Well, we have recovered from the chilly weather in the Languedoc several weeks ago. Back up to normal temperatures and activities. We have been busy with friends both French and English. We were invited to a true "Parisian Dinner" with Pierre and Evelyne a couple of weeks ago. It was great! Evelyn even got Pat to liking her Parisian escargot served in a large soup spoon with a creme coulis (sauce) that was great. Pierre has (had ) a substantial Scotch whisky bar and he also served "the Americaino" aperitif which was great. Dinner was Prime rib cooked to perfection with two Bordeaux wines, a creamy dessert followed by cognac and cafe.
We also hosted a Jambalaya, Etoufee, and Gumbo evening chez nous for Welsh, English and Aussi friends. The next week was Thai night at Ken and Alison's.
We had dinner at Ancient Domaine Cressyls
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| Our wild boar dinner cooked over this fire |
with Jeffrey and Margaret just before they went back. BTW, they lost Tunene, their Whippet who was 16 and just wore out. It was so sad.
We enjoyed an aperos at Suzanne Millar's which was special because there were mostly French folk there. Thierry's wife (can't think of her name) is a
body builder and she was showing off photos of her most recent competition. ooh, la,la ...
Pat had her neuro doctor appointment to nothing new status. However, he did schedule a scan for later this month .Her only problem now is nagging vertigo. Jake's paw is gradually healing with the most recent speculative diagnosis being a snake bite when he stayed a week in the garden while we went to Alsace. Alsace is an area I highly recommend for scenery, food and wine. (maybe in another blog)
We wish and hope one day you can enjoy some of our great fun here.
We now continue the evolution of our barn area. Some of it is probably repeated from earlier posts but within this series we try to show the transformation of before and after. Here we put down concrete and waterproofing.
After the
barn was cleared, we contracted to have the floor made secure and ready for the
phases that followed. We planned to eventually remove a large section of the
roof to form a terrasse. The Mairie had already said no to that idea but all
the villagers told us to ignore the Mairie and do what we want. The objection
was a product of Batiment de France whose job it is to preserve the style and architecture
of the old villages. They are most concerned with structures that fall within
the shadow (300 meters) of the ancient (12th century) church.
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| La Eglise |
We moved
forward planning to ignore the Mairie which meant that the future outdoor
section must be waterproofed. The outside walls would remain so no change to
the rear façade of the building leaving us with an interior space open to the
sky or “terrasse
Tropezienne”.
The English contractor,
John, started by planking the large openings that remained. He then busted out
mortar along the entire perimeter making holes about 6” square every 2 meters. These
holes were to receive reinforcing steel in long sections of 3/8 inch rebar
formed into a 4’ square. Over this was placed more steel in the usual mesh
sheets that are used under slabs and driveways everywhere. This part was very
dusty and noisy and generated a lot more ruble to cart off.
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| Ahmed toiling away |
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| Preparation for steel |
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| Holes, Holes, Holes |
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| "Holy" mess! |
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| More rubble |
The access to the new space was twofold: one way was to come through the existing living quarters and the second was a set of stairs from the garage. To provide for the stairs, we had to knock a hole in the floor where the stairs would go and pour the floor around the hole. The stairs would come later but it seemed wise to use the same builder to make the hole, set the stairs and clean up any related problems. Knocking the hole was easy but messy and dusty. They then had to build forms around the hole for the concrete to run to.
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| Access for the stairs |
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| Dust for all |
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| Quite a proper hole, says John |
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| Formed up and ready to pour |
Having the space ready for concrete, John appeared the next week with a large concrete mixer and pump and set up in the street behind the house and started the pour. He started in the summer kitchen area and worked back toward the street. This area was poured flat unlike the terrasse area which needed to be sloped to accommodate runoff from rains.
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| Mixer and pump in the street |
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| Setting screed forms |
Because the roof was still intact and we couldn’t use the normal pumps, the concrete pump fed a 4’ hose to a large box head on a tripod and then the concrete had to be manually moved and leveled. It was very labor intensive using one man on the pump, two men spreading and one man screeding and final leveling. John completed the summer kitchen area (about 40 square meters) in one day and rested his men and came back to tackle the larger area.
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| Pumped concrete |
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| Styrofoam panels |
The terrasse area proved to be more difficult as the native slope was reverse to what we needed. John did not know this until about half the area had concrete down. He then realized that to get proper slope, the high area would need to be about a foot thick. The existing structure would not hold that much weight.
John pulled the wet concrete away to the lower area and worked it level. He quit for the day and returned the next day with 4X8 sheets of Styrofoam. He used this very lightweight material to build up the needed areas to control the weight by displacing concrete with the lighter material. Later he still had to place some I-beam steel below in the garage.
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| John and Rashad |
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| Styrofoam ready to be buried |
This work
was completed in July. It was quite hot even for France and the old barn must
have felt like an oven. To compound the heat problem, John’s workers were
Islamic and it was the season of Ramadan. According to their custom, they are
not allowed any food or drink (even water) during the daylight hours. We were
very concerned because they were sweating profusely under the heat and work and
weren’t allowed to replace the water.
After the
pour was completed, John started to clean the pump and return to the rental
company. He flushed clear water into the storm drain for a while and the final
step was to force a sponge cleaning ball through the hose with pressure from the pump. Well,
it stuck in the hose. They worked for about 30 minutes until it finally cleared
and immediately the built-up pressure made the 4’ hose looked a garden hose ran
amok. It sprayed concrete water over houses, cars, the street and intersection
and people were ducking for cover until they got the pump shut down. It took a
long time to clean all that was soiled by the frisky pipe and pump.
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| Fiberglass resin |
After several
days of curing the concrete, John returned to complete the waterproofing on the
floor. This phase consisted on rolling on a coat of resin to form a fiberglass
seal.
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| John rolling along |
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| Turning up the wall |
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| Rolling Fiberglass |
He then laid a fiberglass mesh sheeting over the first coat and covered
that with another coat of fiberglass resin. Very smelly and perhaps toxic to
the eyes so we stayed out of the way. The workers wore simple paint masks to
keep from inhaling the fumes. He turned the fiberglass resin up the walls or
about 8 inches to prevent any water from leaching into the walls before
draining off.
John
collected his check and went away happy and glad to see the back of us. So we
now have a waterproofed terrasse sloped to handle any rain or storm. Or so we
thought!
A few days
later, while pressure washing something on the newly completed floor, we
discovered that the floor did not have proper slope to drain off as intended. Water
puddled in several places, none of them near the drain!
Now we have spent a ton
of money, the contractor is paid and gone and the product is defective! And in our case, you can’t correct slope by
adding more concrete because we are overweight already. It would be very
difficult to dig out concrete to obtain grade as we have already waterproofed,
etc.
The final
solution was to have John lay the tiles and assure slope on every course. He paid
for the extra colle (thinset) required for buildup and when he finished the
slope is better although marginal at best. He matched the price for tile work
of our usual man so we were none the worse. His work was not as good as our guy
but it was passable and we worked the setting of the stairs into the deal, so money-wise, it worked out okay.
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| Note the buildup under the tiles |
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| Tile laying |
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| More buildup |
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| Kitchen floor complete |
The next post will recap building the wall separating the rooms and working on the interior walls.
More pictures......
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| Temporary bracing under the floor |
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| more bracing |
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| Installing I-Beam |
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| I-Beam |
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| Finished view |
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| Finished view |
I tried for several hours on different attempts to repair a threshold to the terrasse area. I tried to cut and fit wood to rebuild an old wood threshold complete with a drip ledge to shed any rain or water. It was not possible given my meager talents.Then in a stroke of genius (or blind luck) I decided to try my hand with a concrete product for the first time on detail work. I previously had only poured simple slabs and while not particularly proud of this work, it is totally in keeping with an old house.
I later added some terre cuite "nez de marche" (terra cotta tile nosing) to cover the rough ancien concrete step.
A border of faux bricks is planned around the top to separate and the upper part will get some paint. In preparation for this, I had to run the electrics to provide a smooth finished product. With my mortar buster, I channeled out a canal to place the wires in which will be covered up later when we finish the walls. I also placed the boxes in mortar so they are sturdy when using them later.
My Dewalt cordless was no match for very old wood and most of it came off a chip at a time with a hammer and chisel.
The preliminaries are complete and the crepi guys blew the walls and covered all my sins. Afterward it is just necessary to set the outlets and switches. 
I rented a good spray rig and the lad did a good job from the scaffold at heights of about 6 meters. Money well spent as I am not good on ladders or great heights!!
When they returned they completed the structural bits and proceeded to set the fixed panels above and finally the sliding doors at the bottom.
