault all the way back home along the flooded road. In the next photo I am walking along a particularly damp section with the pipe-clearing rods over my shoulder. It’s difficult to see the depth, but the water was half-way up my wellington boots. Actually the pipe under the road here was not blocked, but just couldn’t cope with the sheer volume of water.

Back at home, I diagnosed that the Renault was, perhaps unsurprisingly under these conditions, flooded. No, not with water; but too much petrol was getting to the cylinders. I removed and cleaned the sooty-black and wet spark plugs whilst LSS returned once again to the aged FIL with the tractor for further ditch-clearing operations. I eventually managed to get the Renault to start again, but it’s still running very rich (the inside of the carburettor was completely black). Unfortunately the tuning of carburettors is not my strong point, so it looks like we won’t be using this vehicle for the foreseeable future.

Despite our raincoats, LSS and I were both soaked to the skin, so as all the outside work was complete, we each had a nice hot shower, then took the afternoon off.

With the amount of rain we had last night, I noticed that the pond is now at its maximum level, so this morning I wandered down to have a look at the overflow pipe. This was partially blocked with leaves and has now been cleared. The poor hens are looking really soggy. The rain has not however stopped them from scratching around looking for more things to eat.

Hooray! I am once again allowed to eat solid food. I had my test done at the hospital yesterday, and was given the all-clear. The worst part of the experience was drinking two litres of  a concoction called Moviprep. I’m surprised this stuff is authorised for use, as it is absolutely horrible. I managed most of it, but the last 250ml glass was poured onto the weeds in the driveway.

Whilst I was at the hospital being readied for the anaesthesia, LSS received a phone call from a cousin informing her that her uncle (the Aged Aunt’s husband) had succumbed to a heart attack yesterday. He was 83. The funeral is on Monday next week. Unfortunately this means that the Aged Aunt will no longer be able to live in her house. She has the onset of Alzheimer’s, so the only option is a retirement home. Her son is very much against this, saying he’ll look after her. However, not only does he suffer from bipolar disorder, he is still working, so I don’t think this is really a viable option. The Aged FIL will be informed on Sunday. Even if he were able, he would not attend the funeral. He didn’t particularly like his brother-in-law, and has also not spoken to his sister for years.

And I’m afraid I have more bad news. We will once again not have any ducklings in the pond this year. Mrs Duck’s nest is empty with the exception of two broken eggshells. I’ve no idea of the identity of the culprit; maybe a jay or magpie?

I’m not supposed to do very much today, so wood-cutting or lime-concrete-pouring is out of the equation. I still have some website-updating to do though, so I guess I’ll get on with that…

I took the tractor down to “Piggy Corner” to retrieve some more dead trees. We gave this field its name because the wild boar have created a mud wallow next to the drainage ditch. Due to the dead-tree-clearing operation, one is now able to drive around the entire perimeter of this field. (Only with a tractor, mind you. It’s very boggy in places!)

The next batch of beer (a Victorian bitter) is ready for bottling. I may do an Irish stout next. The beer brewing needs to be complete by mid-May because that’s when the fermentation buckets will be needed for this year’s batch of elderflower champagne. That is, presuming there are lots of elders in flower; last year we weren’t so lucky because a late frost finished them off.

Cat brought five new little friends home. Unfortunately it would appear that the tick season is once again upon us. The tick-removing tweezers were swiftly applied, and cat is very annoyed. “But they were my friends,” she meowed. “That was Tom, Tricia and Tina. I hadn’t yet got around to finding out the names of the other two. Now I shall have to go and find some more.” Good luck with that; I’ve sprayed under her chin with an ectoparastic spray called Effipro. Unfortunately it has to be re-applied every two weeks, which is an operation the cat does not enjoy. At all.

The day was spent getting in and out of the tractor. No, it didn’t go anywhere. I once again removed the seat. Well, that is to say, half of it. I decided to leave the original metal seat-and-frame in place, and just separate it from the modified car seat. This was obviously much easier (and lighter) to lift out. Using my angle grinder, I removed the attachment rails from underneath, and attempted to weld on a couple of brackets so that I could bolt it to the tractor seat base. Unfortunately my mig welding machine decided to give up the ghost. Although I’d wire-brushed all the rust and paint off the steel first, and had the machine on its highest setting, the welding wire refused to form a weld pool; it just sputtered. Well, I’ve had it about eighteen years so I suppose I can’t complain. I ended up drilling four holes in the tractor seat base, and using four large hose clamps to fix the car seat frame in place. It seems to hold it strongly enough. And it’s certainly very comfortable now!

LSS has decided she’d like some raised beds in the greenhouse, so I’ll use some of the dismantled pallets for that particular project. She’s in the process of designing a new sign for the front of the house. The current one is looking rather weathered, and the “D” is no longer legible. So it’s rather forlornly displaying “La  arnoire”.