"two cool" Our Ruin in France

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

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 (12^th century) church.

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.

Ahmed toiling away

Preparation for steel

Holes, Holes, Holes

"Holy" mess!

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.

Access for the stairs

Dust for all

Quite a proper hole, says John

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.

Mixer and pump in the street

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.

Pumped concrete

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.

John and Rashad

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.

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.

John rolling along

Turning up the wall

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.