Project Erratic, the DIY Self Build Chalet Experience

Sickness and Loss

2011-09-29T22:25:00.001+02:00

Spent this weekend in Morzine. Took a flight out on Friday evening and we hired a car to get us to the chalet. Saturday morning I was feeling really unwell. We had eaten this very dodgy suspicious cheese sandwich in the plane and by Saturday it wanted out any way it could. So in between dashing to the toilet^and feeling sorry for my self I put more tiles up in the shower and bathroom. I grouted the shower room. I stuck the tiles down in the hallway and stairs that had some unstuck and replaced the grouting in the kitchen with grey mastic in the hope that it will stop crumbling out and look a little better. I cleared off the wooden kitchen surface and after a light sanding, applied a generous coating of oil that I hope will help keep it pretty.I have stuck down the divider between the tiles and the click clack flooring as it really annoys me when it lifts. I have stuck the trim down a^t the top of the stairs.I went round the laminate flooring in the dining room and stuffed packing foam into the gaps at the edges and then masticed over the gap. The mastic looks a little off colour, more purple than brown but I am hoping it dries a better colour.I got a bit done but I was hampered by being sick and also by a strange disappearance of many of my tools. I searched high and low for several of my favourite tools and cant seem to find them anywhere. My clipper and my wire strippers normally stored in my tool belt appear to have gone walkies along with a red plastic box I used to put wire and cable in. The wire and cable are all over the garage but the box is gone along with some of my tools.Looking forward to our next visit probably in October during half term.

A month of hard work

2011-08-29T23:07:00.001+02:00

We came back! After a long break (we never made it for Christmas) we came back for a four week "holiday" determined to get some of the outstanding jobs sorted out.
One of the most important jobs was the construction of both balconies, finishing the render to the rest of the outside walls and boxing out around all the windows and doors.
We arrived on Sunday night to find the place had been "tidied". Matt has been living in the chalet for the past 5 months whilst he works on Robs farm project and he has moved everything around. Everything has been moved into one of the unbuilt bedrooms downstairs. Feels a bit weird to have had everything rearranged without knowing about it.

Started on Monday with the shower room, figured out what bits I had after searching around and what bits I might need to finish the sink and toilet. I need to box everything in so several bits of chipboard are employed the holes. I find all the toilet bits so I can start by plumbing that in. I have to make up a reducer from 16 to 14 to 12 to 10 so I can connect the cistern up and turn the out let through 180 degrees to get it to flow properly but eventually its all working and water flows in, flushes and flows out. The sink is next which is easier as its all flexi pipes to the taps and a bit of drainage. So the shower the toilet and the sink all now work. I think I should leave it a couple of days to see what leaks so in the mean time I look at the huge amount of tiling that needs doing. Starting at the top of the house I disassemble the dalek do I can move it out of the way and take a look at the base. Found the signatures we signed when it was laid back in 2009!

Laid a few tiles and rebuilt the dalek:

Wednesday, the shower room needs a light and that is supposed to be from a cabinet on the wall like the other bathroom. This means breaking a channel and embedding cables for the cabinet. So get out the hammer drill and break a channel in the wall, dust and bits of concrete everywhere. Arrange the wires and make sure its all going to fit through up through the sink supports and up through the plasterboard wall out along the channel I have hacked out and up into the back if the cabinet to the lights. I also figured out the heater supports and that the light switch needs moving. In the evening I started to tile the top steps.

Thursday, was tiling day and I tiled more steps, and finished the hallway. I tiled the splash back of the kitchen

and began tiling the shower floor. This involved cutting round the curved shower base, cutting the floor tiles as close as possible with the tile cutter then trimming them down with an angle grinder. At this point it was about 6 in the evening and I was finishing up when the neighbours complained about the noise. I suppose they had a point but it could have been a whole lot worse! Anyway that kind of stopped my grinding and cutting tiles for the evening. Try to do something a bit quieter that evening and fix the bath plug which has popper out of alignment and needs completely taking apart to fix.

Decided that Monday was going to be rubbish tip day so we cleared out one of the downstairs bedrooms, moving all the wood and stuff that Matt had stacked in there into the front drive. We made five piles of stuff, wood, cardboard, metal, plastic and sweepings. Tidied the garage, moved loads of stuff outside for the tip. Took all the insulation of the garage walls (most of it had fallen off anyway)
Built shelves and generally cleaned up the garage and the bedroom. Laid the insulation down on the bedroom floor.

Monday: To the tip, loaded up the entire car and the largest trailer we could cadge from Matt, and went to the tip with all the rubbish. Dumped it.In the afternoon I began to prepare for building the balconies. The existing timber has been sat in the sun and rain for about 7 years and the varnish is looking pretty sad. I resolved to sand the timbers down and recoat them with varnish before building the new balconies on top of them. This turns out to be a major task. After sanding them down they need covering in preservative, luckily I have plenty left from when Matt tried to preserve the chalet. Then the timber needs varnish. Both balconies back and front need the treatment. Some time during this the timber for the balconies arrives from Vioron. I have chosen to make the balconies to my own design and the easiest way to do that was to simplify the order for Voiron. I figure I can make the entire balcony from planks and posts. The uprights are rough sawn timber so I set top work sanding down a few of the lengths. Takes an hour or so and makes a tonne of dust.

Borrowing Robs new chop saw (he broke mine, dropped a log on it and cracked the stand, so its only fair) I chop out some uprights and bolt them on to the balcony timbers with some rather large screws, (12mm diameter and 160mm long)

After the uprights I rip a plank into three thin battens and screw these to the uprights. The floor starts next and for this I am using decking. Planks of decking chopped up and screwed down onto the freshly varnished timbers. The top hand rail is to be made from two planks laminated together. So two 5m planks are glued and screwed together over night.
The next morning I have to use my favourite tool, the router. I bought it ages ago and havent had a good use for it before this but I have really wanted to have a go with it. I need to cut a slot in the top hand rail to slot the top of the planks into. I set the router up and cut the slot. It really cuts well and was really easy!

Now this laminated handrail can be fixed to the uprights and I can start with the planking.
Loads of planks later:

A bit of sanding

a bit of varnish

Now its time to start the other side!

Super Sue put nearly all the planks on and got very painful shoulders after doing up all the screws. I bought 1000 and had to buy more so I am calling it the thousand screw balcony. Super Sue then painted both balconies three times, once with preservative and twice with varnish

On a visit to Voiron's I found the mesh for the outside walls which made me much happier and I could finish the walls.

Wednesday, fixed the mesh over the remainder of the walls on the outside until I had run out of bolts to hammer in. Decided to box out the bedroom doors as the the walls were in full sun and rendering in the sun is hard work as it goes off really quick. So chopped up some wider planks I had got from Viorons and boxed out the doors.
Thursday, started rendering the outside.

When this was finished I could get on with boxing out the rest of the windows and doors.

During this hectic time of balconies, rendering and boxing out, we tiled the shower room and tiled the bathroom. We built a wall in the bedroom to fill the gap, plaster boarded the gap. Built a tongue and groove panelled wall to cover up the cables, rendered all the other walls of the bedroom with the textured paint. The walls were also painted and the window and door had timber strips fixed around them.

I finally got the lights to work in the stairway and tidied up a hole load of electrics. At some stage during the four weeks I fixed the roof as well. About half the ridge tiles had cracked for some reason. Did not have the opportunity to replace them but patched them up with mastic and will look to replace them as soon as possible. Patched up a couple of other cracked tiles at the same time.

Well all that was four weeks of really hard work with only about one day off.

Did not get everything done I hoped to but got quite a lot finished. Hope to be back in October when the next holiday starts, maybe I can get the last bedroom finished and the last bathroom started.

Back from the dead

2010-12-01T00:31:00.000+01:00

Well its been a long time since I posted here, nearly 12 months! In that time we have moved from Switzerland back to the UK. We moved most of our stuff from Switzerland to either France or the UK. Moving it to France incurred the wrath of the French customs who made us pay to import it and initially at least tried to make us pay for importing the car as well, which we eventually resolved. We "imported" a load of stuff and paid the customs money to do it.

We have been back to the chalet quite a few times during this period and it has changed a bit. I have clad the outside in insulation and begun to plaster over it. This involved sticking insulation to the walls and then as this did not seem strong enough, nailing screws through a mesh, through the insulation and into the concrete

Then plastering over the mesh,

Between Rob and I we got about half the chalet covered in a couple of days and I intend to finish the rest as soon as the weather gets back above freezing. In the mean time the nieghbours get to view an orange chalet.

On another visit we had a huge tidy up upstairs and moved all the furniture from Zurich around to make the place a bit more habitable. My wife and kids wired up the TV, VCR and DVD player so we can watch movies while relaxing on the huge couch!

Railings have gone up overlooking the dining room to provide the impression of safety and the mezzanine will be railed across fairly soon to.

The oven has gone into the kitchen and its been wired up. The big hole that was, is no more and now contains an oven. The microwave works as well.

In the boys bedroom, I have finally finished the wooden paneling and while we were at it we did the floor as well!

This is probably the best room in the house now.

I pulled out the on suite shower and fixed the leak caused by last winters freeze, just in time for this winters freeze to destroy it again! We shall see. This time I was very careful about opening up all the taps and included the shower. I have also swapped the sinks from the shower room and the bathroom as the shower sink was too big for the space and the bathroom sink was a little small. It works a lot better now. Shower room sink is not yet plumbed in.

We ordered a couple of pallets of logs to ensure we had enough for our planned visit at Christmas

This is about half of them! there quite a lot of wood there! But I reckon we will burn a load of it during our stay. Rob has also dumped a couple of loads of timber cut out of his farm. All that is out side the garage doors. So I reckon we should have enough fire wood to keep us going for the next trip at least.

I have replaced the big radiator at the bottom of the stairs with one that actually works now and with all the doors closed to the empty unfinished bedrooms, the stairway does seem to get warmer. That said I think I will super insulate the garage wall and install another big radiator at the bottom of the stairs.

I have done some work on the electrics as well. I remounted the distribution box on a "fake" wall which should allow me to run all the cables behind it and tidy all that up.

This leaves the question of what I am going to do on this Christmas visit. Well, I am going snowboarding with the kids and maybe if there is time I will put that extra radiator in and maybe I will tile the steps between the lounge and the dinning room and if I do that, then perhaps I could finish tiling the entrance hall and could even get down to the next landing!

So lets hope I dont leave this blog quite so long next time and I will let you know how it went at Christmas.

Money money money

2009-12-03T20:59:00.001+01:00

Somebody asked recently how much it had all cost and I realized that I had not actually really worked it out properly. Sounds weird, but I know it will be too much! I know how much the loans are costing and how I have spent on them but I have not broken it all down.
We bought the land, about 1338 square meters, for two 4 bedroom chalets for 530,000 French francs (before the change to Euros) My half was 26,000 pounds. A small unforeseen cost involved here was the Notary's fee. This is the "solicitor" who does all the legal stuff. He cost 45000 FF or about 4500 pounds. We financed this on loans and overdrafts from the UK. Then I had to pay for actually building the chalet. This was financed through a French mortgage. In fact this was relatively simple once we had solved some issues about the land ownership.
As we had bought the land jointly with a friend and his wife, in order to get a mortgage we had to formally split the land in half, this cost us about 11000 euros to the notaire! (Some percentage of the price of the land) Then the mortgage could be arranged (through the notaire), 210000 euro mortgage cost us 3079 euros to arrange. Then there was a problem with the neighbor and his access that cost another couple of grand to the notaire to sort out. OK so I have now spent £26000 for the land + £19000 in Notiares fees (!!!)
The mortgage amount was based on the architects rough estimate of 292500 euros based on the habitable area of the house (136.33 m2) I was allowed to borrow 70% of this.
The concrete work has cost me 102500 euros. The woodwork cost me 134000.The Architect has charged my about 14000 for his services.
All that comes to 250500 Euros and that is only the external shell no finish inside at all, no electrics, no plumbing nothing extra but walls, floors and roof.
This is obviously more than my mortgage so I had to arrange a top up loan of 50000 Euros (notaire cost something like 3000 E)

I am now reaching the end of my 50000 and as I used it to pay the balance of the construction and the architects fees an a bit of tax I have come up short. I guess I will need about another 10000 Euros to finish the place.
So all in all it will have cost about 320000 euros, about 30000 more than estimated (I think most of that went to the Notaire!)

Flooring the Salon

2009-11-16T21:28:00.001+01:00

I wanted to get the floor in the salon laid but I knew it was a two person job. My wife volunteered and insisted although I told her it would be cold. Never the less she insisted and so we all found ourselves driving down to Morzine on Friday evening.

We bundled the kids into bed as soon as we got there (at about midnight) we followed pretty soon after and we awoke on Saturday after a not too cold night.

First things first we had to clear the remaining stuff off the salon floor. Then the kids set about trying to find the squeaks. Jumping about in the floor trying to hear when the insulation squeaks. Then my 10 year old would drill down through the floor and into the concrete, hammer a bolt in and tighten it up.

The I could come along and finish tightening the bolt and grind it off so it would not interfere with the flooring.

When the floor was pronounced squeak less by the children we set about sweeping up and giving the floor a final Hoover before laying out the foam backing for the underfloor heating.

Ontop of that went the 12 sections of heating mat, each with two cables that all have to come back to the distribution box and be wired up to the thermostat.

Lots of sticky tape later the heating mats were all stuck down and the wires all taken back towards the distribution box we could start with the actual flooring.

Loads and loads and loads of flooring! We started laying the floor at about 11 in the morning and we finally completed the floor at about 1 in the morning, 14 hours later.

We were both exhausted.

A Cold Weekend

2009-11-09T21:27:00.001+01:00

Drove down to the chalet this weekend with the intention of getting the electrics in the salon finished.
As I left I stopped at Bauhaus to pick up a toilet bowl as my DIY shop in France doesn't seem to want to sell me just the bowl.
I arrived on Friday evening at about 10:00 pm to a cold, cold chalet.The only warm place was the hot room, at least that works. Since I replaced the heater a couple of weeks ago (maybe I didn't blog that weekend?) The heater has been on to keep the hot room just above freezing and stop the mains water from freezing. Not sure how much work the heater had to do as its not been too cold but the hot room was hot so I was pleased it was all working.
Filled the hot water tank and switched on the radiator in the bedroom when the house is plunged into darkness. The trip has gone. Out side to switch it on after remembering to switch something off first.
Turns out that underfloor heating came on and that plus hot water hot room heater and radiator is too much! OK I turn off the hot room heater and the underfloor heating. No way do I want the electrics to cut out during the night, it will be cold enough as it is without having to go to the bottom of the drive and push the reset button in the wee small hours!
Saturday morning and I wake after a pretty good night although I am wearing a huge amount of clothes and I have a huge thick duvet. It was OK.
Unloading the car is the first thing. More paint and the toilet! I hope this fits. OK try later.
Shopping! down to Vourons and pick up some stuff, they still don't have any 6mm wire for the hob so that will have to wait. Get some food and back to the chalet.
Where are the tools? the tools have gone. Quickly realize Rob must have taken them down to his farm. Well I suppose they are actually his tools so, you know, he can actually use them, I suppose. (be nice if he put them back though ;-)
Drive down to the farm find the keys but the keys don't open the tool shed. Remember where the secret keys are kept and drive back to the chalet get the keys and drive back to the farm. Open the tool shed and find the drill and a couple of other things. Drive back to the chalet. Realize that Rob has taken all the bits for the drill and have to drive back to the farm open it all up dig about and can only find a couple of drill bits including the chisel.
Fine, after some swearing and a quick rethink I figure I can do what I need with what I have, so back to the chalet and on with the show!

Break a channel for lots of cables. After the electricians visit I know I need telephone and TV in the saloon this is the socket to supply them. The telephone and TV will come through the floor in the entrance up the wall and through into this socket. Below the entrance they will have to go through the shower room and along on the ceiling basically following the water. Not happy about exposed wiring or conduit but not much choice.
After a bit of breaking I can pull the cables through the last section of gaine and wire up the second from last plug. I put the insulation down and glue in the chipboard floor panel.
I need to put the flooring down soon so I need to deal with the floor squeaks a couple of big bolts through the floor and into the concrete should top it moving. It seems to work but there are a couple of risks,
1 - While drilling these bolts into the floor I will drill through an electric cable (not funny and not easy to fix!)
2 - If the floor is fixed down what happens if the floor expands/contracts as a "floating" floor should ?
Well putting these aside for now the bolts seem to work.

Lunch time and while waiting for my lunch to warm up I fix the wooden panel on the end of the kitchen as well as the strip which covers the transition from tile to laminate. Its horrible and does not fit very well. I will probably have to stick it down or something.

After lunch the wooden panelling behind the red sofa. cover up all that concrete. I need a light switch and a plug socket built in.
Screw batons to the wall, run a few cables, add an empty gaine for the telephone socket in the dining room. tongue and groove across the concrete all very nice.

I just need some edging to go around the edges and it will be finished.

I plan on filling a few gaps with expanding foam and then painting over it with my porridge paint. So out comes the foam and a quick spray later the few gaps are mostly filled in. Until ten minutes later when the foam filling the biggest gap expands a bit too much and pushes itself out of the gap and down the wall and all over the floor! Yeuch. It is horrible stuff. But I know enough to leave it until tomorrow when it has set before trying to clean it up as it will just make more mess while it is still sticky.
So that evening I mix up a batch of porridge and slap it on the two remaining walls in the entrance after finishing off the timber surrounds to the door and window.

The expanding foam cleaned up pretty well but there will be a lot of sanding to do to get it all off the woodwork

Sunday morning and I wake to find 2 inches of snow has fallen overnight. I hope this is not going to stop me getting home. Before I left on Friday I had grabbed to snow chains just in case but I was relieved I did not actually have to use them, by the time I left most of the snow on the drive had melted although the snow on the grass was still there. I wonder how long it will last?
I need to leave at 12 so I clear up the saloon and try to make it ready for next week end when I hope Rob and I can get the underfloor heating in and the floor laid.

Mothers Approval ?

2009-10-23T19:42:00.001+02:00

Took my mum and the boys down to the chalet this weekend. She has not seen it since it was a hole in the ground and was surprised by the change, although she expected it to be more finished than it it. Even though she reads this blog she expected it to be more finished, perhaps I give the wrong impression here.

The chalet is not finished. It is a long way from finished. I need to do more work on the chalet.

OK that should help.

We arrived about midnight on Friday and it was cold. The chalet was about 5 degrees and bundling the boys into bed I was concerned at how warm they would be.

Rather disappointingly even with the radiators on full it was a chilly night. The morning was horrible. Put on as many clothes as you can and get breakfast.

I sparked up the dalek as soon as I could and a bit of heat started to fill the upstairs. Turning on the underfloor heating in the dining room suddenly tripped all the electrics.

The temporary supply I have only supplies a few amps. If I pull more than that the trip goes and has to be manually reset. Normally this happens in the dark in the rain or in the snow.

This was to be no exception as it was actually snowing now! With the trip back in and the bedroom radiators switched off we could use the hob and the underfloor heating at the same time.

It would be interesting to see how much the various appliances pull from the electricity. My brother has some gadget thing that lets him see what power he is using, maybe I should put that on my Christmas list! (hint hint)

So with the fire lit and the heating on it was slightly more than chilly. I wanted to get the new radiator and the ebay bathroom cabinet installed. The radiator went up quite easily with a bit of help from my mum positioning the four supports which have to all go in at once.

How are you supposed to do that on your own? I chased out for the cables and built in a cable box. The other end goes off to the other bathroom and is not connected yet so I can really test this out just yet. I have the earth cable here that the heater does not require (?) so I bring it back out and do some earth bonding on the copper pipes (about time)

The bathroom cabinet is a bit more tricky although simple enough. I need to get the cables, one fro power and one for the switch to come in right in the middle of the back of the unit. This means I need to chase out a channel in the concrete. So I slice the plasterboard and drill holes in the studding to get the cables through then break out a channel in the concrete for the cables.

Thinking about what the electrician said I know that the switch has the wrong colored wires in it. It has red blue and earth in it. There is no earth and there is no neutral. The wires should be red and black. So these need to come out and be replaced. Its not a long run but its annoying to have to replace stuff.

Eventually I have the cabinet on the wall after some more help from my mum holding things in the right place while I screw it to the wall. A nice switch installed and connection down on the really messy consumer unit...

and it works!

Well that was a busy day now I think I should round it off with some painting. The wall down the stairs get the textured paint treatment and I manage to cover up some of the concrete badness where the reinforcement was showing through at the bottom of the stairs. Just camouflage really and the rust might show through again but for now its hidden.

Saturday night was another cold one. Not too cold to start with as the bedrooms had had a chance to warm up but at 4 or 5 in the morning it was getting a bit chilly. Apparently it got down to minus 5 degrees and the hard frost on the ground in the morning make me believe it!

October and the first frost. More snow is forecast next week.

Not sure the family should keep coming with me until I can get the place a bit warmer. I need the doors on the bedrooms and the stairway heater working. But that might just blow the trip withe the bedroom radiators on? Hmmmm. Well we need to sort it out so we will just have to see what happens when we turn it all on! In the mean time there is the radiator to put up in the shower and tile and all the rest o it to do!

5 Electric days

2009-10-14T19:47:00.001+02:00

Saturday
Arrived quite late in the afternoon as I had only left after lunch and had stopped in Bauhaus to get some bags of paint.

House was very quite and still. As the kitchen was empty and clean one of the first things I did was to rub down the worktops and apply a layer of oil. With any luck this will be absorbed by the morning and not be a problem

Sunday
after unloading the car, stacking the last 20 packs of flooring on the mezzanine, the 5 bags of paint down in the garage, setting a shelf up and all its shelfs, bathroom cabinet - (Modern bathroom cabinets are extremely expensive, especially if you want, as I do, to light the bathroom from the cabinet. How hard is it to make a cupboard with a mirror on the front and a big light on the top? Nobody seems to get this, its all tiny little specks of light or anything that might light more than the top of your head costs the earth. Anyway I had ranted about this to my long suffering wife and she had begun searching the Internet for bathroom cabinets. Having found a couple and won the auctions we bought these oldish cabinets for about 5 swiss francs, saving about 2 or 3 hundred in the process. I was bringing one of these cabinets to the chalet in the car) I went to visit Robs next property, "The Farm". Its a pretty large 200 hundred odd year old barn over a few rooms just down the road. He is renovating it or rather he has got some local talent to renovate it for him. They seem to be doing a pretty thorough job of mucking it up at the moment. They have gutted the building and dumped everything that was inside in a huge heap outside. Then they built a wall and put in a concrete floor, carefully demolishing the wall that was holding the roof up. The roof is now propped up on long tree trunks. It doesn't look all that safe to me. Rob is hopping mad as the builders haven't done what he asked and have done strange things like knock down walls and left huge chunks of valuable floor tiles (2m by 1m slate flooring slab) outside on the road. Then they have the balls to say that yes everything is fine and that there is no mess and the carpenters can start next week when clearly they can not. Anyway I took some pictures and had a long chat to Rob about how crap French builders where.

Getting back to the chalet I set to work on the kitchen. I was surprised to find that the oil of last night had not soaked in. This I shall take to be a good thing. I will take this to mean that the wood is now fairly sealed and more oil will not soak in. So I rubbed down the worktops and begin work on the plug sockets just above them.

I mark up where the plugs are wanted, drill through the chipboard with the hole saw and extend them into socket shaped holes with the jigsaw. Then reach in and fish about for the wires I put in all those months ago when the wall first went up. Praying that they are about the right length and that I marked the sockets in the right place and remembered where all the sockets were planned. Insert the yellow boxes and wire up the sockets. Screw down the frames and clip on the covers. Voila. Now all the sawdust and bits of plastic wiring and god knows what else is stuck to the work top in what remains of the oil I put on yesterday night. Lovely.

The hob is next. The cable clamp on the hob broke while I was wiring it up last time so I resolved to dump hot glue all over it to fix it down. This seems to work and after a bit of trimming of the worktops the hob is siliconed into position and weighted down with handy boxes of tiles which are quite useful as well as heavy.

I keep going and start screwing the worktop down, up and to the units. Sometimes this is with some special angle bracket but more satisfyingly its a big screw directly through the unit into the worktop. The second worktop (with the sink in it) butts up to the first (with the hob in it) I silicone this joint and screw down the second worktop, the third follows. The joint all round the back is then filled with silicone. Not sure how well this will stick as everything is covered with oil but it will be also covered with a tile splash back and masticed again so this is really overkill but then who wants there splash back to leak?

While messing about with the hob I had to empty the drawer underneath it and low and behold there was the fridge fittings. These fittings allow the fridge door to be fixed to the nice matching wooden door and slide properly when its opened. It was these fittings that we had mislaid and were trying to get replacements from Ikea. No need now! these are quickly fitted and the fridge is finally finished.

OK with the fridge done I start to think about the microwave.
One of the last times we were here I went out to climb a mountain and left my wife and youngest son on there own. My youngest also had climbing ambitions and decided to climb the kitchen units, no doubt having discovered that the lollipops where "hidden" in the top cupboard. He opened the drawers and using them like steps climbed up to where the oven should be, then seeing the microwave door handle he grabbed it and started to pull him self up. The microwave was not fixed in at the time and instead of Hari pulling himself up he pulled the microwave out and down on top of him. Microwaves are heavy. They are a lot heavier than they look (after all they are mostly a big space for putting things in so whats in there thats so heavy?)

Hari fell on the floor and the microwave fell just next to him, corner down, onto my new tiled floor. Something must have been right that day as Hari was basically unhurt the tiles were unbroken despite being hit by both small boy and heavy microwave. I returned to find a badly dented microwave and a tearful but grinning three year old sucking a lollipop. He had got his lollipop after all! We were just glad the microwave landed on the tiles rather than landing on Hari!

Well I wrote the microwave off and thought of getting a new one when I eventually buy the oven. But today I thought I would try it out just to see. So I carried it to the nearest plug and rather gingerly plugged it in. Its alive!! All the right lights came on and it turns on and bings. It looks like it still works. I am, frankly, quite surprised and have to start thinking how to fix the broken plastic front piece.

After an hour or so of patient bending and straightening and ample amounts of hot glue the rear metal corned is kind of corner shaped again and the front plastic trim is almost in the right place. I can slide it into position and wind up the screw that extends the arms that grip each side of the unit and prevent the microwave from surprising my son again.

I am a bit nervous about microwaves as they can be really nasty if not shielded properly but there is nothing missing or broken off from this one just a bit dented and the plastic trim is back in about the right place so I think it will be OK.

To finish off the day I start to wire up the ground level plug sockets in the fake wall. I get there position completely wrong and have to drill and cut several holes before I can get the gaine and cables in the right place so that everything reaches properly.

Monday
Monday means the shops are open so Monday morning means driving down to Thonon on the trail for bathroom heaters and a replacement toilet.

Can not find a suitable bathroom heater for less that 500 euros which is way out of my price range and the shop does not or will not sell me a single toilet with out the frame and mechanism behind it. It comes as a set! Well bugger that. I am not spending 200 euros for a 40 euro toilet! I will buy it Zürich and pray that it fits and all the holes line up! They probably will not and I will have to buy the bloody mechanism as well next time but for now I can hope that it will work.

So after a less that successful trip to Thonon I drove back.
The doorway into the kitchen has always presented a bit of a challenge. The concrete wall needed a fake wall skin built over it to allow lights and power into and around the kitchen and the big wooden pillar on the side of the door was another design problem. With a fake wall or skin on the concrete there would not be very much room between the pillar and the new wall. Too big to leave and make a feature out of but too small to do anything with. I resolved to cover both sides of this gap although I had not got to specifics on how I was going to do this covering.

This gap was the right place for the electrical switches for the lights in the kitchen and entrance and because of this, a large amount of wires and gaine came up in this space and were distributed across the kitchen or the mezzanine. It was now time to fit this switch properly.

The gap on the kitchen side would be filled simply by covering it with a plank of wood!
Simple is good.
The chalet had other ideas. The pillar, it seems is not actually vertical (a little worrying) It leans slightly out from the kitchen. The doorway, just to be contrary, is not vertical either but leans slightly into the kitchen. The combined difference at the top is about 3cm. After trying various ideas and thinking about how I would do this I opted for the simple approach. Get plank of wood and screw it into the pillar and the doorway with some big screws and make it fit with the hammer!

Simple it might be but it was actually quite effective. I cut a three socket hole in the plank and carefully threaded about seven gaine through the hole after another few hours trying to identify what the hell all these cables were from! There are about ten cables coming down/up/through in this small gap and although I knew what most of them were, there were two which I just could not figure out.

They came in right at the bottom so they ran under the floor, they did not run out to the snake pit and to the consumer unit and I could not think were else they were from. Well after an hour or so of head scratching and searching through tangled knots of cables I figured out these mystery cables were for the external lights. I confirmed this by stripping the ends of the wires and twisting them together then circuit testing the other end with a torch. Then to make sure, untwist the cables and check again. I confirmed that these two were the external lights and resolved to make better notes and labels next time.

Each of the gaines and cables need to be threaded up through the hole in the plank and then the plank was screwed to the wall covering the gap. I turned to power off before I started all this so I was a bit against the clock. I had to finish this and get the power back on before it got to dark to see! I wired the cables up to the three switches and then made sure the ends of the cables were safe especially the external lights. Then turned on the power. Low, let there be light! and it was good! I now had a light not only in the kitchen but in the entrance as well!

Later that evening I cleared the entrance and tried to figure out he best way of tiling the floor. I laid out about 2 packs of tiles in various trial runs but nothing seemed to go right and I stopped to get to bed.

Tuesday
Today was for filling the other side of the gap. This side would have the underfloor heating thermostat mounted on it and would have the underfloor heating wires running out at the bottom. This would be installed in two boxes. One high, for the thermostat and one low for the connections to the heating elements. As well as all the cables hidden in the gap I would now need the underfloor heating power cable, the thermostat temperature probe cable and a gaine to connect the two boxes together. Then the underfloor heating cables come up through more gaine into the connection box. All in all it was quite complicated and took a long time to sort everything out and get it all connected, but eventually the power was switched on and I watched with delight first as the LED display actually came on and did not burst into flames but showed all the right numbers and secondly as the LED display showed the temperature slowly, oh so slowly start to rise. I could also feel the floor of the dining room and kitchen start to warm up!

Nothing caught fire and nothing shorted out and the temperature was still slowly rising.
I leave the dining room heating up for the moment and start to think how the saloon underfloor heating is going to work. I originally figured the thermostat would sit in the concrete wall just above the stairs but now I have actually installed the dining room system I can see this would have problems. To a quick redesign and the heating wires can come in at the top of the stairs and the thermostat can still be above the stairs. Now I have to chase out for all the cables and boxes I need. Using my new angle grinder (the old one is still MIA) I cut down the sides with the diamond blade. Not as effective as I had hoped and it makes a lot of dust. After the sides have been cut I get to work with the breaker and break out the concrete enough to get the plastic gaine in. There is going to be a lot of cables in these boxes and a lot of connections to make I just hope a can get all the heating element wires up the few gaine I can actually fit into the box. I fix some temporary wooden battens across the holes to hold everything in place. I mix up some "deep crack filler" and carefully fill all the gaps fixing the gaine and boxes into position. That will have to be left overnight to set.

Tuesday evening I set out to tile the entrance floor. I laid out the tiles in what was the third dry run and finally had a layout that seemed OK, no really small cuts and fairly straight runs. So I started tiling. I should have known better. Despite laying out the tiles three times I still got the lines skewed. The concrete wall was not running straight and was needing slightly bigger cuts each time and when I got to the opposite corner the full tiles would no longer fit! Bugger. I had too many tiles down to try messing about and adjusting it all so I made do and squashed the tiles into the corner as best as they would fit. Not great but hopefully there will be a big cupboard over all this so no one should ever see it.

Well at 2:30 in the morning it was about as good as it was going to get so I went to bed.

Wednesday
Today was the day the electrician would come and have a look at my efforts. Today I would know if I was going to have Christmas in the chalet or not. But that was after lunch. Before lunch I played about with electrics in the saloon. I removed the batons from the wall as the plaster had now set. I rebuilt the dalek on the new fireplace cursing the fact that I had forgotten to tile the fireplace and that that would have to be done sometime but now the weather was getting cold I would need the dalek before I could tile it so it would have to wait.

Around 12 ish the electrician turned up and was given the grand tour. I don't think he was very impressed. He pointed out a couple of big problems. I have red wires coming up into my light fittings. This is a big no no. I have the earth and power in separate gaine for the hob and oven. This is a big no no. So before I do much more I need to rewire most of my lights, the hob and the oven. He gave my lots of advise on the consumer unit and what I needed there. But he big news was that with the amount of rewiring I needed to do I was not really going to be getting the inspection this year. I think I was a little optimistic anyway but then you have to be with this chalet, you have to be!

Well I was little depressed at the prospect of pulling all the lighting cables out and replacing the red wire with a black one. threading the wire through in the first place is a nightmare and thats when the gaine is not fixed in. Threading a new wire in with no room to maneuver will be terrible! I quickly disprove this by opening up the three way switch I installed on Monday, undo all the connections and pick out the entrance light which I now know has a wrong color cable in it. I attach black cable to the end of the red, earth to earth, blue to blue and wrap it all in insulation tape, then pull on the wires coming out at the light end. The wire moves through relatively easily and with a bit of encouragement I have replace the wires relatively quickly. The stairway light does not need it as it is a cable and the phase is brown wire. The entrance way external light goes relatively easily for 95% of its length only to snap just before I can reach it. OK don't panic, stop swearing about electric regulations, calm down. Fix it. If I drill through the wall, I can pull out the gaine and place a connection box there. So I do that and with some pushing and pulling and fiddling about it all seems to work and the wires are replaced. Next is the kitchen lights. One of the best things the electrician said I could do was that as long as the light fitting was fitted, I did not need these fiddly socket things. I can just fit the light directly to the cables, so I am not too fussed to get the sockets fitted back exactly right. So after a bit of pulling and squirming about the lights are all rewired and I just have to rewire the three way switch. All before it gets dark, again.

All the lights comeback on apart from the entrance light. A sinking feeling tells me the three way switch needs to be rewired again! Ah maybe not. I replace the bulb and we have lights again!

Using this new light I grout the entrance tiles and the few kitchen tiles I laid. I hope the kitchen floor is a bit more stable now it has few bolts in it . We shall see.

Thursday
Big tidy up. Sweep floors, get all tonnes of dust and rubbish off the floor. Wash the kitchen floor. I don't think black tiles were ideal choice. They will never be clean. They are impossible to get clean. You wash them but they dry dusty!

I try to tidy up all the tools and accumulated rubbish from the saloon as sometime soon We need to put the floor in and everything will have to be cleared for that.

My big clean up of the dining room has revealed a couple of problem areas with the laminate flooring. There are 2 corners that seem to stick up slightly. Not sure what caused this. Probably caused having to take the floor to bits and relaying it. Most Ikea stuff is like that. I think is works fine when you put it together the first time and it looks like you could just take it apart and rebuild it again. But just try it. The rebuilt cupboard or floor or whatever will never be the same it seems like the fixings are fix once do not re-fix.

Anyway after the big tidy up I packed the car and drove back towards Zürich. On my way I pass another DIY shop on the other side of Thonon. I had plenty of time so I stopped and had a look round. There in the sale was my ideal bathroom heaters! Well not quite ideal as they are only 750 Watts not the 1500 watts I thought I needed. But they are on sale and the sale ends today! great I have to buy them. So I do. I will fix these up next time.

Important Information

2009-09-16T22:33:00.002+02:00

A friend of mine sent me this:

EU Directive No. 456179
In order to meet the conditions for joining the Single European
currency, all citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland must be made aware that the phrase 'Spending a Penny'
is not to be used after 31st December 2009 .

From this date, the correct terminology will be: 'Euronating'.

Floors and Fireplace

2009-09-14T23:22:00.001+02:00

Spent the weekend in Morzine. Drove the family down on Friday arriving about 10 ish.
Determined to do some electrics this week end and try and move the next two bedrooms along. Saturday morning and I was fixing the door frame up on bedroom number four hammering in big nails when instead of hammering the nail I hammered my left index finger. Full on smashed it! Oh my! painful.
It is two days later and its all gone black and swollen to twice its size and is still totally agonizing when ever I bang it against anything.

Any way with this slight handicap I finished the door frame and started on the underfloor electrics for bedroom 3. One handed electrics!

I wanted to start on the tiles in the entrance and in order to do this I was going to use Robs idea of bolting the floor down where ever it moved. So I drilled the holes put the bolts in, tightened up the bolts fixing the floor down. It worked very well but the next phase is to grind off all but a sliver of the nut so it can be tiled over. OK I need the grinder. I cant find the grinder, somehow it must be in Robs chalet locked away out of my reach. So now I have these bolts sticking up out of the floor about 5 cm just right for catching feet o, right in the entrance to the house and whats more they stick up so far I cant actually get the door open past them! I have to go out via the ground floor bedroom and round to see if I can get into Robs chalet and locate the grinder. Well I cant get to where I need to be. But I still have a door that will not open. In the end I get a metal blade for the jig saw and slice off as much as I can with that which although leaving a fairly lethal spike in the floor at least the door opens now! Ok this is not going to work so I wrap up the ends of the bolts and tell the family really clearly to avoid them. This pretty much guarantees that one of them will stub or spike them selves on them by the end oif the weekend.
My wife suggests that we do the dining room floor. Right. Underfloor heating and laminate flooring. What could go wrong? Well remarkably little actually.
We cleared the room and laid down the black foam underlay for the heating.

This we nailed down to the chipboard to keep it from rolling around. Next we taped down the heating elements. Not quite in the recommended pattern as the kitchen breakfast bar had moved forward by about half a meter meaning the heating elements would no longer fit sideways. We hastily improvised and laid them long ways leaving one left over which I will put in the entrance under the tiles. (good job I had not done the tiles today!)

Then comes the laminate

Each section needs to tapped into place and every other section I would bash my finger so the laminate proceeded slowly across the floor as the air filled with blue swear words. The floor was 5cm bigger than two sections of laminate which meant both ends needed to be cut.

All the wires for the heating elements have to be routed back to the thermostat and the temperature sensor needs placing in the floor but it all went quite well

So well in fact that my wife insisted that we do our bedroom the next day.
The bedroom does not have any underfloor heating so the laminate so it went down onto the thin (3mm) white foam underlay.

Then the laminate on top, bit better sized this time not quite so many cuts.

Again the flooring proceeded across the floor accompanied by much swearing and cursing as I bumped and knocked my finger. My wife was amazing and ended up doing most (if not all) the hammering.

Monday morning and before we left I wanted to get the fireplace finished so the floor up in the salon could be thought about. So I dissembled the dalek and moved it off to one side, then constructed a wooden frame and filled it with broken tiles from the garden where I seem to have a huge supply.

Then mix up four bags of morter and spread out

This will have tiles on it and then I will put the dalek back on top.

We all signed the slab, packed up the car and drove home.

Mail From Morzine

2009-08-23T22:46:00.002+02:00

Arrived Friday night for a quick weekend visit determined to get a lot done. I had a list, I was on my own, no interruptions, I was going to get a load of stuff done. This new determination arises as a result of inviting my brother and his family to the chalet for Christmas. My mum is invited too (although as I haven't actually talked to her about this, she is on holiday, she may well read this before we talk, well, Hello Mum, Your invited to the chalet for Christmas. Let me know if you want to come!) My sister will be invited as well but unfortunately if she decides to come she and her family will have to stay elsewhere as my brother has three kids I have 2 and with my mum makes 10 people in a chalet that officially sleeps 6/7! My sisters family would be another four which we just don't have room for. Maybe Robs chaet is available, I will have to ask.

Anyway I figured I had about 15 weekends before Christmas which didn't sound to many and with all the work ahead of me I thought I needed to get cracking. In order to have all these people here I need the electrics all certified and I need that done soon. Hopefully I can get Robs electrician to fix this up for me.

So Saturday morning and before the traditional trip down to the DIY shop in Morzine to fetch the required gear. I had to unload the car. 20 packs of laminate flooring, about 250 kg and that is only half of what I need had to come out of the car and be stacked in the salon. When I finally made it down to Voiron's I managed to get a letter box. Arrived back and started work on the third and fourth bedroom doors.
I fixed the uprights to either side of the doorway after extensive calculations and determining the gap between the uprights should be just enough for the door frame, only to discover that the timber is not exactly the desired dimensions. 50 by 70 mm timber when rough sawn is only nominally that size it varies. It varies quite a lot, so much so that my careful calculations were completely useless. The door frame would not fit.

Shiny toys to the rescue. Rob had brought with him from the UK a new electric planer, just the job. It took a while to get the hang of the thing and figure out just how to get the best out of it. You have to apply most of the pressure at the front of the plane and it really helps if you go with the grain and don't use the silly shavings collection bag. It just gets full very quickly, as it is far too small, and this somehow stops the plane planing off any more wood. It took a couple of hours of some quite hard work to get the timber down to the right size and ready for the frames. as well as reducing the size I had to chop out notches for the hinges and at the top for the fixings that keep the frame square. Once the frame would fit I had to pad out all the edges with plaster board which is pretty easy, just nail up the board then run the hand saw down the frame to trim the edge. Glue up the frame and glue the uprights then slide the frame in. Fix the other side of the frame together and slide that into the frame. Make suer its all squashed in together as far as it will go and the frame touches the paster board all around then brace:

While that was setting I was looking at the door next door. After having to mess about with the plane I was a bit more careful with this side and quickly spotted there was not enough room for the uprights on this side either! I only had 40 mm to play with so that meant either cutting down a 50 by 70 plank or getting 40mm some other way. I ended up taking 2 strips of 19mm chipboard and gluing them together and gluing that to the wall. Brace it off and let it set. Then i would hang the frame on that.

While I was waiting for this to dry I was thinking about the stairway tiles. I was on my own which was a perfect opportunity to do the steps as only I would be walking and I would be the only one to blame if I stepped on the wet tiles. I started to figure out what I would need.

Rob invited me to dinner and before I could really start we were eating freshly caught trout from the trout farm down the road caught and killed that very morning, They were delicious. Anyway after the meal, Rob went to put his kids to bed and I started on the step tiling, I thought I would just do the risers and leave the treads for another day but when Rob turned up after about an hour we progressed on to do the whole thing. About 2 in the morning we had all the tiles for the first flight of steps cut (all except one) and Rob, who was driving back to the UK the next day, decided he had to get some sleep. So about an hour and a half later I had fixed all the bits on the steps and left them to clean up.

Sunday morning and a bit of grouting later:

Not bad but took ages to do.

Sunday was also the day I out the post box up.

And finally got round to putting up my official number. Well, not actually the number I thought I was. I received, via Rob another number!

4215? where does that come from? Now, last time we were here we told the mayor of Morzine that Rob owned 4235 and I owned 4225. So where does 4215 come into this? There is a rumor that these numbers are supposed to be the distance from the mayor of Morzine's office in the square, but this is not strictly true as many places the numbers do not run in sequence. Anyhow its a bit weird and How I ended up with 4215 I dont know. I somehow do not think this is the last we shall hear of this. So I putthe new number on the house:

I also found out that the huge bill I got last weekend was for tax Froncier and tax habitation . The habitation part I should not be paying so I will write to them and explain and ask for some money back!

Floored by the tax bill

2009-08-17T00:05:00.004+02:00

Saturday and I went to buy the floor, the laminate flooring that will finish the salon, dining and bedrooms. Overall I need 100 square meters of this stuff which turns out to be 42 packs! So I am in Ikea (yes I know ikea but they sell some good flooring that is pretty cheap) and I need another double bed so I buy that then down to the ground floor to get the flooring, 42 packs is never going to fit in my car with food shopping and the bed and then I notice the carts have a 130 kg limit on them. Each pack weighs 14kg so 10 packs will put me over and ten packs is about all I am going to be able to push and fit in the car. Right 10 packs it is I will have to come back for the rest in a couple of more trips. Well I loaded up the car and it was full so I am glad I did not push it. Anyway I got home and there was a letter waiting. Unfortunately the episode in the mayors office last time has started something unpleasent. It means the French tax people have figured out where I live! So now I get a letter demanding payment or they will stop my bank account and freeze my assets the whole none yards - this is the first I have heard of this bill - presumably someone is Swindon has been getting wierd letters from France demading money for a while now! Any way I will have to pay this or bad things will happen. I will try to talk to them on Monday and prevent them stopping my bank or anything silly so I can see them next Saturday to sort it out.

Two week Transformation (part 2)

2009-08-13T20:16:00.009+02:00

This is the second post describing the second of the 2 weeks I have just spent in Morzine. I got up to Saturday, so on with Sunday...

Sunday and I was due to pick up my son from Geneva train station. He had just spent a week on a camp, had been home for a day then been put on a train on his own for Geneva. He was not fantastically happy about the situation and was a bit overwhelmed by the culture shock of coming from a noisy camp with 40 other kids to the quite of the chalet with nobody about. Well not quite nobody as Robs kids were there and he plays well with them. Still he was not himself for a few days while he sort of recovered. Anyway I picked him up from Geneva and drove back to Morzine arriving back just after lunch. Once back I started on the shower room. I wanted a toilet and basin as well as the shower and wanted to work out the best position. I thought the toilet would work against the external wall. These suspended toilets (I like them a lot) have about six bolts that hold the frame against the wall. These have to be marked and drilled all in the right position to get the toilet bowl at the right height to sit on, all relative to a floor that does not actually exist at the time. So it quite a fiddly process to set all the adjustments up mark the wall, remove the frame, drill the holes and bolt the frame to the wall. Well, this I did against the external wall.

The frame has 2 long bolts onto which the toilet slides and is bolted back to the frame. I slid the toilet bowl onto the bolts and then to get a look to see if it would work I stepped back towards the door. It was not going to work. It was too close to the shower and you would not be able to sit with your legs comfortably. OK it would have to be moved. Just as I was coming to this conclusion. The toilet bowl fell off! It must have heard me! There was a bit of a horrible crunch as it hit the concrete floor and I realized, as I jumped forward to save it, that it was broken. It had cracked.

So this shower room really did not want to get built. First the shower doors and now the toilet. Bugger! Well, the toilet (frame) was in the wrong place and it needed moving, so off come the bolts and I have to readjust the frame in its new position and redo the whole process. Here is the (blue) frame in its final (hopefully) position

With the toilet frame in position I looked at the basin. These I had bought from Zürich as I have had no luck at all finding a decent hand basin in France. I am sure they are available but just not in the few shops I have tried. Anyway I bought 2 basins from Zürich with us in the car. One was going to replace the basin in the first bathroom, the second was going in here. I installed the big bolts that hold in up and slid the basin on, (making sure this time to put a nut on the bolts so the basin could not fall off!) It looks too big and too low. Right thats it for today enough It's all going wrong. I am quitting for the day. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Monday morning was spent in town at the mayors offices. Some time last week Rob had found a letter with my name on it but his address stating that I had not paid my water bill and I would be disconnected on August the 17th! So Sharon (Robs partner) and I were in the mayors office to sort it out. Also we were able to sort out (maybe you never really know) the numbering issue. We were able to tell the lady in charge that I owned number 4325 and Rob owned 4225 and to which plot of land these numbers belonged. She diligently entered and changed things on her computer system so maybe we will all have the right addresses now. Anyway I paid my water bill which they had been sending to England, to an address about 3 addresses old. I guess it was probably my fault for not telling everyone where we live and when we change. You would have thought with the number of times I move and change address I would be quite good at it by now but I think it has the opposite effect.
Monday afternoon saw me painting. I mixed up a batch of porridge, and started by finishing off the second bedroom.
With the bedroom walls finished I moved out on to the landing and began to paint the pillar on the stairs. The porridge is really good at filling in the holes and bubbles left in the concrete and when smoothed off against the metal corner strengtheners it really looks quite nice.

Tuesday morning and Rob and I rescued his old trailer from the ditch in which it had been buried about 2 or three years ago. It was full of rubbish but it was in surprisingly good nick for lying in a ditch for three years. We jet washed the inside and bought a new plug for the lights, put Robs new number plate on it and we were off. Down town to get me some more chipboard. We returned with 10 sheets of chip board strapped down to the trailer. Very good first trip. Now all I need is a tow bar on my car and I could make full use of it.
I set to work using up the chip board by fitting the floor in the shower. To do this I had to finish up the electrics and carve all the blue insulation around the cables then fit the chipboard into the floor. It certainly tidies up the place when its down. No more snaking cables and pipes all over the place.
My wife was due back tomorrow and I wanted to get the entrance floored out with chipboard too. We ate with Rob and his family and over dinner I removed my wedding ring as my fingers were swelling and it was beginning to hurt me. So I removed my wedding ring and wore it on my little finger as a pinky ring. It was a bit loose but I thought "I will put it somewhere safe when I get back" Rrrriiiigghhhhtttt. So there I am with Robs help laying the chipboard for the entrance floor. Rob showed me his patent method for stopping the chipboard from moving about - put a bloody big bolt through the chipboard, through the insulation and into the concrete. Fix the bolt in the concrete and tighten the whole lot down. Then grind of the top of the bolt and leave just a sliver of nut to hold it. Tile over this. Interesting but it looks like a lot of work. I will bear it in mind for the awkward bits that keep bouncing. Anyway around midnight we finished the chipboard and went to bed. As I retired for the night I noticed the inevitable, my ring had disappeared. F***K **@@/((()='*** (good job my son was asleep!) My wife is going to kill me! I will have to tear up the floor to find it all that work for nothing. Arragggggghhh.
After a look around the floor, down all the cracks and crannies I could not see it so I thought I would leave the ripping up of the floor until Wednesday.

Wednesday and when I got up out of bed I went to put on my trousers and ping my wedding ring rolled out across the floor. Oh thank God for that. I dont have to rip up the floor. How did it get there? I will not question how or what put it there but just accept that I have found it now and am saved from some horrible and embarrassing explanations not to mention ripping up the floor. I spent most of Wednesday tidying up the house and hoovering all the dust and concrete bits and rubbish that seems to accumulate when ever I leave a room for more than a few moments. That evening I collected my wife and youngest from Geneva.

Thursday was spent putting in the landing floor between the bedrooms and laying the chipboard in the bathroom. The blue insulation on the landing was a nightmare. In other rooms I had tried hard to keep the cables in a regular shapes but the landing was a mess there were cables all over it going in all different directions. This made cutting the blue insulation very tricky. The 19mm chipboard went down on top and mad it all so much better. My wife and I cleared out all my stuff from the second bedroom and moved the double bed in. We had our own room! The boys would stay in the first bedroom in the bunk beds cos they really like the bunk beds.

Friday and we took the boys out most of the day to a rope park were we exhausted ourselves climbing about on wire ropes and cargo nets high up in the trees. Friday night saw me fixing a few metal corner strengtheners on in preparation for painting the walls. My wife then suggested that we should get on with the mezzanine floor. OK lets do that. So Midnight finds us cutting and hammering away at the mezzanine floor, which the next morning looked a bit like this

Saturday morning and I asked Rob for his help again. This time I wanted to borrow an Acro prop. He had a couple in his newest property "The Farm" and I needed something to replace the tiny piece of wood that was in effect holding up me entire chalet and that was disintegrating. This is a picture of the piece of wood a year ago

That was a year ago and it was cracked and basically the wood had failed. The block of wood was supposed to be about 50mm (5 cm or 2 inches) square but now the block had been squashed to about 30mm or just over an inch high. This was effecting the entire roof. If you look at the picture of the mezzanine the big vertical wooden column to the left of the coffee cup, this holds up half the roof. Between that column and the concrete was this small piece of slowly disintegrating wood. It really had to be changed. It was a major error on the part of the builder in my opinion and it should never have been left as it was. In my thoughts this job could go 2 ways. It would either be quite easy and we would position the prop under the beam wind up the prop. Prop the roof up about 20mm and replace the wood with something else. Alternatively we would try to wind the prop up and nothing would move. If that happened than I would have to deal with it as it was. Fortunately someone was smiling on us that day as the prop was wound up the roof moved, well the column lifted. It lifted enough to get the old piece of wood out and replace it with a handy slab of stone which was ideally suited and just the right size.
Here is Rob jacking up the house

and here is the replacement chalet support. You can see the old piece of wood on top of the beam

That afternoon I used the last bag of porridge paint to paint the landing and one wall of the entrance. It makes such a difference and really tidies up the bare concrete.

Sunday was spent doing a bit of tidying up and packing before we left.

All in all a very good two weeks I did not do half of what I wanted to do but then that is the way of it I suppose. Next time I must get to grips with tiling the stairs and landing.

That should be fun.

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Two week Transformation (part 1)

2009-08-09T21:10:00.014+02:00

Just returned from 2 weeks "holiday" at the chalet. 2 Weeks of hard work building. 2 weeks turning what was really a building site into something livable.
We arrived on Saturday evening and installed our selves.
Priorities were set and established. A kitchen sink and the shower were at the top of these priorities, but it being Sunday and both of these activities required the purchase of stuff we made do with placing the dining room floor. This meant I had to complete all the electrics in the kitchen and dining room before the patchwork of blue insulation could be laid around the cables and have green 22mm chipboard laid on top of it. Sunday night at 1 am (Monday morning) We had a dining room floor.

Covers up the snake pit nicely!

Monday and after a trip down to Voiron's I return to plumb the sink in with what I thought was 8 meters of 40mm diameter waste pipe. This is to carry the waste water from the sink along under the kitchen units then down into what will be the second bathroom and connect into the drain. Easy thing to buy you would think and it should be. I went to the shop requested 8m of 40mm waste pipe in my best French and it was understood (a minor miracle in its self) and I was pointed at a formidable rack of grey pipes that presumably contained my pipe. OK. The rack it turns out contains every diameter of grey waste pipe known to man and several unknown bits and pieces. Well 40mm is 40mm how hard can it be? I spent a literally a 10 minutes trying to decide which pipe was the correct one knowing that I would almost certainly choose the wrong one. Most of the pipes could be ignored as they were obviously too big or too small and it came down to a choice of three, 40mm external diameter (yes I had a tape measure with me) 40 mm internal diameter and some other pipe that said it was 40mm but I couldn't measure 40mm anywhere, 35 internal and 37/8 external, anyway there was not much of this strange pipe around so I chose the 40mm internal diameter pipe on the basis that there was a lot of it and it looked about right (?) Of course when I got this back to the chalet and compared it to a piece of real 40mm pipe I knew I should have chosen the 40mm external diameter! Fine! I knew this would happen I can return it and swap it for some correct pipe. Only fly in that ointment was that this pipe comes in 6 meter lengths and in order to get it into the car I had to saw up a 6 meter length into 3, 2 meter bits and then with great care I had actually hunted about to find a 2(ish) meter length of this stupid wrong pipe to make up to 8 meters. Anyway I was unsure how they would take back there 8 meters pipes when it was in 4 pieces!.

Well it would have to wait until tomorrow, today I had plumbing to do. I had to get the hot and cold water from one side of the chalet to the other. From the "hot room" across the ceiling to under the shower room (through a concrete beam on the way)
Of course for this I would need copper pipe and this morning Voiron's had had none so I scoured Morzine for 16mm copper pipe, I scrounged up about 5, 2 meter lengths of pipe (i needed at least 8) from about three different shops. Right these all have to be soldered up together and taken through a stud wall and a concrete beam to get to the right place.

Through the beam and to the taps...

Then on with the plastic pipe, through the wall, through what will be the second bathroom...

and up into the kitchen under the fridge, round under all the kitchen units and up into the taps

Now the waste has to reverse that journey via a U bend under the kitchen units down into the second bathroom and into the drain.

All this took me until Tuesday to finish, but Siew Ling was very happy with her kitchen as it now had hot and cold running water (like all good kitchens should have!)
Voiron's very gracefully accepted the 4 bits of pipe and allowed me to take another 4 bits of the correct pipe, they also found a few more copper pipes in the back somewhere that I needed.

So running a little late with the list of priorities, Wednesday saw me started on completion of the shower. Wednesday saw the first real disaster (of the whole build really) I was constructing the shower door assembly and holding one of the glass panels when all of a sudden it turned with a snap, from a glass panel into a pile of windscreen glass

I don't really know what happened just it went from one solid piece to thousands of pieces in a split second for no apparent reason, other than I was holding it.
Well this was pretty bad news the 300 Euro shower was pretty much junk now and I was rather annoyed.

Thursday and I went at the studding around the shower and the bedroom. This went well, and despite the last minute change to on suite the door frames all went in well.

Sound insulation and plaster board

Having finally done this piece of studding I could finish the other side of this wall and plater board the section between the two bedrooms. (sorry no photo)

Electrics in the walls takes forever, setting in the lights and plugs and heating cables demands constant thoughts about what is going where and what will be connected to what. The radiator in the second bedroom in wired in and connected up as is the power socket and then the cable runs up to power the entrance plugs. (Slightly unconventional but something I forgot when we floored the dining room) Still it is still within the 8 plug sockets allowed on one line of 2.5mm cable, 3 in each bedroom, one on the landing and one in the entrance makes 8.

Thursday saw blue insulation go down in the entrance and then the afternoon was spent with the family.

Friday was a trip down to Geneva to drop Siew Ling and Hari off at the train station (Ohmri was at camp this week) and on the way back stop off at Thonon to see what they can do about my shower doors.Nothing it appears. I bought it too long ago so they cannot replace it and the one single shower they have of that model (now reduced from 299 to 199) is for sale fully assembled! I cant get it back even if I buy a completely new shower. Well just below the assembled showroom shower is a set of doors that might just fit. I will have them! 199 euros! bugger. This shower that was pretty cheap just got pretty expensive! That afternoon I fitted the new doors together and with Robs help (he turned up with the family on Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday?) The new doors were fitted.

They look OK and apart from some fiddling about with the tops of the old shower they work quite well. I was able to have my first shower and the shower works really well. (thank heavens)

Saturday and I cleared out the second bedroom, swept and hoovered then put the 40mm blue insulation down followed by the last of the 19mm chipboard. I need another 20 odd bits to finish the rest. Then I painted 2 of the walls of the bedroom with the porridge paint from Zürich. Which is not as porridge as it looks. It seems to dry quite white. White enough to probably not need to be painted.

Thats it for now I will continue with the next week in the next post.

One Of Those Days

2009-07-20T19:43:00.007+02:00

Another weekend with the family down at the chalet.

On Friday evening, just as we left I had stopped in the big DIY superstore here in Zürich and bought some lovely door handles and before we went to bed we fitted these. They are solid aluminum and sculpted just a little. They feel wonderful and solid and make the doors really look finished.

This time I was concentrating on the plumbing. I need to get water to the shower and the kitchen. This means bringing the water across the chalet, up in to the shower, along through the second bathroom and then up into the kitchen. I was pretty sure I was not going to get all of it done but if I could sort out the fiddly bits then the main runs would be that much easier. The main "fiddly bit" was bringing the pipes up into the shower and splitting them off for the basin, toilet and shower. I wanted to be able to seal off sections of the plumbing without turning the whole house off, so I installed taps in the ceiling of the store room at the bottom of the stairs.

You can also see in the photo the waste water for the shower room, which I need just one more bit to finish. Isn't that always the case!
The pipes then come through the floor by the wall and up into the shower. It rapidly turned into "one of those days", nothing was going to go right. Joints would not solder, pipes would not fit, every second hole I drilled into the concrete would hit re-bar half way in. Well, with these days the only thing to do is to continue on and work though it.

So it was unsurprising when I realized I did not have nearly enough pipe to finish and that the pipes I had fit for the shower supply way to high and it would have to be changed.

Eventually, sometime after dinner the remaining pipes I had were all in place.
Next time I just need to take the run across the ceiling and in to the hot room to connect it up. The kitchen will run from the second set of taps through the wall and second bathroom, up into the kitchen along under the units and finally up in to the tap by the sink. This run I intend to do in plastic, if I can figure out the easiest way to join my copper to plastic and the plastic to the kitchen.

After running out of pipe I set to work on the stud walls between the shower and the bedroom and in the full "nothing is going to go right" spirit I determined that there was not enough room for the shower door!

I had spent a long time umming and ahhing about whether to have on suite bathrooms or not, this bathroom shower was the perfect example. It could go either way. I decided that if I was going to have a nice shower then it should really be available to everybody and not just the one bedroom. So I had decided against on suite, although I was told that on suite is basically worth more in both the rental terms and final selling price.

Anyway it turns out there was not a decision to make anyway. There is not enough room for the door so the shower will be on suite! Anyway I ran out of wood pretty quick as the studding really soaks it up.

Looks like I need another delivery!

Saturday night saw us in the kitchen again fixing some of the remaining doors and handles. The fridge door was my main target but I quickly discovered that that there was a box of bits missing. The important bits that connect the fridge door to the unit door!

OK they must be here somewhere, but we could not find them at all. I suppose it is possible they got chucked out with all the polystyrene or cardboard last weekend but I think thats unlikely. More likely they are just hiding under something waiting until I have gone out and spent more time and money to get replacements then they will reveal them selves and laugh at me (OK they wont actually laugh, but you know what I mean)

OK so no fridge door.

Sunday saw me trying to put some of the finish on the top stairs. I had decided to clad the stair way hole in timber and leave it for a while, in the meantime the timber would enable me to paint the walls and finish the rest off while I waited for inspiration about the hole.
Using the new miter saw and cutting some fancy angles into the timbers, I clad out some of the hole and with my eldest sons help we screwed it to the sides.

OK time to go. Never enough time to do very much on a weekend visit like this. I will get more done next week. I am staying for 2 weeks.

So a big push to get "finished" or at least not quite as deadly as it is at the moment where one wrong move will trip you over or pull wires out of sockets or flood the electrics with water or any number of other horrible things. Especially with my kids wandering around. I would feel a lot better about it if I could get rid of the most deadly stuff lying around!

My aim is to get all the chipboard floors down in the saloon, the dining room, the kitchen, the entrance hall, the first landing, the second bedroom, the shower and the first bedroom. I want to get the shower and bathroom tiled, walls and floors, so everything up to that stage. I want to install an oven and the dishwasher, maybe even the washing machine and dryer.
I want to tile the entrance hall, the first flight of stairs and the first landing. I want to paint the second bedroom and finish the first bedroom (T&G, paint walls and ceiling)
I want to finish the mezzanine floor and get some timber on to the balconies. I want to sort out the electric panel in the hot room.

I think that should keep me busy for a couple of weeks!

Instructions Inside

2009-07-13T19:26:00.003+02:00

The whole family went with me down to Morzine this weekend. My wife spent her first night in the chalet on Friday and although it was a little cold it was OK (I think)

With only the weekend there was loads to do, Friday evening we emptied the one semi finished bedroom and hoovered the floor then put the beds we bought up in the van into it with the mattresses.I checked the fridge out and wired its plug into the mains. After putting the kids to bed my wife and I sat in the kitchen putting drawers together until midnight and oiling worktops ready for Saturday.

Friday night was distinctly cold and as this was my wifes first weekend I was anxious to make it as comfortable as I could, so first thing Saturday morning I set to work wiring up the bedroom heating.

A quick trip down to Voirons, mainly to pay my bill (for the Mezzanine) and I set to work clearing out all the cardboard plastic and polystyrene and general crap that had accumulated to about head height in the dining room. Basically if it was cardboard my three year old and I chucked it out the window, if it was plastic or polystyrene it went onto bin bags.

Its still a mess but there is now a whole load less rubbish!

I then began to assembly the shower. loads of bits and no instructions! bags of screws and strips of plastic, feet things and roller things and all sorts of strange fittings and clips. How does all this go together? The shower came in four big boxes and we slowly unpacked each box trying to find any sort of guidance on how it all went together. I mean the basics are not that difficult, we have a shower base, big white quarter circle thing made of fiberglass - Check

Drain and U bend assembly screwed into base.
Leveling feet go into base base gets leveled up.

Two big glassy panels go each side of the smaller silvery panel, but which screws/bolts hold them together and what are these big strips of silicon rubber for?

How do all these nozzles and pipes go together, OK so the nozzles screw in to the holes in the big panels but how do they all get water? What do we do with all these pipes and clips?

Well we discovered some bits of paper with the glass doors right at the bottom under everything else along with a whole load more screws and bits. A huge helps the instructions were! Obviously in French but they were for a different make of shower. It was close but not quite the same. I could only assume that the principles were going to be the same and to water proof everything!

Saturday evening we had a barbecue - I need to get a proper grill for the barbecue, our makeshift assortment of supports drops more food into the fire than we get to eat!

Saturday evening saw my wife and I in the kitchen again, we cut the hole in the worktop for the sink and started on the drawer handles and cupboards.

Saturday night was lovely and warm, the radiator working a treat, I was worried as the other 2 radiators I had tried warmed up once and then never got hot again!

Sunday and I was only allowed a cup of coffee once I got the hob working! So I set to work wiring up the hob in the kitchen. Simple job, undo a few screws wire it up tighten it all back again made really annoying by the French design which uses star headed screws! Nothing normal like a cross headed screw, but a star so I have to dig about to find a star bit that fits and then cos the only thing I have that will move them is the electric screwdriver I end up shearing off one the screws and generally having to bodge up the whole job!
Not too happy I decide not to completely stick down the hob into the worktop as it sounds like it will probably have to come up again! Anyway I got my coffee!

The electric distribution panel is getting to be a real mess. I know what I want to do with it, to give me more room for all the "hundreds" of cables coming in I want to do what we did in the kitchen and stud panel the wall to give me room to drop all the cables down behind the panel and bring them through but its quite a big job and basically I will not have any power while I do it.
Mind you the longer I leave it the worse it will be to resolve! Well lets say, it has risen in priority and leave it at that!

The sink went into the now oiled worktop and although not very impressed with the fixings that came with the sink, I do not think its going anywhere.

A door on the bathroom was todays challenge. The frames and doors we brought up in the van are ever so slightly different to the three I had bought before but you would not notice unless it was pointed out, one or two of the edges are rounded in the new doors rather than square on the old and the finish is a bit better generally.
Anyway these new doors actually came with instructions - in English! (and French and Italian and polish and ....) so I can now finally see exactly how you are supposed to install these doors and apparently I have been doing it completely wrong! Any way i prefer my way of putting them up it seems stronger and all the wedges and foam installation they suggested sounds tricky!

So the door went in and I found my self with a few hours before we left, so my three year old and I started on the studding walls for the next bedroom and bathroom. We cut the sole plates, drilled and screwed them into the floor. Hari, my three year old looks cute in his ear defenders and bob the builder helmet! He helped measure up the timber and pull the trigger on the drills.

Time to go I was pleased with what I had done and even more pleased my wife and children had enjoyed the weekend.
We plan on doing the same thing next weekend and then I get 2 weeks to do as much as possible.

I have my orders from my wife, shower and kitchen sink, get them working! I intend to use the plastic plumbing we bought to hopefully speed up the plumbing but need to think more about the fittings.

I need to make a list!

The Big Van

2009-06-21T20:53:00.009+02:00

So, this weekend the plan was to hire a van and load it up with the kitchen worktops that do not fit in the car and take them down to the chalet. Hiring a van for a couple of pieces of wood seemed a bit extravagant so we decided to fill the rest of the van with a load of other stuff. We bought a couple of mattresses and beds and dug out stuff thats been sitting in the cellar since we moved to our latest apartment. All this was loaded in the van including 6 doors purchased from Bahaus. A good friend of mine, Steve, had agreed to come down with me to help with some lifting and also I think out of curiosity about this building I keep ranting on about and no one has ever seen.

Well we left about 5 ish on Friday and arrived about 9 something just as it was getting dark so after a brief tour of the building we had dinner and went to bed.

Saturday was shopping day but first we had to unload the van. Doors, beds, mattresses and other furniture was all unloaded and parked about the chalet in various rooms. We drove down to Thonon in order to get the fitting for the second bathroom, namely a sink a toilet and a shower. After some faffing about in the shop and after two shop assistants were surprisingly helpful we left with a toilet and a shower.

Then it was off to Gedimat to get a huge amount of tiles. i wanted to get all the bathroom tiles, the bathroom floor tiles and the hall and stairway tiles also. this was about a 1000 Euros in tiles with all the adhesive and grout I would need. All this was loaded into the van and we drove home.

All this was unloaded and, God those tiles are heavy!

After a cup of tea to recover we set about making the rest of the units for the kitchen and sizing up where and how the worktops would go. Eventually, after much thought and with some trepidation I made the first cut in order to fit the back worktop that contains the hot plates. It seemed to fit and in our enthusiasm we proceeded to try and cut the hole for the hot plate. Measure carefully, weigh up the alternatives and then commit yourself. After cutting two sides out the jig saw finally broke and left us half way through the third side. Critical bits snapping off left the saw unusable. The worktops are hard stuff! I finished the third side with a hand saw but that still left the fourth side. I then attempted a "Plunge" cut with the rip saw. Normally with the rip saw you start from an edge and slowly work your way across the timber to the other side, with a plunge cut it is possible to start in the middle of a piece of wood with the cut. We only needed enough to get the hand saw in then we could finish with that. You don't do many plunge cuts as they tend to be a bit messy and a bit rough and difficult to get exactly where you need and its not recommended to do this to cut out holes in worktops! Any way it all actually went very well the cut was close enough and we finished off with the saw.

Sunday and I wanted to get the three worktops cut to the right size. Again, after some ponderous thought and careful measuring the cuts were made. Steve had meanwhile oiled up the first worktop and with that in place the kitchen actually started to look like a kitchen.

One last job and I changed the swiss plugs on the microwave and fridge to French plugs.

We left about 1:30 and got back to Zürich about 5:30.

I think the weekend was a success, we got a lot of stuff delivered to the chalet and even though the jig saw gave up we did cut one hole out. Only the hole for the sink remains. we have the fittings for the second bathroom (except the sink, I cant seem to find a decent sink in France! must have them somewhere!) Loads to get on with next time.

Next time I need to prepare for the family coming down in August. So the dinning room will need to be cleared of all the rubbish from the kitchen, the chop saw room will have to become a bedroom and it would be really great if I could get the stud wall up and the shower working for when they are there.

Return of the Hot Box

2009-06-04T18:58:00.002+02:00

Returned the Hot box yesterday, Ikea very good about it, would not give me cash back, as I had taken all the wrapping of the oven, but instead, gave me a kind of credit card thing with 599 CHF on it.

Now all I have to do is get another 240 volt oven to replace it. I wonder where the nearest French Ikea is to Morzine?
Meanwhile I am trying to figure out how best to get the large worktops down to Morzine. The plan at he moment is to hire a van and take them down in that but if I am hiring a van I should make it worthwhile and take a bit more stuff that will not fit in the car, like beds and mattresses etc. Either that or balance the worktops on top of the car and drive with them strapped to the roof.

The Warm Box

2009-06-02T22:14:00.005+02:00

Ohmri and I where down in Morzine this weekend and took the fridge and oven down with us. The plan was to see how much of the kitchen I could get built now that the tiles were in. But first I would have to finish the electrics for the lights and plugs, skin the walls and then start the actual build of the units.

Rob was down with his family for their half term and he helped put the kitchen walls up and wire up the lights and plugs. Then we started assembling the kitchen units that fit along the back wall. Once the carcasses were fitted and screwed to the wall we started to fit the fridge, microwave and oven. The fridge and microwave have Swiss plugs on them and I did not have any French plugs but the oven just needed to wired directly to the wall. We wired it up and as we did noticed that the oven said 400 Volts. This is weird. Rob and I expected 240 volts. 400 is just really hard to get, especially when the plugs lights etc are all 240. Well we tried it and I can confirm that a 400 Volt oven is just a warm box when you try it with 240.

It was bit disappointing and I will have take the oven back to Ikea although it will provide Rob with hours of entertainment, teasing me about how many volts an oven has, I have looked and they do actually say it is a 400 volt oven in the web page. Strangely, you can buy the exact same model in the French Ikea which is 240 volts! Stranger too is that the swiss oven coats 599 swiss francs and the French oven costs 525 Euros! Nearly 800 swiss francs. Apparently swiss ovens all are 400 volts and they do something clever with 2 or 3 phase electricity to get 400 volts, but it must be complicated and why bother when you are providing 240 to lights and plugs anyhow? Seems weird. Well a couple of friends here have confirmed it and the oven in my apartment is actually 400 volts as well, but I still have no idea how to get 400 from 3 240 phases. I could perhaps do the same thing as I have three phase power in the chalet but I have to get the electrics signed of by the EDF and I don't want to have to explain anything out of the ordinary. I just want it simple, so I will replace the 400 volt oven with a 240 volt oven (not quite sure where from yet) and use that one.

Any way the kitchen is looking good apart from the oven, loads to do still but it looks good.

The Bath is Finally installed

2009-05-25T12:05:00.005+02:00

Spent a long weekend in Morzine with my eldest son. It was quite productive. We managed to finish the kitchen floor complete with tiles, we put in the bath which has been a long time coming and started on the wood panelling in the bedroom.

Thursday was Ascension day and a public holiday here in Switzerland. Nearly everybody decided to take Friday off as well for a long weekend. Surprisingly my sons teachers also decided to take a long weekend also. So I took him along with me to help out in Morzine.

My intention was to get the kitchen floor in, so that next weekend I can start the construction of the kitchen proper. In order to do this I needed tiles for the floor, these I was going to get from Bahaus, a big DIY shop here in Zurich. But (as usual) something went wrong and when I got there at about 18:00 on Wednesday evening they were closed, despite the signs assuring me they opened Monday to Friday 8:00 until 19:00. Apparently they forgot to mention that they close early on Wednesdays or maybe just Wednesdays before public holidays or maybe just Wednesdays before Richard wants to buy tiles, who knows? Anyway they were closed and so I was not going to get the tiles I had been looking at for weeks for my kitchen. Never mind Thursday was not public holiday in France (?) so the shops should still be open, maybe I can get some similar tiles there.

We arrived in Morzine at about 10 ish in the evening, set up home and went to bed. Thursday was big shopping day but first we had to unload the car. I had brought most of the rest of the kitchen and a big chop saw recently purchased in Zurich. The saw is more precisely called an "Sliding Compound Mitre saw" and looks a bit like this:

Basically a new toy! Shiny! The mitre saw Rob has lent me can not cut the wider tongue and groove planks I wanted for the Mezzanine floor so I decide to buy one myself. I will also need it do do the panelling on the out side of the chalet as this will be wide planks also.

That plus most of what was left of the kitchen apart from the fridge, oven and worktops was all unloaded and stacked in the chalet.
We drove down the valley to Thonon and loaded up with electrical and plumbing goodies for the kitchen and bathroom. No luck with the tiles and we had to get back to Morzine. So that afternoon Ohmri and I spent putting insulation in the kitchen floor, cutting around the many cables and running other cables through the false walls I put in last time, cables for lights and cables for power sockets. With all the insulation down I started the carry the sheets of 22mm chipboard up from the garage into the kitchen and lay them. So by the end of the evening we had a kitchen floor all ready for the tiles we did not have yet.

Friday morning and we drove down to Voiron's in the hope that they would have something like the tiles I wanted but no. So back down to Thonon and run around DIY shops until we arrived a Gedimat. Loads of tiles. I found something in my price range that looked a bit like the tiles I had wanted.
Got them and some adhesive. Right, back to the chalet to lay them. Figuring out where to start is not simple. All the books say start in the middle of the room and work out to the edges. Place the middle tile where the cuts will be even on both sides of the room. Well that's all well and good but I have a kitchen to go in on top of these tiles and nobody is going to see 2 of the edges so what's the point in spending ages getting all the cuts evenly all the way round. More to the point they will see the other two sides which will look strange with cuts along them. So discarding the books advice I tried to figure out where the tiles should go to give me full tiles down the two exposed sides and minimal cuts everywhere else. Laying the tiles was fine with Ohmri helping spread out the adhesive and putting the spacers in. We laid one pack of adhesive and quit for the day as we had no way of cutting the tiles and I did not want to mix up the second pack just to waste in. A barbecue in the evening sunshine finished a nice day.
I spent the evening building a frame and support for the bath. The bath which has been leaning up against a wall for months (well probably more like a year actually) has 5 of these spindly plastic adjustable legs under it that allows you to spend hours and hours adjusting them over and over again until you get so pissed off with them you just snap them off and place the bath on a couple of big blocks of timber (offcuts from the mezzanine beams) which works so much better and takes about 30 seconds to level up! A framework along the sides made of the framing timber which magically just happens to fit the gap between the bath and the rim and we are ready to go with the taps. But I will leave the plumbing until tomorrow.

Saturday and a quick visit to Voirons to get a tile cutting machine meant we could lay the last if the tiles ready for grouting Sunday morning. The few cuts we had to do should provide a few thin strips that will act as a skirting on the exposed edge against the wall.
We then started on the panelling in the bedroom but after a noisy hour or so of drilling and fixing the batons on the wall I fixed about a meter of planks on the wall only to realize 2 things. The batons were not deep enough for the light and plug sockets and that I had run out of gaine so I could not wire up the lights or plug sockets anyway! OK so abandon that project! I will have to take down the first meter or so of planks and double up the batons. This will allow the plugs and lights to fit better plus give me an easy way of getting the batons over the gaine that all over the wall.
So that left the bath. Turn off the water, cut through the hot and cold spurs weld on and extension and a screw threaded end. Screw on a long flexy pipe. Fix up a back board for the taps to fix too. This took me three attempts to get right. But finally I had the right combination of small hole to hold the pipe and big holes to allow the joint to do up tightly and enough room behind everything to allow the flexy pipe to actually flex rather than fold and the tap was in. The waste pipe was another nightmare. Plumbing seems to be all about how to get the most complicated tangle of pipes into the smallest least accessible space possible. I spent most of the afternoon fiddling about crammed between the toilet and the bath trying to tighten the plastic fittings on the waste pipe. Eventually it all seemed water tight, which is just as well as the main electricity distribution box is directly below the bath. Something that made me feel distinctly uneasy as I wallowed later that evening in several gallons of water.

Sunday was the last day and we had the grouting of the kitchen to do before we left. Ohmri and I worked quickly to grout all the gaps and clean up all the tiles and by 11:00 we had finished the floor all ready for next weekend and the placing of a few kitchen units!
Quick tidy up, pack the car and off home. Clean (for a change) and tired.

The Burping Builders Brother Builds

2009-05-02T17:06:00.014+02:00

So my brother, Eddy came over to Switzerland to help me out for a week. He arrived on Friday evening and on Saturday we loaded up the car with half the kitchen that has been sitting in my basement for a week or so, and drove to the DIY shop. We bought some paint for the bedroom walls and some other bits and pieces and then set off for the chalet. We drove down to Morzine in the brilliant sunshine and arrived about 3 ish. We unloaded the car and set up home. Eddy and I got stuck straight in and started work on the steps.

We screwed timber to the edge of the steps and insulated the gap covering it all in chipboard. The concrete steps were not very even and needed to be levelled off on each step.

The next morning Eddy started in the drying room by plastering the plasterboard joints and filling the joints around all the walls.

Meanwhile I was upstairs at the top of the house fitting blue insulation in the salon. We shifted some of the sheets of 22mm chipboard up to the salon and started to fit the floor.

Stuck together and carefully kept about 10 to 15 mm from the walls of the chalet. The pieces were slotted into place after being chopped to fit with my jigsaw, (thanks Mum!)

Some time or other we did actually confirm that we are connected properly to the sewage. So pigs can actually fly after all! There are 2 manholes. One is just a soak away and is rightly connected to the down pipes of the gutters. The other is definitely a sewer (you can tell!) and
my toilet when flushed, empties into it!

On Monday morning we went to Viorons to order the timber for the mezzanine for Tuesday morning. We picked up a car load of insulation and wood with just enough room for Eddy to squeeze in behind. After Viorons and some food shopping we returned to the chalet and emptied the bedroom in order to get the floor in. We fitted the 40mm blue insulation onto the floor and cut it around the cables.

After the insulation we laid 19mm chipboard on to the floor. I have to be a little careful with the floor height as the balcony doors are at a set height as is the door I fitted. I have 70mm to play with and this needs to include the insulation the chipboard and the actual floor finish. So with 40mm of insulation and 19mm of chipboard I am up to 59mm leaving me a slim 11 mm! for the finish.
With the floor down the next job was to paint the walls. I had bought two types of "paint" for the walls, (you can see a tub in the photo above) It seems so long ago when I painted the test panels in this very room. Those test panels seemed to indicate that an undercoat made very little difference, but the paint had a slightly better finish if applied to a damp surface. Since then I had thought of another way of messing up the paint. I proposed to seal the surface of the concrete with PVA glue in water, and apply the paint to that. Seemed like a idea, so Eddy painted the walls with watered down glue while I finished off upstairs.

The tub of paint went on first and it was quite hard work. It goes on like plaster and has troweled on and troweled smooth. With Eddy slapping on the paint and me finishing the wall it took about three hours to empty the tub (25kg) and we had not done the entire wall! Well no matter we have another type of paint, this was a sack of powder I had to mix. It was 30 kg of powder and I reckoned it would make about the same amount of paint as the tub so into the now empty tub it went, problem, it made more than the tub! OK get another bucket mix the rest in that. Another problem was, once mixed, it was not white, it was grey! porridge coloured. Right, put it on the wall in the drying room Eddy has filled it and it was ready so on the paint went. It was a lot easier than the original tub of paint but it was still grey.

The bucket of extra paint was not needed so I dumped it, interestingly when I tipped it out it was white! This started me thinking maybe the bag of paint had settled and the pigment had settled to one end of the bag (that got mixed in the bucket) and the gravel and stones that make the texture had settled to the other end of the bag and had got mixed first. Well I had another bag but I definitely needed something bigger to mix it in.

So the next day was Tuesday and we were expecting the delivery from Viorons. I started work on the railings I needed to finish in order to complete the insulation in the salon and Eddy began work on the steps for the salon. Around 11 ish the delivery arrived. We unloaded the timber from the truck and I was a bit surprised at the size of the wood. On Monday we had bought 14 joist hangers each 60mm wide and ordered timber beams 60x160mm for the mezzanine. Voirons delivered 80x160 timber.
OK so I had to drive down to Voirons and change the 60's for 80's but no big deal.
When I got back we started work on the mezzanine.

2 temporary timbers screwed to either wall and the joist hangers bolted into the walls,

Slot the beams into the hangers and there it is.

(With Eddy sat on top)

Wednesday morning and Eddy was getting itchy feet, he desperately wanted to go walk up a mountain and he had come all the way here so who was I to stop him. He compromised on a walk down into town for supplies. He set out around 11 and I soon realized that by the time he got to town it would all be shut for the French 2 hour lunch break. Anyway while he was walking into town I started on the ceiling of the hallway.

Eddy got back about 2:30 and I had lit the fire as about 1 o'clock it had started snowing and I was a bit worried Eddy would come back soaked and freezing, well the fire warmed up the salon although Eddy got back warm and dry. I finished the tongue and groove on the ceiling.

Thursday and we decided to use the second bag of paint to finish the bedroom as well as building the two walls I wanted in the kitchen. The kitchen was first and we got started on the two walls

With the frames of the walls built, I decided not to skin the walls just yet as the electrics and plumbing need to go in. This can be done later and will not take 2 people so we moved onto painting the bedroom, for the third time. This time I had bought a big trough, big enough to mix all the paint in at one time in the hope that the paint would this time come out white rather than grey. Unfortunately it was still grey. Ah well I suppose it can all be painted anyway. The bagged stuff is about half the price of the tubs and is just about easier to put on the walls. I will have to check the budget to see how much I estimated for the walls and see if I can afford white paint as well or if the new colour scheme for the chalet is now "porridge"

Well we slapped in on the walls anyway. It went up quite well but there was not quite enough of it to finish the job.

The last thing we did was get all the horrible rock wool insulation Rob had dumped on me and cut it to fit the mezzanine beams.

By the end of the day the grey paint we had put up in the bedroom was beginning to dry and it seemed to me to be going paler (in places) so I still hold out a slim hope that it might be white when I return in May, but I think it will all need painting one way or another.

Friday morning and a quick tidy up (Eddy had tidied up most of the chalet the day of his walk into town) and we drove back to Zurich to a very welcome shower and Eddies plane home.

Thanks Eddy for your help it was a great few days and I really had fun. I might have been a bit obsessed at times but my excuse is that I know how much there is to do and how much time I need to spend doing it all. Thanks Siewling for the curry, it was really good.

All in all a very useful week, we got quite a lot done especially the mezzanine which would have been really difficult on my own. The salon floor is just about finished except for a piece around the fireplace, the salon railings have been started, the mezzanine structure is finished (the electrics need to go in and the floor on top). The kitchen walls are up, although not skinned but they are up. The bedroom floor is in and the walls are painted (three different colours but painted!) the bathroom floor has been relaid with 40 mm, three flights of stairs have been completed. The drying room wall has been painted and I have loads of timber to be getting on with.

So the plan is to return, evening of May 20th (Wednesday) for four days (leave on Sunday) and the list of jobs is as endless as ever but the main points would be (in no order)

Plumb bath and shower
Floor in bath room
Fix small but annoying leaks in bathroom
Tongue and groove the bedroom wall, with all the electrics
Electrics in Kitchen
Electrics in Mezzanine
Electrics in Salon
Studding for new bedroom and bathroom
Doors everywhere
Kitchen floor
Kitchen units
Hall Electrics
Hall floor
and on and on and on...

Secret Chalets

2009-04-20T10:57:00.003+02:00

Rob has revamped his web site (about time) and I must say it looks really good. He seems to be marketing the whole Morzine experience. So check it out at www.secretchalets.com.

He also mentioned I should get a move on and finish my chalet so I can earn some money. Well Yes that is the general idea.

On a more related note the kitchen arrived on Friday, 83 boxes of stuff (and that not everything) I have sorted it all out and need to decide what I can take with us next week. God my brother and I have a load of work to do!

Easter Holiday

2009-04-17T08:41:00.005+02:00

So the family spent Easter at the chalet in a camper van. It was small and cramped but we managed. I took my eldest son snowboarding and even got some work done on the chalet! The main point of this trip was to order some of the materials Eddy and I will need at the end of April, not only that but also to get a little boarding in as I haven't been out on the mountain for ages and what is the point in having a chalet in the mountains if you spend all your time in the chalet and never actually get out into the mountains!

So I was a little worried about the camper van and where we would park it. I was a little concerned we would not get it up the drive and onto the flat bit at the top. Typically, it was not this aspect of parking the camper van that caused the problems!

Strangely I had not thought to ask Slow Chalets if I could park there. A bit inconsiderate of me I think but I was to be honest more worried about actually getting the van up the drive and I really did not consider getting permission to have it there. This was to cause some problems during the weekend.

So on Thursday evening we pulled up at the chalet and easily parked at the to of the drive in front of Robs chalet, noticing as we did that they had some clients or rather that Slow Chalets had some clients, as their car was parked out side. Well we plugged in the camper van and went to sleep. The next morning we moved the van back so that slow chalets guests could get out with their car. (embarrassingly It had still not occurred to me that anybody would mind us parking out side Robs chalet.)
We came back from snowboarding on Friday evening to Slow Chalets asking about what we were doing here and that we were not expected until the end of April and could we move the camper van as this was not the kind of thing their clients expected. Well maybe I was tired or just stupid but I still did not get what they were really talking about. We shifted the van back a few meters so the clients could get in and out past us.
Saturday I spent fixing the toilet. Breaking a hole in the hot room wall, digging a trench along side the chalet to the box and connecting the two together. I also discovered that I have no idea where the sewage goes after it leaves the box out side my chalet. The out let goes off in a completely wrong direction towards the old septic tank and not towards what I think is the sewage connection.
The sewage connection or what I think is the sewage connection has two pipes coming in to it one appears to be from my roof down pipes and was happily dribbling the last of the melted snow from my roof into the chamber and the other comes from the general direction of the what was the septic tank that Rob installed....

Actually I have just had a look back at some of the photos I took when Rob and I discovered the connection, here and this hole does not look like the hole I was looking at so maybe I was looking at a soak away and my sewage is actually going the right way after all. (yeah and pigs fly south for the winter!) I need to check when there is less snow about and I can see the other manhole cover.

I also started on the stairs to see if my design would work. It seems to be suitable so I will continue when I have more material.

Sunday We went snowboarding again and my son and I had a great time in the sunshine on the mountain. Came back to urgent texts and phone calls with Rob who Slow chalets had talked to demanding I get my camper van off the drive, well I was tried and hungry and by now understood the problem and realized I was in the wrong but slightly embarrassed by the whole thing for not thinking it through properly So I moved the van on to my own drive (which slopes) I could not figure out how to jack the van level (if indeed it would have gone that far) so we all slept on the slope and the van stayed there until the guests left on Monday afternoon.
Monday I was doing electrics in the kitchen and figuring out what stuff I had not ordered. Tuesday We were waiting for the order to be delivered from Voirons and at 14:30 my wife advised I go down to the shop and find out what was going on. I was sceptical that this would in fact do any good but as usual my wife turns out to be correct (I must remember, my wife is always correct!) Voirons had misplaced my order and needed reminding to deliver. So at four o'clock my wood and flooring turned up and had to be shifted into the chalet ready for Eddy and I to shift it in a couple of weekends. In the mean time I had been tidying up I had even opened up the garage door in anticipation of the delivery.

I am looking forward to the end of April with Eddy.

My kitchen arrives on Friday 17th, should be fun and a lot of boxes!

I Just Ordered A Kitchen

2009-03-31T23:24:00.002+02:00

Well I dropped in to IKEA this evening and ordered my kitchen!

It will be a bit like this:

IKEA have to look at my design and will quote me for it and then can have it delivered in about 2 to 3 weeks. It will be delivered to Zürich and I will have to transport it down to Morzine but that should be Ok.

Yes and the under floor heating arrived a week or so ago, 2 large boxes and three large rolls of foam underlay. Looks good.

We are looking forward to spending Easter in the chalet. We are renting a camper van for about 5 days and will be living in that cos the chalet is not quite livable in yet. Then a week or so later at the end of April my brother is coming down for a week and we will try to put the mezzanine up.

Under Floor Movement

2009-03-12T16:58:00.001+01:00

The underfloor heating guys have taken their money and we are receiving phone calls from "Die Post" asking about 2 packages. Seems they want to know how much its worth. I think they are going to tax me on importing foreign goods into the country.
I wonder how much that will cost me?
Oh well at least the packages are "in transit" I was beginning to wonder if they had actually got lost or even if they had been dispatched. Never mind I imagine in the next few days all will be revealed.

Civilization At Last

2009-03-09T14:21:00.005+01:00

Friday night and it was snowing gently as I left Zürich. The snow got heavier and heavier and the traffic got slower and slower (I am not complaining, I am one of those people who slow down when they can not see anything on a motorway!) At one stage hundreds of us travellers were stuck behind 2 snow ploughs churning down the motorway. Once into Evian the snow stopped and I drove up through Thonon and up the valley towards Morzine, only to be deviated at the roundabout at the bottom of the valley. Off I went towards Chatel, which is in the valley next to Morzine and the only connection I knew about is the Col du Corbier. This pass is not recommended in the snow. This I knew and I was a little apprehensive about crossing this pass tonight after all the snow we had had. Coming up the pass, three snow ploughs passed me coming down. OK so the road should not be too bad and it was not a problem until I started to go down the other side. I had expected that going up would be a problem and never thought that actually going down is much more tricky, especially when the snow ploughs seemed to have forgotten the route down into Morzine and only ploughing the route up!
Well the road down was about 100 mm of snow and ice. This made driving/sliding down the pass very interesting!

Well I arrived and unpacked and after digging out the electricity box from a meter of new snow, I went to see if the water was still running or if it was frozen up. The water was still liquid and judging from the huge puddle on the floor it was still dripping out of the drain tap! OK no big disaster just a bit of a puddle.
So with the heaters on and the water turned back on I went to bed.
Next morning after a quick shop for food and the trip to confirm that Viorons is closed now on Saturdays (that will make things interesting) I returned and began work on the hot water. The big red tool from Switzerland was the closest I could get to a Stilson but it proved effective and I had the the leaking joint open when I eventually figured out the best placement for the jaws. Lots of PVC tape and re tighten the joint, fix all the other pipes and joints making sure they are all the right way round and that the have washers etc. and then fill the tank and pray the joints dont leak any more. The joints held! Wow. Right, power. Cable and gaine and boxes wire it all into the distribution box, flick the switch and yes the small light comes on on the bottom of the water heater. Right I now have to wait a few hours for the thing to heat up then we shall see!

In the mean time I need to plumb up the hot water feed to the tap upstairs so get all the plumbing stuff and solder joints for a while until I can finally turn the taps and wow! water comes out the tap! Not Hot water yet but I suppose I need to give it a while.

OK next job is to measure up the kitchen so I can design and order it from Ikea. I measure the kitchen and measure the mezzanine as well just in case I need to design something later. I measured the doors to the downstairs bedrooms to ensure I know how they are going to work too.

Still no hot water.

I wire up the bedroom heater, fixing the gaine into the chiselled out grooves I made last time. Wire up the switch and the extension that will power the heater in the next room. I haven't connected the power in the distribution box yet.

Still no hot water.

I tear out the insulation in one of my studding walls and add another feed from the light switch to what will be the overhead lights for the bedroom.

Is that water "not cold" or is it my imagination?

I have bought a camping gas stove, 2 rings and a grill. This I fire up (literally) and have a hot meal.

I HAVE HOT WATER, great I can do the washing up!

CIVILISATION has arrived! I read somewhere or heard somewhere that Ice is civilization, well who ever said that had never been to Morzine in the winter. There is plenty of ice. Well I think hot water is a positive mark of civilization and now my Chalet has it. HOORAY!

Sunday I spent basically cleaning up. Upstairs the salon was a mess wire, tools, insulation, wood, dust, crap everywhere. So I cleaned all this up and sorted it out even hoovering! Did a quick tidy up elsewhere and started the "turn the house off" list. Drain the water tank, all that lovely hot water has got to go, set al the drains open turn off the main water feed and this time close the little drain cap which made a big mess before. After that just pack up and turn off all the power and away I go.

Got back around 3:30 after a boring trip only noting that there was a large amount of trees and snow all up the road that had previously been blocked. Presumably some avalanche or maybe a tree collapsed across the road.

Frustration

2009-02-25T22:21:00.004+01:00

Spent a long weekend in the chalet and got very dusty tired and frustrated about the whole thing. Managed to get the big heater swapped in the store for another one quite easily, bought a load of other bits and pieces.

When I arrived the water was still frozen, no surprise there. So I hung the door and turned the heater on. The next morning I was surprised to find that the water had thawed enough to flow and fill my pipes. All was well the joints all held up. I was just trying to fill the hot water tank when I noticed a small arrow pointing the wrong way. After a quick study of the diagram I find that although I have installed all the bits as per the drawing, the drawing is in fact back to front and I need to swap it all about. The cold water is going in to the hot water outlet and the hot water supply was connected to the cold water inlet. Great to all those joints that were holding now have to moved about, undone and redone. So I spend most of the day under the hot water tank fiddling about with all the joints and the more you fiddle the worse all the other joints start to get. By the end of the day I was a little pissed off and needed bits! Saturday discovers that Vourons is now closed on Saturdays, great. OK the other store has some bits and after complex explanations and detailed examination of the existing bits I get some more bits and head home with the new knowledge that the kit you buy when you get a hot water heater is made up of specially sized screw threads and nuts that are very much non standard so that if any bit gets lost or breaks or needs replacing, you have to buy the whole kit again!

SO now Saturday lunch time and I decide to abandon the hot water for now as there is one leak I cant fix as I cant get the joint open, I need some stilsons which tighten up the harder you push on them. Any way I dont have any so it will have to wait. In the mean time I will make do with cold water. So I run the water up to the bathroom plumb in the toilet and bring the water up to sink. I fit the sink and the new sink tap fit the toilet, fit the trap under the sink fit the waste pipe for the sink, stop up all the loose ends open all the valves and hey presto we have running water.
Easy! Right!

So I can now wash my hands, its a bit cold but okay. My next discovery is a bit more serious. I have often wondered why the waste pipe for the toilet has never smelt at all of drains. Well today I found out. Its because that pipe is not actually connected to the sewer. It is only connected to the storm drain for rain water. Fantastic. After all this time I finally connect up the toilet and it is still unusable.

Bugger. I really dont know how to fix this. Major surgery required outside with a digger and pipes and fun for everyone. May be I could run the pipe out side and connect up somehow at the drain, I really do not know what to do about it.

So I get on with some electrics. Something else to mess up. I wire up the sockets in the Salon, about 5 sockets in all all chained together and really hard to get the wires up through the gaine and into the sockets. The plastic surround things will not clip in properly and stick out on one corner.
With this wiring done I could put some floor down. So down goes 2 layers of 50mm blue insulation, loads of it, I have to carve it up around the cables on the floor but it goes down all right.

Sorry no photos as the big disk drive here at home appears to have failed and I cant get to any of my music or photos. (that will be a disaster if I cant get it working)

Came home to noisy children, a loving wife and a long hot bath. Feel frustrated and annoyed at French builders and French building supplies.

Underfloor embarrassment

2009-02-16T07:39:00.003+01:00

I have recently ordered the underfloor heating from an English company. Put the purchase on my French debit card and made sure the money was in the account. Great.

Heard back from Rayotec last week, The delivery is on its way but your card was refused. Oh no not again more trouble ! OK shot off an email to the bank, turns out there is a 1200 Euro limit on the card (that can not be changed) my heating was 1522.75 GBP !

So now, a little embarrassed I have to work out how to pay Rayotec there money. They are very nice about it and have even dispatched the 2 boxes to me here in Switzerland, but still its a bit embarrassing.

This is not the first time either. It seems like when ever I try to buy something slightly out of the ordinary something weird happens to mess it up. God knows what will happen when I want to buy my kitchen !

Fire and Ice

2009-01-12T23:05:00.013+01:00

Friday evening I rushed out the house and drove the three and a half hours (nearer four) to Morzine. The temperature dropped as I got further and further away from Zurich. Morzine was a balmy -10 when I arrived around 9ish. Rob was due to arrive on Saturday and I had arranged to stay in his chalet on Friday night. So the first problem was finding the secret key! Now without telling the world where the secret key is located I will say that There is about a meter of snow and the key was right at the bottom of it all. After warming up and a cup of tea I settled in amd went to bed. Saturday morning and a quick look around the chalet measure a few things make a list, all the usual. Drove into town spoke to the bank about the debit card I had forgotten the PIN for and then drove to Voirons. Horror it was closed! oh well Maco is just down the road - yes but despite there fine selection they dont have what I need. So there is nothing for it but to drive all the way back down the mountain to Thonon and the DIY superstores there.
Bought lots of tubes of different sizes some big and some small.
Drove back and put the big tubes on the stove and poked the end up the chimney. Then with mounting excitement I lit the fire!

After a few nervous minutes thinking the fire was leaking but it wasnt I mooched about staring at my new fireplace. I love the huge big window and it gets hot really quick. Unfortunately it did not really warm up the chalet, but that is a bit on the optimistic side. It was 10 below and there is not insulation on the floors which being concrete, would just soak up the heat.

OK that seemed to be working so I moved onto the plumbing. Disappointingly, with Voirons being closed I was unable to get exactly what I needed but had to suffice with just most of it. My aim was to connect the mains to the house, try out the joints in my plumbing and try and plumb in as much of the toilet as possible. It didint quite work out that way as the big black plastic pipe was completly frozen solid. Moving it slightly produced a scary sound like pieces of gless being crunched together. It was really deep frozen. So testing any joints or even turning the tap was out for the weekend! Any way I connected it up

I have reservations about some of these joints but we shall see. I only hope it will be sooner rather than later that the mains thaws and I can actually see if it all works. I drilled holes in the ceiling/bathroom floor and brought the pipework up into the bathroom T'ing off for other connections, taps and the toilet. My solder joints are pretty good although I sometimes get the pipework too hot and ruin the whole thing. We shall see how good they are when the water turns on!

Sunday rolled on and without being able to finish the plumbing I thought the next important thing to do was finish the hot room walls and door

I studded out the wall plaster boarded and insulated the wall. Installed the door frame and would have glued the frame in but all my glue had frozen and gone strange so that can all be done next time. A light inside finished the job.

Not bad for a day and a half.

Got back to Zurich around 7:00 in the evening and got busy getting quotes for the underfloor heating. Next trip is in February for 4 days should make some more progress then! might even get out before that.

The Dalek Sleeps

2008-12-07T22:38:00.015+01:00

Late Friday and I set off from Zürich, I would not be in Morzine until 11:00pm and apart from some strange metal cage things lying all over the road just outside Montreux, it was a quite trip. It had been raining all the way and just out side of Thonon the rain turned to snow. By the time I got to Morzine it was falling thickly and I was worried about making it up the road to the chalet. But it was OK thank heavens for traction control and ABS brakes. The car was sliding and spinning all over the place but was OK until I tried to turn in to the drive of the chalet, luckily it had been cleared of snow recently but there was still 20 cm of new snow to get over. I needed to at least get the car off the road as the snowploughs are a little unforgiving when it comes to parked cars. Managed to reverse the car up far enough to clear the road. Emptied the car in a couple of trips and set up to sleep the night in a very cold chalet. The thermometer said it was zero in the room at one point that night but I was pretty warm, wearing a t shirt and fleece and woolly hat, in a sleeping bag under a blanket with a duvet on top! It was heavy but warm.

Anyway Saturday morning and the usual trip down to Viourons to get stuff. The big plan this trip was to insulate the hot room wall and get the hot water heater up on the wall and do as much plumbing as possible.

Plumbing is not easy. There are literally hundreds of bits all different sizes, all different shapes and all do different things. They all join in different ways to other different pieces. Its like a huge jigsaw puzzle were you have far to many pieces and don't know which pieces you don't need!

At least I had a plan. I have, for the past year or so, carried around a note book in which I scribble down ideas and plans for the chalet. One of these was a long time ago a plan for the plumbing. It involves valves and T junctions and should basically mean a plentiful supply of hot and cold water to the chalet while being able to turn off and drain the pipes when required.

With this in mind I stared at the bewildering range of connectors and plumbing bits. OK I need valves, a huge vista of valves opens before me Oh dear this might take some time.

Well about an hour and half later I had a basket full of bits and pieces, these plus some wood was all driven home. One major problem was no where in Morzine could I find a 150mm diameter pipe for the fire. So on this occasion the dalek sleeps.

Back at the chalet, I framed out the hot room wall,

This exposed another potential disaster. In the past we have spent money on groceries and got points. Each month or so because of the huge numbers of points we get we are sent about 50 swiss francs in vouchers. I spend these on stuff for the chalet like screws and nails and small tools, stuff like that, Well I had thought my self real clever as I bought a box of long screw suitable for fixing these batons to the wall. I was very careful to get cross head screws cos I have loads of screw drivers and all sorts of bits for the drill that would screw them in. So imagine my surprise when I open the box to discover the screws are in fact star headed. Great I have one drill bit that might fit.

OK it seems to work, something to put on my Christmas list. So fit the frame to the wall, insulate the frame
Blue insulation cut to fit.

Board out over the insulation to give me something to fix on to.

The try to lift a really heavy hot water tank. Oops this is going to be interesting. The tank is heavy not so heavy I can not lift it but heavy enough to be awkward. The tank is large, too large to reach all the way round so handling it is awkward. Right drill the walls and install 4 massive bolts. Then build a platform (from blue insulation) get the tank up onto the platform sling a wire around the bottom supports and lift the tank using the wire then wobble it towards the wall and with a bit of luck the tank and the bolts should all line up.

There you are! Tighten up the bolts and hope it stays on the wall when its got 200 liters of water in it!

There is then the jigsaw to do with all the other bits and pieces.

34 pieces all have to go together and (not leak) Then I realized I did not have a vital connection that would allow me to actually get water into the tank! Probably just as well as I dont think my joints are tight enough. I need another wrench.

Any way the taps at the bottom allow the water to drain, the taps at the top will have more pipe added and lead up to the bathroom above, hot water on the left and cold on the right.

Did a bit of finishing of the plaster board in the bedroom when it got cold.

Came home a bit early on Sunday evening.

A Bit of Heavy Lifting

2008-11-22T21:51:00.018+01:00

I wanted to buy an wood burning stove for the chalet but I knew it was going to be heavy so I arranged with Rob to come down on Friday (yesterday) and get him to help with the heavy lifting.

The trip down on Friday morning was terrible. It was raining hard and the windscreen wipers on the car started playing up just as I got out of Zurich. Sure enough a bit further down the motorway the wipers jammed and I could not see anything. I pulled over on to the hard shoulder and freed them, had a look to see if it was fixable but it would require a spanner to remove the blade. Well there is a services a bit further down the road surely I can fix it there, after all it is a service station, that's what they do. Yes? Well the blades jammed up again before I made the services, I freed it up and carried on. Got to the services to find or rather not find a single piece of mechanical help available. You could buy clothes and garden furniture but a simple spanner No. Right desperate times apply some pressure and oops the wiper just came off in my hands. Oh well that will cost me! Still thank goodness its the passenger side not the drivers or I really would be in trouble!
It rained all the way up to Morzine. Arrived about 14.00 and after a cup of tea Rob and I went back down the mountain to Thonon to get the wood burning stove and a hot water heater. Drama in the DIY store, my credit card was refused and we had to make other arrangements much embarrassment but sorted. Any way the stove and boiler only just fit in the car we had to strip the packing off the water heater to get it to fit.

Still it drove back OK. We left it until Saturday morning to unload As handling heavy stuff in the dark and snow sounded a bit dodgy even for us!

It snowed over night even more and when we came to unload the car we decided the Stove was just too heavy to lift so what about a sledge?

Dropped the crate onto a pieces of blue insulation and dragged and pushed our sledge about 20 meters until it was at the foot of the entrance stairs to the chalet.

We heaved the crate containing the stove up the stairs on runners made from a ladder. Up ended it through the door and in to the chalet. The crate decided it had had enough and disintegrated allowing us to discover that the stove actually came to pieces and we removed about 100kg of iron from inside of it! Moving it into its final position was a lot easier now it was a bit lighter.

It looks like a Dalek!

Cant light it up yet as the chimney needs 150 mm tubing and I only have 125mm so I t will have to wait until next time.

The other heavy piece of kit was the hot water heater and associated plumbing stuff

I was worried the heater would not fit on the wall but it seems OK. There is a load of plumbing that needs attaching to the bottom of it.

All this fun for next time. Well thanks to Rob cos I couldn't have done it on my own.

Heat and doors

2008-11-10T22:27:00.024+01:00

Friday rolled round and at about 3:30 I left work and went straight to the DIY shop on the outskirts of Zürich. I had already scoped out the place and knew what I wanted, I knew where it was and I knew how much it was going to be. It still took an hour to get three doors and three door frames off the shelves and into my car. They only just fit, but once again the car was great and has taken all the stuff I cram into it. So I drive home to eat a quick dinner then off towards Morzine at about 6 in the evening. Before I left I found a letter from the bank, just a statement but it showed that the loan was up and running and that money was available. Very reassuring just before I go and spend it! Taking the slightly longer way round in order to avoid the mess we got into last time. Arrive at the chalet just before 10. Wow, Robs chalet has been done over! He has given control of the bookings etc to a management agency called Slow Chalets They have been in and changed all the furniture! That might not sound too bad but some on the decoration is a bit disturbing. The large wall in the front room has been covered in about twenty or so skulls complete with antlers. Apparently Rob had to ask them to remove the moose head and the boars head from the walls! Very strange.
Any way I unloaded the car and got straight to it, plaster boarding, I had to stop at midnight as I had to get up the next morning to go shopping.
Saturday morning, drive down to Thonon, to one of the big DIY shops there and loaded up with heaters and electrics and loads of other stuff, about 900 Euro's worth!
Back to the chalet and unload then on with the job. Install the big heater at the bottom of the stairs.

After a few false starts with the electricity and blowing the trip switch a few times I finally wired the fancy switch the right way round and the heater came to life!

OK then on to the door. Lots of plaster boarding. It takes ages to get that all done and It was Saturday evening by the time the door finally went up.

Looks quite smart from the photo, doesn't quite close properly but it can be adjusted. Right just time to put the heater in the hot room and then bed time.

Sunday morning and into the bedroom the door here was going to be a pain as I had constructed the walls without knowing exactly how or what kind of doors I would be using so as expected the doors I had bought were not going to be simple. I was going to have to make some adjustments.

All in all it went up fairly easily once I had worked out which bits to chop off. The plaster boarding took forever but then the door went in pretty quick after so many trial fittings to make sure it was the right size.

I had to adjust the sides quite a bit to get it to fit but all in all it looks OK.

I should be back at the end of the month with the intention of putting in the hot water boiler and the wood burning stove!

Signed, Sealed and well, pending...

2008-10-24T10:43:00.002+02:00

Took another day trip to Morzine to see the Notaire. Drive down was a nightmare diversions all over the place. Drove to Chatel and was going to go over the Col du Corbier but that was closed, OK, instead of going over the mountain we can drive down this valley and back up the next one, only adds about 15 minutes. As we drive down the valley there is another diversion. So we end up driving all the way back down to the lake at Thonon to come back up the valley for Morzine. Horrible.

Anyway we signed the documents at the Notaire and gave him his enormous fee. Over a thousand Euros for a few signatures! God what else does he do? What else does he need to do?

Anyway we then drove up the road to Morzine to see the bank. Turns out my bank manager is on holiday (again) and will not be back until the middle of next month. Good job we came here in person rather than emailed these invoices in. They would have sat in her in box for 2 weeks!

We shall see what happens, I gave the bank a few thousand in invoices from the past few months which should cover the Notiares cheque. Now I can get back to working out how to spend it all!

Again the Bank needs watching

2008-10-17T15:17:00.003+02:00

I should have known better, I spent so long uming and ahing about calling the Notaire, when I finally did it, they dont have the papers from the bank!
So I call the bank and Oh yes I will get head office to send the papers!

The bank said they would send all the papers when I signed them. So what happened?

Aahrrrggg this makes me mad - mostly at my self for dicking about and not calling the Notaire when I should have done. Why do I put this stuff off only to find that something or someone else else was waiting about to be pushed into doing something !!

Later
Well it turns out the bank did send the papers and the notaire had just misplaced them!
After a confusing call to the notaire I now have my appointment. I just have to get there with my wife. The kids are back in school so that's another problem. O well I have my appointment the rest will have to be sorted around it!

Electricity

2008-09-23T14:57:00.002+02:00

Received a bill from the EDF last night, seems they have read the meter and I was charged 174 Euros for my electricity. No big deal until I remembered I am paying 90 Euro's per month and the EDF now Owe me nearly 700 Euro's I wonder If I can get that back? or just stop paying them for a bit!

Quick trip to the bank

2008-09-23T14:56:00.002+02:00

Saturday was a long day, after trying to arrange an appointment with the bank to sign the loan agreement I received an email on Friday evening with a very official looking invite to a meeting at 11:00 o'clock on Saturday.
This meant getting the whole family up and out of the house by 7 for a 4 hour drive down to Morzine for a half hour meeting where my wife and I signed the required document multiple times and then a four hour drive home again!
The kids got to watch too much TV in the car and I just got really tired!

The bank requires a "cooling off" period so the document will not actually get sent to head office until the 27th, then the notaire is notified and I need to arrange a meeting with him to sign the guarantee. This probably means another long day sometime the beginning of October.

My head is full of shopping lists, I cant wait to see how fast I can spend 50,000 Euros!

Paperwork, paperwork

2008-09-04T18:37:00.002+02:00

Finally got the document from the bank that was wrong, some health questionnaire. Received it last night along with a strange letter from the electrical supplier EDF. As far as I can understand it the temporary electricity supply I have has expired and I can only renew it for three months. That would make things difficult to say the least. Need to get some one else's opinion.

Beading on the Barge Boards

2008-08-17T21:58:00.010+02:00

Well I dont have a long holiday as yet and I dont have the money as yet, but I took four days roughing it in my chalet to see what could be done without spending any money.

Roughing it is right, there is no heating so dress up warm, there is no toilet so trips to the public lavatory in town need to planned! There is no kitchen so barbecue time! There is no running water but the river is pretty close. It was very primitive.
At least I had a bed and was warm enough during the night. It wasnt that cold it only got down to 13 degrees which is a bit chilly but not as cold as the night Rob and I spent in his chalet while we built his bathroom now that was cold minus 10 and all we had was one small blow heater! Anyway another story or perhaps one for Rob.

So build chalet but spend no money. Arrived on Wednesday night, just after it had got dark of course, I was planning on arriving while it was still light but got delayed at home and did not leave as planned. So its dark and I set up my bed and crash out for the night. I actually slept quite well and in the morning although a bit chilly went to town as usual. Shopping for some food and then back to decide what to do.

Basically the place was a mess, there was beer cans and wine bottles and rubbish everywhere, the garage was a tip ( I think Rob had been repairing something down there) so the first few hours I spent tidying up. Whilst clearing up i was thinking about the jobs I could do. Basically I had made a list of stuff that I could do with the stuff I knew I had already in the chalet. One of these jobs is to break a big hole in the wall. So I set to it and a couple of real dusty dirty hours later I had my hole.

This will allow the waste from the toilet and shower to flow out as the builders kindly forgot one of the connections. So this is where eventually the waste will go down through the floor and through the wall to the out let. In pipes of course!

OK I was covered in dust and rubble so lets try the river for washing. Stroll over the road and get down to the river. It was cold! straight of the mountain refreshing but still cold. I didnt want to use soap or pollute the river any more than I had to so a brisk scrub up and I was feeling good. Time for dinner.

Cooking dinner was a campfire in what I hope will one day be a garden of sorts, may be decking. My earlier clear up had provided lots opf wood so that burnt and burgers fried and were eaten. Then as it got dark I went to bed.

After a warm enough night I discovered it was raining, a situation due to last all day. At least it proved the varnishing work of the last few weekends was working because as you can see the rain was beading on the barge boards

This is a good thing it means that the varnish is protecting the wood! all that hard work was paying off!

Looking around a bit further I could see The white bits that the rollers had missed. In the corners and crevices the wood was still white.

Well its not a great picture but you might be able to see at all the angles the roller cant get in to the corners and the wood is still white.

Well there is nothing to be done now so ignore it for now maybe I can fix it later.

Well today was electric day I had been thinking about the bathroom and the bedroom and what they required and after a quick consultation of the book I knew I needed an extra plug socket in the bedroom. The other challenge was to sort out the lights for both the bathroom and the bedroom. In my enthusiasm for putting up walls I had forgotten to think about the electrics so I needed to sort them now. The bedroom was not too bad as only only side of plaster board was in so out comes all the insulation and then I realize I dont have a drill. Well I have an SDS drill for breaking concrete but nothing really for wood which I am going to need if I want to finish the electrics. Of course they are in Robs chalet but I dont have a key. After many text messages and phone calls I get Robs lovely property manager, who agrees to call round in a few hours and let me in. Meanwhile I drill through the timber with the SDS drill its messy and hard work but it works (kind of) I install the light in the bedroom and the switch, doubling the nu,ber of working light bulbs in the chalet! I also put in an extra plug socket remebering just in time to turn everything off before cutting the live cable to slice into the plug.

Wonderful I spent the afternoon switching the light on and off, on and off on and off like primitive mans first encounter with electricity!

Robs property manager called round and let me in. I grabbed an armfull of powertools and legged it back to my place. I am sure she thought I was stealing them all but never mind Rob knows where they are.

With the rain the barbecue was out so a cold dinner and bed hoping for better weather tomorrow

The morning dawned (Saturday) bright and clear. Right the bathroom lights, these will be provided by a bathroom cabinet fitting hung on the wall with integral florescent strip light, or thats the plan anyway. The light needs a swith so I need to cut a groove in my new plaster board wall and put a switch in. I dont have a switch so I will just cut a hole and fit the cable. Cutting the groove was quite easy so easy in fact I would consider it for some other electrics if I do the same thing again. For cable I was using the three individual strands of 1.5mm wire and it works really well at least with shorter pieces of gaine, dont bother with the horrible wire in the middle just pull that straight out. In fact I had no choice as little wire had dissapeared from one end but threading the three wires was not a problem. Put the wire filled gaine in the groove and fill the groove with plaster. Done.

Came out quite nice I think.

Right next was to relay the bathroom floor insulation to allow for the new cable and two others. The cable for the bathroom towel heater and a cable to get power to the lights for the other bedroom and the shower room.

Still with electrics on my mind I had turned up three more yellow boxes for embedding in walls these I fitted into the salon upstairs after cutting neat (ish) holes in the timber.

One more job today and that was another dusty one. Break a socket in the wall of the salon for plugs and probably the phone or TV cable. This was fine apart from the steel bars inside the concrete which took some cutting but nothing too difficult.

Well that was about it for Saturday and after another fine barbecue I went for a wash in the river. By this stage after three days of dusty work I was a bit grimy . I am not really bothered most of the time about personnel appearance but my hair was horrible it was dry and dusty and like twigs. I just had to wash my hair. Feeding the river just where you can go down to it is a big culvert nicknamed the hungry drain and this was flowing so standing under it I got what can only be described as a really cold shower! It did not do much for the state of my hair but I felt cleaner.

Sunday rolled round and I packed up and began the drive home. During the summer the mountain communities do all the major road repairs ands this results in diversions all over the place. I was on my third diversion which led eventually to the Col du Cobier. It wound though a few little villages one of whicvh was holding some market or festival or something. Anyway the whole of France had decided to go to this festival and had parked, as the french do, everywhere. All down the side of the narrow road leading up to and through the village there were cars parked. Soon enough we ground to a halt as cars coming the other way could not pass. Some cars turned around, some cars reversed back God only knows how far. But cars were backing up. This was the only route over the pass and once you are on it there is no way off. 2 hours of squeezing past cars and waiting for other cars to squeeze past me and I made it through the village to the clear road. Waiting just the other side of the village were 2 of the biggest camper vans, huge things that normally would have no problem getting through but today no chance. I pity them and the problems they had. It must have been horrible for them. After taht the trip home was not eventful.
I was looking forward to getting back and having a long hot bath.

Painting painting painting

2008-08-04T12:33:00.000+02:00

OK so its been a while since I last posted anything but things have been happening. I have been trying to get lots of money from the bank which although agreed is taking forever. I had planned on taking a holiday and spending the money but with no money yet it has not been possible. So I have resorted to travelling down for the weekend and finishing off the painting.
This turned out to be slightly more epic than it should have been, after all I paid Mat to paint the chalet! Well that was a bit of a waste. Last weekend Rob and I painted all but a few square meters of the chalet and this weekend we did it again! So how did it take Mat a week to not paint the chalet even once!

We used a revolutionary new technique in house painting called "brush on a six foot stick" this allowed us to slap varnish on most everywhere. Even so we were at some points piling up blocks of insulation and furniture to reach some of the highest bits.
When I say slap on I do mean slap on. It is really hard to achieve an even finish when you are reaching up with a paintbrush at full extension trying to cover as much as possible without a) falling off what ever you are perched on and b) trying to avoid huge globs of varnish landing on you.

So by the end of last weekend we had clear varnished the place all over bar a small section on the front.

I came back this weekend to apply the second coat.
I was varnishing the house with a clear varnish that "retains the beauty of the wood" well thats fine and I was OK with the result but it was very bleached from its year in the sun and snow.
For the second coat I was in 2 minds as to what to use, whether to stick with the clear varnish that you cant see or go with a slight stain that you can. The clear varnish would have the problem of not knowing exactly what I had painted where as the coloured varnish meant I would have to paint the entire chalet or end up with a patchwork effect.

I went with the slight stain and am quite happy with the result.
This time we improved on the brush on a stick slightly by replacing the brush with a roller. The roller on a stick method is far more effective but cant get quite into all the nooks and crannies around the chalet and there are a lot of nooks and a lot or crannies!

The chalet certainly looks better for the couple of weekends it took to do it. All I need now is the lots of money from the bank and s long holiday to get some serious work done inside!

Blood on the tiles

2008-06-08T23:49:00.011+02:00

Blood on the tiles, rather a dramatic heading but it takes ages to come up with catchy titles for these things. Its true too, there was blood on the tiles but probably not quite what you might be thinking.

My friend Mat has been painting this week. He was under instructions to paint the chalet. One coat of preservative and at least one coat of varnish all over. All over means all over, every bit of wood on the exterior needs covering, the walls the balconies under the eves of the roof, everything. The chalet is not an easy thing to paint and Mat knew what he was getting into and he said he could do it in a week. This sounded reasonable so away he went. I meant to be there last weekend to help him out at the start but something came up at home and I could only get there this weekend.

Text messages through the week told me how he was getting on and it seemed OK although it was raining a lot.

We turned up at about 9 at night on Friday, just after it was getting dark. It was raining and as we arrived in the gloom I thought the chalet looked a different colour...

That night Mat explained that he had not been able to paint the whole chalet but had done most of it. Most of it included nearly all the preservative and about 70% of the varnish. He then went on to explain how the varnish was weird and might not be varnish after all...

The varnish, it seems, is totally colourless and it dries quite quickly, its really hard to see what you have done and what you need to do.

So the next morning we are out and about on an inspection of his work. It was raining, which Mat told me was not unusual for this week, in fact it had been raining all week and this was one reason why he had not quite finished yet. Well he is right, it is real difficult to see what he has done but slowly you get accustomed to what you are looking for and yes it has been varnished, well most of it, just the hard bits are left. The problem is that the varnish is clear and water based. You need two coats to see it. Most of the other chalets around the place are brown or even orange from using varnish with a touch of stain in it and I imagine its a darn sight easier to see what you have done if the wood actually changes colour when its painted. Well this stuff is clear and the wood is the same colour as it was. Its great, it really looks nice. Just to make sure I gave the front door and the panels around it another coat

Maybe you can see, the wood is a bit shiny, but still the same wood colour.

Although you do feel a bit like the little boy in the Emperor's new clothes. Has it really been varnished? Am I just imagining this? No there really was varnish on the wood. It shiny, you can just see where Mat stopped. I haven't just wasted all that time and money! I haven't. I will believe, I will, I will.

Anyway, the bits I really wanted to do were the bits of timber that the sun and rain had already started to effect. That is the balcony above the garage, the barge boards (thats the timber planks on the edge of the roof) at the garage end and the other balcony. So we spent Saturday varnishing balconies and anywhere else I could reach. Meanwhile Mat regaled me with stories of how hard it was getting up to under the roof and how many times he had to move the ladder and how many times he had nearly fallen off and how it had been raining all week. Any way By Saturday the balconies where done and all the windows and most of the easy places had had two coats of varnish.

On Sunday I decided we had to attempt something more interesting and when the morning dawned not quite bright and sunny but not raining. So the barge board beckoned. Probably easiest to get at from the roof and although not recommended in the wet, in the dry it should be fine. So I opened the varnish and in doing so sliced my thumb open (you can see where this is leading...) Up the ladder and on to the roof. Easing my way over the roof right to the edge I have to lean out to paint the barge boards.

Its not easy and every now and again you get this feeling that your leaning out too far.

Well as I worked my way up the roof I left a trail of blood from my thumb. Looking down I think "Blood on the tiles" great blog title! - How sad is that? thinking about a blog while sitting on your roof in the sunshine!

What you cant see in this photo is Mat:

Just who is paying who ?

Well, I now have a partially varnished chalet, which on the whole is better than an totally unvarnished chalet so I am happy. The colour is great, I love the natural colour of the wood and I am really glad it will stay that way. For how long and how it will age remains to be seen but for now its great.

Saturday morning was spent at the bank seeing my new Bank manager, she was very helpful and is probably going to lend me the huge amount of money I need to get this place rentable!

Walls and door handles

2008-05-13T00:44:00.019+02:00

Spent the weekend in Morzine. I arrived on Friday evening to find Rob and Mat around a camp fire after a barbecue I just missed. Rob had been up a mountain with one of his children and a friend and had come down that afternoon. Mat is there to create robs decking masterpiece. It all looks very good, a little springy but it all looks great it really finishes of the surrounds to robs chalet, especially the front door. I dont have any pictures of it, as I only had my phone with me and the camera is rubbish on the phone (as I will show later). Well Saturday rolled around and I went as usual into town to do my chores, visit the bank and go to Voirons to get supplies.
I need the bank to lend me lots of money as I don't have any and my personnel friendly bank manager has disappeared and is not responding to his email. I discover that he has moved on and his replacement is not available for a meeting until Friday. Not very helpful. So I resolve to phone and email her when I return. That's my job when I finish writing this.
Next was Voirons, this time it was gaine and some plastic boxes to hold plugs and switches. I had worked out what I wanted where inside the walls. Plug sockets heaters lights and lights switches, but as usual the plan needed changing almost immediately.
There needs to be a heater in the drying/store room as this will hopefully heat the center of the house as well. The heater needs its own electric supply so that's one line of 2.5mm cable (each of the three wires in the cable is 2.5 square mm in cross section, the whole cable is actually about 10mm diameter) This needed running to the far wall. I think that the hot room heater will probably go on the same circuit as the drying room heater, not sure yet as it may be nice to keep the hot room independent of any thing else. There need to be plug sockets if only for the washing machine and dryer (which should go in the alcove under the stairs) Plug sockets can be chained together up to a point and as good practice I run all the plugs on 2.5 mm cable as well. I have all double sockets and have added another in the garage on the other side of the wall. All these sockets will be powered from the same trip in the consumer unit. This is another run of cable, The lights or at least the switch for the lights required yet another run of cable. For this I was going to use 1.5mm cable but I did not have any so I used three 1.5 mm separate strands of wire run through the gaine for the switch.

The lighting posed a few problems, (which are not fully resolved yet) My intention is that there will be a light on each of the four levels of the central staircase. and that on each level a single switch can turn on or off ALL the lights on all four levels. Now this is possible (apparently) with a load of wire and complicated three way double rocker switches, but I have looked and looked and not found a easy way to do it. So I have opted for the French way! What I plan is to install what amounts to a relay in the consumer unit and push button switches on each level. The switches are chained together in parallel on one side of the relay and the lights are chained together in parallel on the other. Any one of the push buttons can turn on or off all the lights.

So I start drilling holes through all the uprights in the new wall for the gaine and wires to go through and after a bit of repair with a metal file I discover that my big drill (the one I ruined earlier) is not quite ruined and is in fact quite good still as long as I dont hit any more metal stuff!. So the holes are drilled and the cable and gaine threaded around

This wall needs to be insulated. Rob donated some large furry sheets of rock wool insulation that he previously used on his garage doors. It is about 200mm wide, uncompressed and should be a good insulator. I have to split it in half to make it this enough to fit inside the walls and still be able to panel the side.

Up goes the plaster board and voila there is a wall.

Hard bits include moving a sheet of plaster board (not light) on my own, that is 1.2 meters wide and just a fraction less than the floor to ceiling height high. Plaster board is quite brittle and bends only so much before snapping. corners get crushed if the weight of a whole board. rests on it. Cutting the holes of the plug sockets is tricky to get right and I am not convinced I have done it properly, we will see. In order to see where the cut out should be you rub chalk or marker pen over the edges of the box fixed in the wall then offer up the plaster board to press against the boxes. hopefully and actually it worked remarkably well, the marks transfer to the plaster board giving you a nice outline of where to cut out.

In the last photo you can see the switch with three wires coming out of it. This was the first time I have installed separate wires rather than cable and I was determined to try the official French method as suggested in my electrics book. I was surprised to find it actually worked really well! The separate wires all pulled through very easily. I can only assume that the system is not designed for cables but it designed for wires.

With still no doors to install I moved on upstairs to the bathroom/bedroom walls. This were a little easier and needed a slightly different insulation as I want to stop sound more than heat.

This stuff is rigid and cuts really well so you just carve it into the gaps. then plaster board up!

Again, voila walls!

There is a comedy series on TV called Absolutely Fabulous and in one episode the kitchen burns down and Jennifer Saunders spends the next three months trying to decide what design her new kitchen will be. After three months she has made a decision, she now knows what door handle she wants. Well I feel like that about my front door handle. I have been trying for months to get the right door handle to fit properly. How hard is it? First of all the square piece that actually does the work was too short to connect the handles. Then the replacement was too thick to fit in the door. Then the replacements replacement was too short. Chopping up the two short sections to make a longer one did not work. Then I finally found a section that fit in the lock and was just big enough to connect to the handles, then the slots cut (for some strange reason) in the section caused the handles to spin on the section. I am fed up of door handles but I think I might have fixed it. I have wedged slivers of metal into these stupid slots and now the handles can grip the section properly. Problem now is that with all the messing around I seem to have lost one side of the door handles!

Any way I left on Monday afternoon reasonably happy with what I had done this weekend and full of plans for the next trip, which will probably be around 1st of June to help Mat with the painting.

That reminds me, I really should get in touch with the bank now....

The wall and the fox

2008-04-20T21:26:00.014+02:00

Spent this weekend in Morzine building a wall across the garage. The idea is that this wall divided the house from the garage and hopefully will keep the heat in. In order to construct this wall I needed an order from Voiron's the DIY shop. So Friday morning we are ordering wood and plaster board and insulation and varnish and wood preservative. All this to be delivered on Friday afternoon. Cool. So I spent the rest of the morning making space in the garage and figuring out where exactly the wall was going to go.

At about 3:30 the lorry pulled up

This is the lorry. (finally get to see how to spell Voiron) Rob who was there for a holiday had organised a delivery of timber so that a friend of his could construct some decking around his chalet and my materials hitched a ride with his. Good job he had a delivery as I have discovered that Voiron does not deliver at all on Saturdays at all.

I had ordered insulation, plasterboard, framing timber, and sound insulation. All this was unloaded and stacked out side. So construction could commence!
From empty space to wall in 12 hours:

Studding.

Plasterboard.

And a bit more around the corner for the "hot room" The hot room is an interesting concept, which I suppose Rob dreamed up originally but I will copy (and perhaps improve) as it seems very sensible. Basically the services most especially the water supply is installed in an area that can be kept warm. Seems simple but its not generally though t about until its too late. With temperatures getting down to minus 20 C the pipes will freeze solid and burst when they thaw. Big problems. So I have designed this service room to be insulated and heated through the winter. The outside wall against which the water supply comes in (great design Hervè) will have to be insulated but that is fine as it will give me a neat method to get cables along the wall, running under the insulation behind all the pipes, without getting messed up in all the plumbing. Also its nicer to fix to a wooden surface over the insulation rather than to concrete.

Before my trip up/down to Morzine I had purchased some doors and frames from the DIY shop here in Switzerland and driven down with these in the car with the intention of installing them in my new wall and if this was not to be then installing them in the bathroom bedroom walls upstairs. Well this was not to be. The frames the doors came with were not entirely suitable for the job so at this point I decided to omit the doors for now and have a bit of a rethink. We did not manage to finish the walls but we got a fair bit done. The walls need to be insulated and have the electrics installed and I discovered I am woe fully short on that plastic gaine stuff for threading cables through so that will have to wait. As it is we did not have time to insulate but it looks pretty good from the other side.

We were working on Friday night about 10 in the evening busy banging away using eclectic saws and drills generally getting it on and I turned around to see a rather large fox walk straight through the open garage door, stop and look at us as if to ask what the hell we thought we were doing! Beautiful, I guess female and about 3 meters from us. It stayed for about 5 minutes looking about. We stayed still pretty much amazed and enjoying the privilege and novelty of being quite so close to a wild animal. Then she left.

Well Rob had told me he though there were foxes about but we never imagined we would be introduced. On Sunday just before Rob left we were treated to another visit. We were all inside and Mrs fox trotted across the field and between the two chalets

Cool.

Mat arrived on Saturday afternoon in order to do some work for Rob and I will be using him to paint my Chalet. Although officially I am not employing him. He is a guest and is doing the painting to fill in his time!
He will start some time around June 2nd and it should take him about a week to do the chalet. My plan is to look in on him at both ends of that week and help out with some if the hard to reach bits which one person may struggle to reach.

So as soon as I can I will be back. Around the middle of May. Put the insulation and electrics in to the garage walls, put the doors on, put the plaster board, sound insulation and electrics on the bathroom and look at the floors in the bedroom.

So much to do.

Got another bill from Hervè not very happy about that. Seems to be the balance for his services. Right. Now I have no money and I need to pay everything and everybody, just how is that supposed to work?

Easter 2008

2008-03-25T10:33:00.006+01:00

Wow, no posts since Christmas, I have been lazy!
Well its been cold and I have been thinking about the chalet, I promise!

So Easter break and the family made the trek out to Morzine for a long weekend. I specifically wanted to open an account with Viourons and make an order for wood and plaster board for Saturday then build the garage wall on Sunday. That would amount to a load of work and a big step forward.
Alas, things, as usual, did not go entirely to plan...

We arrived on Thursday evening, a little snow still clinging to the ground in the shaded parts of the valley, Nothing like last Easter with its brilliant sunshine, so much so we had picnics out side. The forecast said snow, snow, snow. No problems getting in this time as an outcome of the key issues of last year Rob and I have an "arrangement" with the keys. All a bit hush hush and I cant say too much in public but I got the keys and managed to open the doors. As we went to bed on Thursday night the first few flakes of snow began to fall and waking on Friday saw a real dump. 30 cm or so of new snow and it was still snowing. All day it snowed.

For the first time I had to put chains on the car wheels. Never used them before. Pain in the arse to get on and off but they make a huge difference. Would never have made it without them. Good job I thought about the weather and bought a set before we left. Apparently my car has enormous tyres and requires the biggest chain sets made. Any way I was well pleased with my forethought at buying them and even more pleased at there performance.
Friday I drove down to the DIY shop and opened my account, all in French and I understood most of it too! They could not of course do a delivery "a demain" (Saturday) because of the snow and the fact that they were closed of Easter. BUM.
So with my new account I piled up a few things on the counter and went back trying to figure out what I could do in the mean time.
Still snowing and the boys playing in the snow, I fiddled about with some electrics, fixing up the sockets in the bedroom and in the kitchen upstairs.
Saturday dawned with brilliant sunshine

So off out on the boards with my son, sod the chalet, lets go surf!
Minor problems including a car that would not lock did not dampen our spirits too much.
Saturday afternoon it began to snow again and kept snowing until we left on Monday!
I put in some more cable for the bedroom heaters and had a major clean up through out the chalet but feel a little embarrassed at the amount of work I didnt do.

I really need to get on with it. Rob is out in a few weeks time and I need to speak to him about some other project we have going but I want to arrange a delivery for that weekend, this will have to be done over the phone!

Something to look forward to!

I have found the key !

2007-12-30T00:04:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all my readers!
No real news, I only wanted to report that the key that was lost has been found!
No idea where it had been but it turned up in one of those odd dishes we have around for emptying pocket change and general kipple into. Well, I was emptying my pocket of kipple and there it was lying in the dish! The key that was lost.

So the key has returned!

Electric Weekend

2007-12-03T09:58:00.000+01:00

I bunked off work early on Thursday afternoon, stuffed some clothes in a bag and headed for Geneva. I arrived at about 4:30 just in time to meet Rob from the plane and then we were off again. We had intended originally to rent a mini digger and move tonnes of earth and rocks about this weekend but worried about the weather and being buried in snow we wimped out and settled for doing some electrical work in my chalet. On the way up to Morzine Rob wanted to pick up some shutters for his windows, which he assured me would fit in the car. Well, fair play, the did actually fit in the car, but they were resting on the front seat, Rob was squeezed in somewhere at the back, I could only just get 5th gear and each time we turned left I thought the whole lot of it was going to slip over on top of me. Any way we made it with no significant damage to the car (or the window shutters)

Along the way we had discussed my previous trip and why I was unable to get in. When we arrived low and behold there was a key in the other side of the lock, just as my wife had suspected.

Rob was very apologetic, he said he and his wife had spoken about just this and decided that because I only had this key that they should not leave the key in the lock. and then they did. Well not them, apparently the cleaner is the most likely suspect. So we have revised our key arrangements especially in light of the fact that I still cant find my other key so I have reclaimed the spare one from Rob.

The next morning we head down town for breakfast and supplies, although it turned out to be supplies and lunch, but that it typical. Rob seems to have lost the cheque I gave him in the post so I have to cancel the cheque and get him a new one, so I see my friendly bank manager Julian, and have a quick chat, he tells me that he could probably lend me the 30,000 Euros it would take to finish the place off. Interesting news. Anyway, Viourons (DIY shop) supplied us with electrical goodies at vast expense and we headed back to fix them up. I had lights and sockets for the garage and power sockets for the bedroom. Easy stuff.
Rob fixed up my earth breaker and hid it all behind a piece of wood screwed to the wall while I screwed sockets and switched to the wall and tried to measure gaine. Eventually we got the power sockets wired in to the consumer unit and they work. Now we had extra sockets for the power tools and importantly the halogen flood light. Its getting dark and we are just finishing off the lighting circuit, I am about to wire the cable into the consumer unit when the bulb blows in the flood light and we are plunged into darkness. OK enough for tonight, come back tomorrow.

The next day, Saturday, as usual we spend the morning in town doing stuff which seems necessary at the time but seems to take up a really long time, so the afternoon is taken up with wiring up the remaining lights and making it all fairly tidy and then we move on to the bedroom.

Four plug sockets later and a bit of fiddling around with the new fixtures and I have power upstairs in the bedroom. Cool.

We have also discovered that we are connected to the mains sewerage at last.

That afternoon we spent fixing up bits of wood in Robs chalet, trying to sound proof it a little bit. seems to work well but its a bit dodgy up that high on the ladder!

Sunday morning and I attack the pristine woodwork around my kitchen. I hope the splash back will cover up any mess I make of the timber, but I have to cut big holes in it in order to pull out my cables. Those cables that I ran nearly a whole year ago! and what do you know, the chippies had made little marks where the cables should be and there were there! Next time I am back we will have power in the kitchen.

I need a few more supplies and a day or so I should have power in both the kitchen and the salon upstairs.

The next big job is the garage wall. This is a must if I am to get any heat in the rest of the place. I think the plan should be go as soon as possible for another weekend, while there arrange account at Viourons then arrange a long weekend and a delivery to coincide and get a load of stuff delivered. Framing timber, plasterboard, cement, sand, gravel, insulation, and anything else I can think of. make it a full lorry load as the delivery costs a fortune.

The Keys of Misfortune

2007-11-10T15:21:00.000+01:00

Well we all set of for Morzine on Friday night. The whole family, thought it would be nice, spend the weekend in France. Siew Ling has not seen the chalet for a while and there have been a few changes since.
One minor problem before we left. I have mislaid the key to my chalet! Yes the most important key in my life at the moment and I cant remember what I did with it!
OK I thought I gave Rob a key maybe he left that spare key in his chalet or if not I can get in through the garage. Fine so off we go. As we got to the Swiss border on the pas de Morgins the snow was falling and there was about an inch on the road. The car is rubbish in the snow and I realized I had no chains and what the swiss call summer tyres on the car. Crawling up to hill to the border the traction control is flashing and the back end is weaving. Not a good sign with the col du Corbier to come! So I took the longer way and went down the valley then back up the Morzine valley rather than take the pass over the mountains. Great we got to Robs chalet at about 10:30 ish and I discover the key I have for Robs front door does not fit! Well it fits it just will not turn. Its like its the wrong key. I was slightly annoyed. Phone calls to Rob who was very helpful but still could not get in the door. So with mobile phones going dead on me the snow falling, the temperature dropping from -4 downwards and both kids now awake moaning at how late it is, we admit defeat.
OK stay at a hotel and try again in the morning? try what again?
Bum.
So to save what was left of the weekend we drove 4 hours back to Zurich! 3 am we got back and I still cant find my keys!

Too good to true

2007-11-06T09:59:00.001+01:00

Well thats typical, apparently I dont have 17000 euros left, in fact I need another 5000 to pay off the last invoice. Great. I spent the last few days trying to work out how to spend the money and what would order to do things in.

Bugger.

I still have to go over my figures to see where I went wrong but the bank says there is only 2500 left and an invoice of 7500 to pay.

Oh well.

Strange Money ?

2007-10-31T23:15:00.000+01:00

I have been trying to work out exactly how much money I have left in the mortgage after the latest bills are paid. I get about 17000 Euros. IF this is true then this is very good news indeed. Thats a lot of work. A lot of timber. A kitchen. Heating. Floors.
Cool. I thought I had run out and would have to stump up the balance for these latest bills.

Now all I have to do is confirm that really is the sum available and figure out the best way to spend it!

Weekend in Morzine

2007-10-28T19:32:00.000+01:00

I went this weekend, primarily to try and get as much "paint" on the chalet as possible. Rob was going to be there and he had offered his help in painting. I knew I only had a very limited time, about one day of actual working so I would have to be quick. For this reason I bought a spray gun. Its a big hair drier really.

I need to paint the entire chalet in three coats. First a wood preservative against termites and fungus, then two coats (at least) of varnish. All the wood. Even the hard to reach bits up under the eaves of the roof.

I went down to Viourons, intending to buy 25liters of fungicide/pesticide to put on the timber of the chalet before varnishing. They only had 5 litres. OK no idea how long it will take to put 5lt on so lets have that and see what happens.
According to the can, 1 lt of preservative should cover 5 square meters. OK so I load up the spry gun with 1lt and mentally work out an area of timber that’s about 5 square meters and spray. About a minute later the area is covered and I have a bit left so I continue on. Great this 5lt Can is going to last about 20 minutes including refills!
This was not the main problem however, by spraying the stuff on I was creating a cloud of noxious vapour (with me in the middle of it) I had a dust mask on but that was useless and by the time I had finished the 5 litres I was really quite ill, nose and eyes streaming, coughing and spluttering. Horrible.

OK so I am not going to get much more of this stuff on the chalet this weekend, not without a vapour mask.
Something like this:

Any how with that out of the picture Rob and I decided to try and get the electricity cable in, maybe the two of us could achieve what I had failed on my own. No luck, we pushed and pulled but got no further than I had before. We even employed the kids to reach down the pipe the cable was going to appear from to see if they could touch it. No luck.

I decided to try and chase back the gaine under the floor in order to determine where the problem was. So with a huge breaker I start smashing up my garage floor! Only to find to my dismay that the gaine is actually leading in almost completely the wrong direction! It must do a huge loop and come back round out the front. No wonder the cable gets stuck. Garage door and electric post are on the left, cable duct is going right!

That evening we went out to a restaurant for dinner and met up with Leon from next door. We all got talking to the proprietor of the restaurant. Leon announced that he had just the tool for getting cable through gaine. Great we will try tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning and Leon is up and about holding a very thin length of wire which has no chance of helping at all. Never mind he quickly decided what we need is lubricant and as we all know "there is always time for lubricant!" Vigorous sprays of lube all over the cable and down into the gaine it goes, a bit of fishing around and up it comes!!

Hurray! Fantastic. The weekend is worth it just for this. I quickly wire up the distribution box and include the earth cable and like magic I have a plug socket in my Chalet! Electricity. Power. Finally.
I am very happy.

Other good news is that we have water as well. Who every it was has attached a tap and meter and water comes out. Wow.

And even more good news, the town has been busy and they have brought a sewage pipe all the way up the road to just outside my chalet. All that remains is to connect from the septic tank to the sewer and we all have mains sewerage.

Good weekend, marred only by the fact that I have no money left and some huge bills to pay.
The final (I hope it the final) bills from the carpenters and the concrete, earthwork guys. and the planning permission bill and another tax bill that I find out Rob has been paying for me up to now.
Lots of bills.

Mind you the inside of the chalet looks nice now that they have put all the timber on the walls. I suppose all that will need varnishing too!

Bathroom Building

2007-08-11T23:49:00.000+02:00

I spent the last week in Morzine, camping out in my chalet. Not the sanest idea I have ever had but it was fun (and cheaper than a hotel) but with no running water in the chalet yet it was a bit on the dirty and dusty side.

I arrived on Sunday night, around 8 ish, about an hour or so before it got dark. Just enough time to have a look around and set up camp.

I have tiles ! I have a chimney!

I was not staying at Robs place this time as he had paying guests in for a couple of weeks. I waved my hello's to Leon, the neighbor and considered introducing myself to Robs guests, no it was a little late, tomorrow would be fine. About midnight Leon, led by Robs intrepid guest, came looking for suspected burglars! Quite what Leon though was lost on me as I hastily introduced my self with assurances that I did in fact own this chalet and I was not a burglar.

Monday
Woke up later than I intended after a much colder night than I anticipated. Bright sunshine. Drove down to Thonon, about 30/40 minutes away to the big DIY shop. Asked for some cable 16mm2 red 16mm blue and some 25mm2 earth, It took the assistant nearly an hour to coil up these three bits of cable and I pottered about looking patient, collected odd bits of electrical goodies. Then off to the plumbing section and load up with a toilet. Nice suspended one, exactly the same one Rob and I had installed in his chalet all those months ago when we built his first bathroom. Now with a few bits of wood and some other stuff the trolley was rather unwieldy so I decided to check out this lot and come straight back in for the bath and sink. Check out OK load the car, come back to the shop to find it has closed for lunch! Will not open for another 2 hours!. Fine I have enough stuff I will come back tomorrow. So drive back to Morzine.
Its now about 1 ish by the time I get back and I make a start on the bathroom to be. Well just the toilet is not going to get me very far and it is obvious that the hole in the floor intended for the toilet is in completely the wrong place without major pipework. So in order to keep it simple I decide to break another hole in the floor to get the toilet waste pipe through. Having already decided on the layout of the bathroom, bath against the wall on the right toilet against the out side wall in the middle and sink opposite the door against the outside wall. I took the plunge and started to break a hole in the floor. Relatively straight forward, no major reinforcement issues. But I could not position the toilet finally without the bath. So that would have to wait. What now?
OK what about electricity. One of the tasks I wanted to do this week was finally get that big cable through the gaine and bring the power inside. No joy. I spent an hour or so heaving around the cable and messing about. It was having none of it. The carpenters have rigged up a plug wired into the temporary supply so extension leads will have to do for now. OK, if the main cable will not go then maybe the 16mm and earth will. Bit luckier this time and I was able to thread the cables through this bit of gaine.

You can see the earth cable coming through the hole in wall there.
No luck with the big cable though. OK I bought some stuff to remake the door in the garage, so I set about rebuilding that. I have gone from a super heavy weight piece of removable wall to a light weight door that actually opens on real hinges!

Tuesday
Woken up at 8:00 by the carpenter poking about checking that his guys had been working, he informed my that I had left my car windows open all night and that it was raining, great. I drove back down to Thonon in a damp seat in the pouring rain, bough my sink and bath, which was very difficult to maneuver through the check out. My car passed its design criteria with flying colours, a bath can fit comfortably inside (with all the seats removed) Back to Morzine, off load and head down to the local DIY store to get some timber.
I obviously bought the most expensive timber in the entire world and some blue insulation. The timber I wanted would be described in the UK as rough sawn, which I now believe the DIY shop provided on the other side of the road (the shop is split in to 2 sections one on either side of the road) what I got was planed timber, not really the sort you hide away in a stud partition wall. Never mind it was wood it was going to be fine.

Arriving back at the chalet I noticed a strange damp patch on my drive. It had stopped raining but this patch was spreading from beneath the rock walls that have been newly installed. The problem was it was not water. It was sewage. Sewage from Robs chalet bubbling up from under the wall and running down my drive. Great, another problem. Hervè was going to have to sort this one.

So with the bath in place, I could work out where the toilet should go and fix it to the wall (surprisingly close to directly over the hole I had broken in the floor!)

So I started on the stud walls.

I laid out and screwed down the sole plates first, apparently you should do the roof plates first but with one person this is impossible. So I opted for the more practical approach which meant the floor first then screw the uprights to the walls.

Wednesday
Visit to Hervè and he assures me that some one will come out to check the leaky sewage, sure enough in the afternoon a guy comes along assures me that yes it is merdè, and that he will be along with a digger to fix it tomorrow.
Also asked Hervè about the water, when is it going to be turned on? He will ask the mayor and get back to me.

With the uprights on the walls using some temporary braces and chocks I manages to wedge the roof beams/plates up long enough to screw them in place then I was able to install the other uprights. With these in place the noggins can be cut and nailed in.

Some of the noggins are a bit wonky but everything was plumb and pretty sturdy.
I then had a go at the floor of the bathroom. The blue insulation is 50mm thick and the timber is 70mm thick. It is actually finished floor level, so the bits under where the doors will go may have to come out or maybe I will raise the floor level a touch to go over these bits. The blue insulation went down really well once I had got the right technique for getting round the cables. Rather than trying to cut grooves in a single piece just cut the piece and then the groove is just a notch in one side. works well.

While I was busy with all this the carpenters had arrived and were busy inside prepping the walls for the layer of T & G. A lot of preparation. The also put in the chimney.

Thursday
Still raining, so I finished the stud walls and started on the support for the sink. Using the only wood I had It turned into quite a monster.

Still, it works, although I am not sure the sink it quite right.
Back to the local DIY shop for some more bits of pipe work and I managed to plumb in the toilet.

Rains all day, no digger to fix the sewage and no water guy although Hervè says he night be out on Friday or Monday, we shall see.

Friday
My last day, The water guy tuns up, now, Rob and I have always disputed with Herve that that the builders actually installed a stop tap for my chalet. Hervè insists that they did but we have never been able to turn it. We know where is should be, there are 2 plates in the road one for Robs chalet and supposedly one for mine but mine has nothing under it. We have told Hervè this but he assures us its OK. So the water guy comes around and after putting a tap on the water pipe in my chalet spends about 45 minutes fishing around with this enormous key on a pole trying to turn a stop tap (that might not be there) at least 2 meters down a narrow pipe. Eventually he gives up declare that its "impossible" and disappears. What?? What now?
I have to leave and everything is still up in the air.

OK so I have half a bathroom, but still no electricity and no water.
But I now have a roof and I have keys to my front door!

Tiling

2007-07-26T14:33:00.000+02:00

Rob (who is visiting his chalet today) reports that the carpenters are in and applying insulation to my roof! They have gerry rigged the electricity cable by just slinging a cable across the drive and they are away!
Maybe I will have tiles by the time I get there in August.

Blasted, Bastille Day

2007-07-16T12:23:00.000+02:00

Friday afternoon, we left Zurich at a very respectable 3 o'clock, motered on down to France over the pas de Morgins, over the col du Corbier, arrive in Morzine at 7:30 (ish) fantastic, 4 hour driving with a half hour break along the way. Right, we need some food, go to the supermarket. The supermarket is open. Result. Siew Ling goes in and gets busy buying food. I see this big notice on the door and translate it to mean "This shop will be CLOSED Saturday 14th July" That's tomorrow, why is the shop closed? OK "Siew Ling we need to get more food, this shop is closed tomorrow" Fine no problem.
As we are leaving my brain has reached a conclusion that it now provides: 14th July why does that ring a bell? what does that remind me of? Bastille Day! France's National Holiday! Everything will be closed on Saturday. All the supermarkets, all the shops, all the DIY shops! Arse!

We arrived at the chalet to find a bit of a transformation, the chalet no longer has a big hole all round it. It has been back filled and landscaped.

I now have a driveway! with a drain out side my garage! More surprises, I have a earth cable, in a weird place but I have an earth, not connected to the consumer unit, but its an earth! I have a temporary supply box, all connected to the overhead wires, with a meter and everything, just what he EDF billed me for!

But no connection to my Chalet. OK I can do that, I just need 20 metres of 16mm four ply cable and an earth cable to connect the consumer unit up and all this was planned, I can go to the DIY shop on Saturday and buy all of what I need and get my power on.

But no, tomorrow is Bastille day and everything is closed!

So Saturday came round and sure enough everything was closed, except, embarrassingly enough the supermarket, I had misread the sign which said "This shop will be OPEN 14th July" Oh well everything I need to be open was closed.

Any way It probably saved me money as I had to improvise. I scrapped my original idea of how to block up the garage and went with a new off the cuff design (as usual) The door turned into a removable section of wall rather than the elegant doorway I had planned but it will function. No hinges mean the door doesn't really open rather it falls!

Oh it was so hot. The sun was burning hot all weekend, absolutely fantastic weather, maybe not for working out side but great sunshine.

With the garage blocked up I could move some (nearly all) of Robs tools into my garage so as not to disturb his guests next time I am there (4th August I hope).

As the garage doors/wall went up I was thinking about the electricity, how best to connect it. In the end I removed the cable I put in last time from the entrance to the consumer unit. This cable is the one the builders donated. Its not bad and I am sure its fine, its just I don't trust it as part of the permanent fixtures so I will use this cable to go from the pylon to the garage and then some spare 10mm from the garage to the consumer unit. The builders cable is the only bit of cable I had available that would reach without cannibalising the already installed 10mm in the kitchen.

So I tried all Sunday morning to thread this big ugly cable down the ducts from the pylon to the garage. Funny thing is the duct changes colour, the duct at the pylon is orange and has a smooth interior, the duct at the garage is red and has a horrible ribbed interior just right for catching cables on. This is a bad sign, I was not convinced they were actually the same duct but some listening and shouting and wobbling cable around indicated they were possible connected. Anyway I tried all morning, I carefully prepared the end, I pushed and pulled, I pulled it all out and laid it all out and twisted the kinks out of it I let it warm up in the sun, I pushed and pulled from both ends, I couldn't get the thing through! It would go about as far as the chalet then no further! bad sign! but the other way it would go a lot further and then stop.
For some reason I am relatively convinced that the ducts do actually join up, why I am not sure when everything points to the fact that the are not joined. Maybe it the hard work involved in digging them up to prove it that I am avoiding!

So no electricity for me this weekend, but I have block the garage up.

A New Electric Dimension

2007-07-12T16:17:00.000+02:00

Surprise, I got a bill from the EDF last night, 250 Euros. Not certain quite what for but it is a good sign. It should mean the temporary electricity box is installed under the pylon. I may not quite have power to the house and I might not have an earth but I think I might be connected to the mains !!

The title is from some song that keeps going round in my head, I think its by Dreadzone, I think the song is called "Third Wave"

Planning a visit

2007-07-11T17:53:00.000+02:00

I am going to Morzine on Friday and I hope to seal up the garage doors. Hopefully I can put a door in as well because without the keys to the front door I will not be able to get in!

This trip is also a recon. mission to determine just what has been done and what hasn't. Hervè tells me the electricity is in, but quite what this means I don't know. I hope it means the consumer unit is wired up to get power rather than the earth spike has been put in. That and the water, Hervè doesn't seem to know quite what is going on as regards the water supply but he has said he will find out.
Apparently Leon (the next door neighbour) has started to connect his sewerage up to the mains that stopped down the road a bit. This means we might be able to piggy back his pipe and have a real connection soon!

My plan is to go out this weekend and block up the garage doors, this will make the place relatively secure and I can leave stuff in there. As it is at the moment anything in the garage is in plain sight from the road, so not ideal. Once the garage doors are sealed I can move my stuff out of Robs garage and into my own. I plan on going down for a whole week in August and Rob has guests in his chalet so my usual ploy of running an extension lead from his garage into my chalet wont be too popular. Also raiding his tools might arouse suspicion! So this weekend I will move what ever I need out of Robs garage and into mine.

My First Consumer Unit

2007-06-03T20:40:00.000+02:00

The backfilling has begun! A big yellow JCB type machine has been busy slinging mud around, generally in the direction of the hole around the chalet. One slight disappointment is the absence of any earth cable, although this is not the end of the world (it can be installed as a 2 meter spike in the ground) I was told that this would be done before the backfilling. Well some things don't change. In order to avoid any complications when or if the electrics are installed I decided I needed a consumer unit on the wall so the carpenters can use extension leads to power their power tools. So this weekend my son and I drove down to Morzine and met up with Rob and his family who are staying in their chalet for a week. Rob and I went down to the DIY shop at the edge of town and I bought this:

A consumer unit. This was priced at over 300 euros but I was charged 192 ?? I think it was Robs account that got us a discount. Sounds well worth getting an account !

So I slapped this on the wall round about where the final consumer unit will go
and wired in one of the breakers to one of the plug sockets. Then as that had taken all of 10 minutes I threaded the big three phase cable generously donated by the builders through the red ducting from the garage door to the consumer unit and wired it up.

Very nice !

I bought the power in at the top because, most likely this is a temporary fitting and I wanted to be certain that I would have enough length of cable to allow me to move the consumer unit around if I have to.

The other end of the cable comes out by the door:

The three phase cable has four cables running in it, three phase and one neutral. It is very heavy.

Now when the electrician turns up to provide a temporary electric supply he should be bright enough to connect up this cable as long as we have an earth as well. With no earth the plugs will be very dangerous to use. I bet that wont stop them!

Just to the right of this photo you can see the temporary supply box. This contains some electric stuff and will eventually sit below the power pole on the other side of the drive and connect up to the overhead wires. Then a cable will run from the white box through the other red duct and can be connected to my cable and that will give me electricity ! Simple huh !

The backfilling has started and they have connected up the sewage pipes to Robs septic tank, well I think maybe it is half mine as I paid enormous amounts to have it moved, any way the sewage appears to be connected. The drains running at the bottom of the back fill connect in to the down pipes from the gutters. I didn't know this before but it seems stupid not to really.

This is the back corner of the garage the 2 90 degree bends one will be turned up and connect to the down pipe from the roof the other will direct the flow across in front of the garage and out presumably under the road ?

It is the end of May and although, yes the backfilling has begun, nothing else has. The backfilling will take about 2 weeks to finish according to M Bergoend (the concrete guy) He was up at Robs place this week trying to persuade Rob to get his drive tarmacked. He was saying apparently that I am going to have my drive done and that Rob should get his done at the same time. Well I am not getting my drive done. That is so low on the priority list as to be off the scale.

I will have to watch what is going on other wise they will spend all my mortgage on stuff I don't want (yet)

Meeting Hervè

2007-05-13T00:00:00.000+02:00

Arranged a meeting for today with Hervè to discuss several points about the chalet. I congratulated him on getting all but 2 of the windows in and he presented me with a bill, 20 grand ! Those are some expensive windows.

Hervè also gave me a tax bill for 4500 for 2 years tax, lovely. Thanks. Apparently the tax people have been trying to track me down at various addresses in Switzerland and eventually resorted to sending the bill to Hervè to forward to me.

Hervè says:
The roof will be done by the end of June
The chimney will be done by the end of June
The gutters and downpipes will be done by the end of June
The insulation and the internal T&G will be done by the end of June.
The backfilling will be done by the end of May
The earth cable will be put in before the backfilling
A temporary electric supply will be established
The water situation will be resolved and I will get a tap and meter installed.

So all in all There should be a fair amount of activity in the next few months.

Rob requested the backfilling be done as soon as possible as he has guests coming. Well Hervè phoned the builder and apparently the builder van do it in the next couple of weeks. I will be amazed if it is done but we shall try. I will write an email to Hervè outlining the points we made and the dates he said things would happen.

This trip was the first in our new car. It went great. Ohmri accompanied me and we drove from Zürich to Morzine. I figured that if I was going to spend any time in Morzine then I was going to need a car of my own rather than rent each time. Originally I was going to get some pick up type vehicle or a 4x4. The new Nissan pick up looked good we could even put the kids in the rear seats. Problem was the rear seats are OK but not for any distance. So the pick up idea was reluctantly shelved and we ended up looking at Renault Espace. Big car roomy comfortable and all the seats come out so it sort of turns into a van when required. So we bought one.

Didn't really get a whole lot done on this trip but fixed down the cables a bit more. Ohmri got ill and we left for home on Saturday afternoon about 15.30 got home at 19.30 so 4 hours door to door, going over the Col du Corbier (a lovely switchback of a road that climbs a pass and is real wiggly) and that was with a twenty minute rest stop. So I am pleased. It went well and we will do it again soon as I have arranged to meet up with Rob at the end of the month.

Now to see if I have any money to pay these bills.....

Quote from Leon

2007-04-13T12:50:00.000+02:00

Leon (my next door neighbour) has sent a quote for the garage doors: 4400 Euros ! sounds a bit pricey, but I think Herve's quote was over 10 grand.

In other news Rob and his family are staying in Morzine this week and have reported that the glass is going in to my windows. Sounds like I will have to take Leon up on the garage doors.

Happy Easter

2007-04-09T21:06:00.000+02:00

Just got back from a very nice Easter long weekend in Morzine. Finally made it back, seems like ages since I was there. My first surprise was that the window frames are in and I have a front door:
The chalet its self is all still in one piece. Apart from some blocks that have fallen over as the builders have not got round to backfilling around the chalet yet. One of the things I need to talk to Herve about.

I managed to do quite a bit in the three days I had to work, well two and a half as I lost half a day blinded in one eye! Long story but I was wearing all the protective gear, goggles, ear defenders, face mask and still I managed to get something in my eye!

Anyway drilling lots of holes and breaking chunks pf concrete to make room for plug sockets

These take about 45 minutes each and leave you with no feeling in your hands for about ten minutes after that! The look tiny but they are hard work. Even harder was chasing out the concrete above my head for this cable

This cable comes out above here just to the side of the big wooden pillar upstairs. It needs to be chased in like this as it will be visible until it gets below the door.

One of the big things I wanted to try out this time was some paint I found in the local diy superstore (called Jumbo) so in a scientific frame of mind I read the instructions and discovered that the 7kg of paint I had bought was supposed to cover all of 3 meters square, So I marked out three square meters so as to get the correct thickness. Then I read that the paint needed a primer on absorbent surfaces, well fresh raw concrete is pretty absorbent so I guess I need a primer, but do I really as buying primer was about half as much as the paint. So I devised a further experiment! (cue maniacal laughter and thunder clap!) I divided the three square meter into six areas, three I painted with primer, 1 I would apply the paint to the fresh concrete and the other two I would make the concrete damp first and then apply the paint. I was awarding marks for ease of application, finished surface and durability.

Before and after.
I let it dry overnight and came back to discover no discernible difference between any of the panels at all. It was all stuck to the wall solidly and all looked pretty much the same. The only difference therefore was how easy it had been to put on and the only thing I would say there was that the primer and the damp surface was marginally easier that the dry panel. So I wont be messing about with the expensive primer. Well maybe on some important places like the stair roofs, but other than that I will be washing the walls and applying. The finished surface looks like this:

This is fine and very similar to the finish we have in our current apartment.

I managed to do lots, more electrics and run loads more wires around and through and all over the place. I have christened the hole most of them disappear down, "The snake pit"

I marked out where all the internal walls were going to go.
I swept the whole chalet to remove all the debris from previous visits, made a lot of difference. I marked out the kitchen.

Things to do next:
Speak to Herve about temporary power.
Speak to Herve about water.
Find out from Herve about what the time table is for back filling, tiling and finishing off.
Get more 2.5 mm cable and install the rest of the plug socket wiring upstairs.
Internal walls
Water
Floors (upstairs at least)

So everything to play for then ....

Robs Chalet is finished!

2007-03-01T14:33:00.001+01:00

Robs Chalet is finished. We were there this week and installed his garage doors and the EDF has installed his proper mains electricity. So his chalet is now finished. Apart from the million and one little things to do, but he is not reliant on any one now. All the official jobs are done, well actually I just thought of one thing he might not have done yet. The marie that gave him his planning permission has to sign off the chalet to say its built properly. Maybe this has already been done. I will ask.

Anyway we were there on Monday night to Wednesday and most of that was spent fixing the last bits of wiring for Robs electrics before the EDF came to turn him all on. Biggest surprise is that apparently we are 3 phase.

Three Phase electricity. Not much of a problem but as Rob had designed his consumer unit on the assumption that the supply would a single phase it was a bugger to change it all around in order to accommodate three phase. But the electrician had sorted most of that out before Robs inspection. He passed his inspection and that is why he was able to get full power turned on yesterday, up until then he was only on a temporary supply which kept tripping out.

In my chalet we drilled some holes through concrete floors and walls in order to run the gaine through and allow the installation of the switches and light fittings.
Not a huge amount of work but important to do. I need to do a huge cabling job now and run some serious amounts of cable into the house. Rob has given me a load of cable which he was using to get power from his temporary supply, about 50 meters of 10mm blue and red which will sort out the appliances in the kitchen. Quite expensive stuff so I save a bit there, Thanks Rob. We also salvaged the electric box and contents that housed the temporary supply so hopefully I can reuse that as well. I need to speak to Hervè about establishing a temporary supply as they will not be able to hack into robs any more. After we had fitted Robs garage doors Rob gave me the panels that were replaced. It is just a shame they do not fit in my garage door holes! Mine are considerably bigger both ways than Robs are.

The company that makes the garage doors is owned by our next door neighbour, Leon Bettenfeld. They make garage doors, so it seemed appropriate to get a deal from him rather than mess about with anybody else. He will price me up a set of garage doors for about 3500 Euros and fit them around April time. Sounds good. He also mentioned that someone had been around measuring the windows about a week ago. This is a good sign. I suppose I could have some windows and doors come April !

3000 Euros from the bank

2007-03-01T14:32:00.000+01:00

The bank has admitted it made another mistake and refunded the 3000 Euros to my current account.

Statement of Account

2007-02-08T10:34:00.000+01:00

Well the bank is looking even worse this morning. I got a statement in the post and it appears they have lost 3000 Euros!
I have a mortgage with the bank and the arrangement is that I inform the bank that an invoice needs paying and they credit the money into my current account (from the mortgage amount) and then pay the invoice out of my current account.
So with these payments messed up by the bank they seem to have messed up again. They credited my account with 103386.39 but made two payments totalling 106386.39
So I am down 3000 Euros.
I looked at the balance and thought, "What ??? where has all the money gone?" The bank tries to nickel and dime you to death at the best of times but 3000 is a bit much to swallow.
So I am on to the bank again and I am quite interested to hear what they have to say. I do hope this is their mistake, maybe I have run out of money!
No, I don't think so there should be about 53000 or so left. That has got to cover the roof, the windows, doors and the internal T&G.

Managing the Bank Manager

2007-01-24T15:44:00.000+01:00

The bank has just gone down in my estimation.
This morning Hervè sent me an email asking that I pay the last invoices he gave me.
This was a surprise as I had sent the invoices and instructions to pay them to the bank ages ago. So I tried to phone the bank but could not speak to the right person so I sent them an email asking what had happened and enclosing a copy of the email requesting payment.
Now I get an email saying "Oh yes I made a mistake and they haven't been paid but I will pay them today." ????

Great, I cant trust the bank to pay the invoices. So in the future the bank will need chasing each day to ensure the invoices are actually paid.

Only in France!

P.P.P.P.P.P.

2007-01-19T12:25:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine once quoted the six P's of any Project "Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance". Well I have been planning this enterprise for about six years so we shall see how this cliché stands up.

A lot of the planing recently has been around the electrics. What is the best way to install the electrics in my chalet? Well the French electric book is a gold mine of information, extremely useful and not as difficult to read/translate as I imagined it might be. After all, the subject matter is fairly narrow and it doesn't take much to figure out if the book is saying do this or don't do this.
Hmmmm. Sounds like famous last words!.

The consumer unit is the box that houses all the trips and RCD's and what not that distribute the electricity around the house. What used to be fuse boxes and now is Micro Circuit Breakers (MCB) or Residual Current Detectors (RCD). This is basically a largish box on the wall with three, maybe four rows of trip switches in it. Each row starts with a big switch called the Interrupteur differential which is and RCD on the the earth and trips the power to that row if it detects any current flow in the earth for that row. (I think ?) The row contains several smaller trip switches or MCB called disjocteur divisionnaire These are rated in Amps and will trip if the current in that circuit exceeds the rated amount.

So as I understand it you are protected from overloading by the disjocteur divisionnaire and from electrocution by the Interrupteur differential.

So what I have to do now is figure out what stuff I need/want in the chalet that will use electricity and where it will be and then figure out how to get the wire to it, then figure out which trip the wire should be attached to and ....and...

Planning the plug sockets is pretty easy, there is a minimum requirement for each room and you are allowed 5 sockets (or equivalent, double sockets apparently count as one, but triple sockets count as two) on 1.5mm cable spur and 8 sockets on a 2.5mm cable spur. Each of these spurs needs a trip on the consumer unit. I worked out that I wanted about 54 sockets through out the chalet which is just a bit more than the minimum allowed. That's a minimum of 7 trips but more like 10 trips just for the normal sockets. Then there are the dedicated sockets/power outlets for the main appliances in the chalet, Oven, hob, freezer, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and seemingly any other major appliance. I think I will put an extra one in for the microwave as well. Each of these needs its own trip, that is another seven.

The lights are harder to plan the routes for, as you need to figure in the switches as well. A minimum of 19 lamps that I will increase to 26. A lighting circuit can have up to 8 lamps on it and uses 1.5mm cable. So that is at least another 4 trips.
That is about 21 trips and still we have the heating and hot water to add in!

But the hardest part of all this is deciding where the actual wires should run, where to put the gaine! Some of these problems will be solved by using false walls or wooded panelling over the concrete walls and using the space between to run the cables, but this cant solve everything. At some stage I need to mark out boxes and cable runs on the concrete and cut it out. It will be easier to cut these chases down from switch to floor but most of the time it is going to be up from switch to ceiling. Sounds fun. And the light itself, how do make a hole big enough in the ceiling, do it from above which is certainly easier but needs to make a big hole all the way through. Or from below which will be harder work just holding the drill up let alone applying pressure to the bit. I suppose its a case of suck it and see try both and see which is more effective.

I should be going back out there soon, so I will have to decide what I am going to do. Drill some holes in the concrete I think!

Electric Book

2007-01-09T19:16:00.000+01:00

The French book on electricity installations l'installation èlectrique has arrived. It would have been useful a few days ago but never mind. I must get my French dictionary out and have a good read through it to try and understand what I need to do.

Quite a hard days work

2007-01-07T19:09:00.000+01:00

Well it's Sunday night and I am knackered. Ohmri, my son, and I took the train to Geneva from Zürich at 2:00 on Friday afternoon and arrived at the chalets at about 8:00 in the evening having stopped on the way to buy some building supplies (cable, drill bits and gaine) We were staying at Robs place while I put some gaine and cable into my place. My first impression was that Rob seems to have got the heating sorted out as the place was definitely not cold. With no effort we booted the house, turning on the water and the rest of the power. We turned the heating on in the main room and the bathroom and then I thought we should have dinner, cook pizza in the oven. Two minutes after the oven went on it all went black. I had discovered the secret of limited power. You cant have the heating, the hot water and the oven on at the same time as this draws to much power and the line trips out. This means you need to get your coat on and your boots and trudge down to the road though the snow in the dark open the power box (and normally dig the power box out of the snow) and push the trip switch back in to get the power on again. This works as long as you have actually turned something off, otherwise just as you have closed the power box and trudged back to the chalet through the snow taken your coat off and your boots the power will trip out again, meaning you have to repeat the whole operation again. Its all even more fun when you have a frightened seven and a half year old who also needs dressing and walking down through the snow and back again to be undressed and then the trip trips out again.

Anyway we sorted out the problem and with Ohmri a little nervous of being stranded in the dark we went to sleep.

The next morning after some chores, and after I discovered that I had left the cheque from the notaire in Zürich and could not pay it into the bank (annoying). We started work on the electrics int the chalet. I must admit I was quite excited about it as this is the first time I had done anything towards actually constructing my chalet. I have helped Rob many times building walls or laying cables or fixing pipes etc, but never actually done anything for myself on my chalet.

First thing to notice is the balconies. They are great. Huge chunky bits of timber bolted to the concrete. They look really nice. I am very pleased with them. I like the joints and the shear size of the timber that was used.

In fact I am impressed at the size of the timber that was used all over the chalet. Enormous pieces of wood.

Anyway my mission for the weekend was to install enough gaine and cable so that my life was not hell when the chippies had installed the internal skin of T&G. The more cables I could install now and run inside the walls would mean less cable I had to mount externally on the inside wall of the chalet. So a little hard work now would pay handsomely and make the chalet look a great deal better than it would with wires tacked all up the walls everywhere.
The kitchen was where I started. Firstly with a bit of demolition. The gaine and the cables have to come up through the floor somewhere as the can not come through the concrete. I am going to use the hole left for the waste water from the kitchen. Although I think that this has been put in the wrong corner. It should be on the left hand corner and it is actually in the right hand corner. No matter that can all be sorted out. My plan is build a fake wall on 2 sides of the kitchen. The third side had the window in and the forth is open to the dining room. This false wall will hide all the wiring and plumbing so I avoid having to install a huge number of wires now. This also makes the job a bit more manageable in a weekend. The third wall is the window so I set about with my plan to install the electrics in this wall as it could not really be hidden.

A hole for the waste water from the kitchen had been left in the right hand corner of the kitchen:

Which looked like this after about half an hour with a big hammer:
It is this hole through which all the services will run up into (and out of) the kitchen. I might move the hole later to the left hand corner or rather I might make another hole in the other corner to use instead of this one.

Anyway after a while of drilling and threading and worrying about floor heights and kitchen unit heights and lots of other worries.

Before and after

Here is a closer shot. As can be seen the plastic gaine, with cable inside it goes up into the wall and the other end comes out horizontally. This horizontal portion is low enough to be under the finished floor level, in fact finished floor level is just about the top of the enormous horizontal beam on the concrete. Drilling the holes was fun as the drill bit I had bought was only 200mm long but that added to the length of the drill meant it was never going to be a straight drill. So I did it in two, well three, stages. First drill down almost as deep as the drill would go then drill in from the side about half way up the horizontal joist and at as much of an upward angle as could be achieved (not much, maybe 10 degrees). Where the two holes met (and surprisingly then usually did meet) would be nearly a right angle and the gaine, let alone the cable, would not turn that sharply, so just below the first horizontal hole I would drill another to allow a larger curve on the gaine and this proved very successful. (more than I expected anyway)

A word about gaine, some one somewhere is laughing, probably in a French accent. How hard is this stuff to use? It comes in a coil which it does not ever want to leave so it really does not want to be straight. Threaded down the tube of gaine is a little wire:
This wire is absolutely useless! You cant actually pull it out unless the gaine is absolutely straight and it hates that. I supposed that this wire might have been placed there to aid the threading of cable through the tube but that is plainly wrong. It was placed there to annoy and confuse people and to stab their fingers when they are careless.
The only way I found to successfully thread a cable through the gaine was to firstly secure one end of the gaine and straighten it all, then remove the stupid annoying little wire. Now try to push a cable down the straightened gaine. But cable also comes in a coil and it likes to stay coiled as well so you are pushing the cable that is trying to revert back into a coil down a plastic pipe that is trying to revert back to a coil and more often that not the coils are trying to revert in different directions. It becomes very difficult.

I had loads to do. Apart from the kitchen there was the dining room and salon and the entrance hallway. Each needed some attention and gaine put in the walls. Again it started with demolition. The builders had left a rather large hole in the floor of the dining room to the right of the steps:

This looked a lot better some time later after some persuasion with my friend the lump hammer.

Well the power for this side of the upstairs is all going to come up through this hole. I think it was originally designed to put the outlet pipe for the humid air up and out through a second chimney.

Using the same technique described above I put the gaine and cable in to this wall

This includes a 300mm hole through one of the main supporting timber columns. This I did by drilling from either side as straight as I could and would you believe it the holes lined up so well that the gaine just pushed through!

But trouble was looming. I was trying to take a piece of gaine up into the ceiling to run a cable across one of the beams in the roof for lights, when I started drilling through metal screws.
As you might make out the top hole only goes in about a centimeter then there is a shiny patch, well this shiny patch just about wrecked my expensive, just bought yesterday, oh so fine drill bit. I was a little annoyed. I mean that drill bit was good it chewed through this timber like it was butter. I had to hold it back it wanted to drill and keep drilling. But sadly after its encounter with the screw here drilling the hole underneath was a real pain it had to be pushed real hard just to get a bite and I was only about half way through the job with many more holes to drill!

I persevered and put in more gaine for plugs in the salon and the entrance hall and more gaine for external lights in the entrance hall and the kitchen.

I was working by floodlight when I finished.

Beer and food in Morzine followed quite closely by bed. I was aching all over. It has been a long time since I worked quite that hard all day. It was good though. It felt real good to have done something at last.

Sledging on Sunday was wet and cold but real good fun and we both enjoyed it despite the rain. A bit of a tidy up allowed me to imaginer the rooms and the work ahead. I reckon I need a bit more power in the walls for lights especially but that will wait until the end of Jan. It a 2 man job to getup high in the ceiling and I think I may buy another drill bit as I don't fancy messing about 20 feet up a ladder with a blunt drill!

We left Morzine at 12:00 and arrived home at 6:00, exhausted but happy.

Christmas Presents

2006-12-23T10:28:00.000+01:00

We got a very nice Christmas present from the Notaire yesterday, a cheque for nearly 2000 euro's !
Apparently this is the balance from the huge fee he requested a few months ago.
Very nice indeed, that will pay for the work I have to do in January to put the wiring in behind the T&G before the chippies put the inside walls up.
That is going to be a cold weekend.

No news about the chalet as far as windows or earth cables or backfilling goes. I will find out in January.

Pictures

2006-12-07T20:23:00.000+01:00

I have now loaded all the newest photos into the web album.

This is how is looks from Rob's chalet. The roof is a single layer of tongue and groove (T&G) boarding covered with a red roofing felt. It is about 95% water proof as it was tipping it down for most of the trip and there are only 2 minor leaks in the roof. There is a big hole right around the building

Inside the carpenters have only built the outside skin of T&G and lined the walls with building paper. This is the kitchen as seen from the door from the entrance hall. There are no windows or doors in the whole building. This corner is where the waste pipe for the kitchen has been built into the floor. This is where the kitchen and the entrance hall will get the power. Gaine will be feed up through the floor in this corner and will spread out through the walls. I have been strongly advised to fit the gaine before the carpenters T&G the inside wall.

This is the dining room. Through the windows there will be a largish balcony on this corner of the building. The balconies have not yet been constructed. As you can just about see, the support coming down from the roof that will form an upright on the balcony is propped up on this skinny plank of timber. We are waiting for the triangle bits that fix to the concrete wall and prop up the ends! These big windows will slide open nearly all the way and with them both open it will feel like outside. In the summer it will be fantastic.

This is the view of the salon from the dining room. You can see the "wall of glass" on the far end and just make out the steps in the foreground. This is a lovely room. It is big and roomy and light, definitely room to swing a cat and kind of makes up for the smaller bedrooms. On the right hand side just below the picture is another opening in the floor. This one was originally intended to take the moisture from the bathrooms and send it up to a second chimney directly above. I dropped the second chimney on grounds of cost but will make use of the box outs in the concrete to route my cables though The dining room and saloon will be powered by cables coming from here.

This photo shows the jointing and detail on the mezzanine level. This big brace ties the roof together and I think it looks superb. The mezzanine will go on top of the concrete walls although the finished floor height will not be very much higher than the top of the present concrete as the window sills of the 2 big windows facing Robs place are quite low.

This vertical column is intriguing, on the plans it is shown coming down on to the corner of the concrete entrance hall. As built it does not. So what went wrong? Is the timber wrong or the concrete? My guess is that the concrete is wrong. I will not know for sure until I measure up the kitchen but my guess is that the concrete wall is about 300 mm out and when the carpenters tried to put the column in it wouldn't fit. When I saw this corner on the plans I recognized it as a major feature of the house. I was going to ask for it to be timber all the way from floor to roof and that the concrete be poured to it. I didn't as time and cost was against me. As it is it has worked out quite well, I have the feature I wanted plus a bit more and maybe I have a slightly bigger kitchen.

This is the two chalets together. Mine will look a bit less tall and skinny when the ground is back filled and the balconies will also help. A second balcony is going on just above the garage and below the pair of French windows. (aren't they actually all French windows)

Hervè has changed the front page of his invoices so that the have my name on them so these can go to the bank to be paid.
He assures me that the windows will be in and the building backfilled before Christmas. Whilst Andy the electrician was around I pummeled him for information about how best to wire up my chalet. He was a mine of useful information. Especially about the earth system in my chalet or rather the lack of any earth in my chalet. Putting in the earth cable does not look that difficult just running a 25mm2 cable around the building and burying the cable about meter deep. As the builder wants to back fill before Christmas and I have no free weekends before then I asked Hervè to organize an electrician to install the earth for me. In back filling around the building the builders will sort out the slopes and attempt to stabilize the steep slopes using some of the rocks discovered whilst digging the foundations.
The water is apparently connected to the mains, and he assures me that the is a stop tap for each connection in the road. Rob and I could only find one stop tap lid so I wonder what is happening there?
The sewage will be connected temporarily to the septic tank.
The carpenters will complete the T&G at my convenience, although with the roof on and the windows in they can finish this winter if I like. So my plan is to get the gaine in as soon as possible and hopefully the wires with it as it it much easier to thread the cable while the gaine is straight rather than fixed on the wall. So January may well see me wiring the chalet or at least the top floors. As it is I need to sit down and design my circuits. Andy had a very good book which was up to date on the latest French regs, L'installation électrique which I will be getting and using to help.

My next trip out to see Hervè will be in January, but I might get out between Christmas and new year for a day trip, maybe?

No Pain, No Gaine

2006-12-07T14:47:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a flying visit to the Chalet. I timed this trip to coincide with a visit from Rob to his chalet. He was getting advise and help from a friendly English electrician, Andy, who is well versed in the ways of French electrics. All was remarkably well with Robs wiring and it could have been a whole lot worse, but basically Rob had wired to a slightly out of date book and the new regulations required some simple changes. That and the gaine. Gaine (pronounced "gain"), yes this strange word is what I was attempting to describe earlier here and I have finally found out its official name. Gaine is the name of the small plastic tubes that the French electricians have to run there new installed cables through. These are the same plastic tubes that were omitted from the building of my chalet. These are very important if you wish to pass the EDF's official inspection (called the consuel) and actually be allowed to connect your power up properly. I am sure they will figure quite prominently in the next few months.

I have learnt quite a lot about the French official attitude to electric installations and, as it happens, they seem to be a darn site safer than the English in this respect.

Well, I have a beautiful chalet which is no where near finished but is just about waterproof and according to Hervè, the windows will be in by Christmas and the tiles and chimney could be in by Easter. Whilst I remain cautiously optimistic, I know how reliable Hervè's time scales have been in the past.

I will upload the photos this evening.

Time to Pay the Ferryman (partly)

2006-12-01T12:09:00.000+01:00

I have been in touch with Hervè to arrange a meeting. It got moved from late November to early December due to family emergencies. I have a meeting set for 6th December with Hervè on site. Another reason for postponing the trip or only doing the trip once is that Rob is meeting a tame electrician to give his wiring the once over. Sounded like a useful contact and I haven't seen Rob for a while so we are taking this opportunity to meet up.

Matt has left the building. He has some appointments in the UK and my "spy on site" has had to leave. I wonder how much work he got done for Rob? It would have been good to meet up again before he left but no matter. On the plus side it means I may receive his photo diary of the construction. He took many photos on his cell phone (not certain of the quality but should be OK for the web) but could not send them as his phone never got a strong enough signal for long enough. I have never had a problem with signal strength out there so I don't know what sort of dodgy phone he owns. So dodgy in fact there was no other interface to get at the photos. You would have thought that in these days there would be another way of getting at this content. Blue tooth or infra-red or even USB, maybe its actually designed that way to ensure you have to send any photos you do take by MMS that way the phone companies make more money.

Where was I, ah yes talked to Hervè. He has sent me 2 new invoices/bills. What he does is take the bill from the concrete guys and put his own header page on top which gives me a clue as to how much to pay. For some reason Hervè has sent me the wrong header page, Mr Wilson and Mrs Wright apparently owe my concrete guy (BERGOEND S.A.S) quite a lot of money (as do I). Fine no problem I can this sorted, but it is just kind of careless to send two invoices both with the wrong headers.
He sent another today, this time for the woodwork. 53000 Euro's.
Lot of money.
Too late now.

It is interesting to try and work out the state of the building from the invoices. It shouldn't have any windows or balconies. It shouldn't have a chimney. No door/s. No tiles on the roof.
Pretty basic really. I am concerned to leave it like that over the winter. I wonder what Hervè will say? ("no problem, don't worry, it will be fine.")

Anyway looking forward to seeing it and meeting up with Rob on the 6th.

Reply to Ian.

2006-11-07T12:29:00.000+01:00

My first verifiable comment! Thanks Ian, the chalet is in the valle de la Manche, head towards the gold mines, about 2km outside of Morzine, a little village/hamlet called Le Chargeau. Ian, your chalet is very nice, really central but away from the noise. I still cant quite work out where it is exactly. Next to Café Chaud, fine, I know there, but I cant figure out which building from your photos. Anyway you are in Morzine in December and we should meet up. For anyone else Ian's chalet is called Chalet Le Coffy and is really well placed in Morzine.

How to give someone your private email address/contact details without it being available to the world?
I suppose that is what the comment moderation type stuff is about. I can decide to publish or not.

Latest pics

2006-11-06T09:37:00.000+01:00

Hervè has sent me some more photos, they are, by his admission not very good pictures but I think you can see the idea. The wood is going up, quite definitely.
This photo shows the end wall of the salon, that should be nearly all glass and you can see the protuberance around the top of the concrete. The quality is bad but the chalet looks great. I really can not wait to see it again. It is a shame I have to wait until the end of November.

This one shows the side seen from Robs Chalet, you can see the front door and the small window beside it above which are two big windows which will light the mezzanine. and to the left are two more holes for windows into the salon. The fireplace should be visible, eventually through the first of these.

Wood is flying up (?)

2006-10-31T10:56:00.000+01:00

I was trying to think of some witty headline for this news and I couldn't. Some Macbeth quote about the woods moving (Birnham woods?) ... my that was a long time ago, O level English lit. probably the last time I read that. Still it must have made an impression.

Any road up, the carpenters are really moving. In a long text message discussion with Matt yesterday evening he tells me they have uprights up and parts of walls, all sorts of timber moving around. He says it is like the biggest Ikea jigsaw ever. Apparently the timber is mostly precut and fits together like a giant puzzle. Sounds fun, but I suppose its the only way to do it quickly. Preform it all while the concrete goes up then piece it all together.

I wonder how long it will take them.

The other interesting factoid Matt discovered is what he called the chamfered protuberance (as it will know be called). Requires a bit of explanation. The plans call for all the concrete to be covered, firstly with insulation and then with either timber panelling or some sort of render. This will make the concrete about 100 mm thicker. So the timber which sits on top of the concrete needs to take this extra dimension into account. Now on Robs Chalet I could never figure out quite how this was intended to happen until i saw the detailed sections through my chalet. Apparently a the timber wall comes down vertically flush with the concrete and where they meet it will have a "chamfered protuberance" to bring the wall out enough to account for the added insulation and cladding. I always though that the chamfered protuberance would be my job to add when even I got round to cladding the out side as there was no chamfered protuberance on Robs chalet. But according to Mat the carpenters have started to place my chamfered protuberance all around the walls where it meets the concrete. Excellent.

I cant wait to see it. I have asked Hervè to send photos.

News from the front...

2006-10-30T12:39:00.000+01:00

Matt reports that a lorry load of pre formed timber has arrived on site today. Could this mean that that are serious about getting it finished before the weather breaks? Interestingly, Hervè promised to inform me of the date that the carpenters would start, but like many other things I have not heard a word other than an email on the 25 Oct in response to mine thanking him for the meeting and requesting the electric drawings (showing all the plugs, light sockets and cable runs). He did not mention the start date for the carpenters.

Sometimes I wonder if he really knows what is going on!

My next visit will be towards the end of November. I now want to go earlier, to see the timber going up, but family commitments mean I will have to wait until around the 25th November before I can see it.

On a unrelated techy note, I am using the newly released Firefox 2.0 to enter this blog and the spell checker is wonderful. Cant think why we never had one before! I will have to go back through all my previous posts and fix all the terrible spelling mistakes!

More Photos

2006-10-23T10:07:00.000+02:00

Rob just sent me some photos from his trip out to his chalet around the 14th, 15th October have loaded them into the online album He has taken shots of the stairs, probably to show me the surface finish which on Robs Chalet left a lot to be desired. This is quite a nice shot of the two chalets.

and this one is of the concrete shutters around the entrance hall.

Thanks Rob.
Matt has taken loads of photos from when he got there throughout the build. He should still be there when the timber goes up so with a little luck his photos should run right through the whole process.

The Plans

2006-10-22T18:25:00.000+02:00

OK, I found the plans in an old email I sent my self from work. They are not the highest quality which is probably why I had forgotten about them, but they are fine to give the general idea of how it all fits together.

This is the lowest floor, the underground, constructed of concrete. The garage and cave.

From Project Erratic

Clicking the picture will take you to a bigger copy.

The bedrooms and bathrooms are on the next level again built in concrete.

From Project Erratic

and the top level, constructed in timber, except for the entrance hall walls which are made of concrete, is the kitchen, dining and salon.

From Project Erratic

So the chalet is actually made up of five levels, (six if you include the mezzanine) On the first level there is the garage where the services come in (and out) and are distributed from. Going up the stairs leads to three doors, two single bedrooms and a bathroom. Up the stairs again (the place is full of stairs) leads to two double bedrooms and two more bathrooms. Up yet more stairs leads to the entrance hall designed to keep the warm air in the house and not let it all out when the front door is opened. Through the door leads to the kitchen and dining room and up the stirs leads to the large salon. The last set of stairs (currently not on the plans will take you up onto the top of the entrance hall as a mezzanine overlooking the whole upper floor. The fireplace will provide a focal point in the salon. Most of the upper floor walls are glass, providing fantastic views of the valley and mountains surrounding the chalet. I suppose it will also provide anybody walking past with fantastic views of what ever we are doing at the time but then I suppose that's what curtains are for!
Having seen the size of the building for the first time I am slightly dismayed over the size of the bedrooms and although the architect assures me the always look smaller at this stage I still think they are pretty small bedrooms. Oh well, its is made up for by the large salon and dining room.

Uploaded Photos

2006-10-21T22:50:00.000+02:00

Picasa, (Googles picture handling software) has got a new web album feature so in the interests of synchronisation and using technology here is a web album of the construction photos so far. I will publish the plans as well but I need a good scan of them. All I have at the moment are A3 photocopies and the original A0 size plans.

The Concrete is Finished

2006-10-21T21:59:00.000+02:00

The concrete is finished, look:
We (the whole family) all went to Morzine today so that I could meet Hervè and talk over the building. The concrete is basically finished, it needs rubbing down and trimming up but its all been poured. Next is the timber and the roof. Apparently that will start shortly and it should take only about ten days to get some sort of roof on the chalet and get it rain proof. I dont think this includes completely finishing the roof like with tiles but just finished enough to protect the chalet and the other workers from the rain. Hervè promised to inform me of the date that the carpenters would start.

This is the box just in from the front door designed to keep the warm air in the house and the cold air out when you open the front door.
There will be a window inside the building which is unusual and this box is roofed over with a mezzanine type floor with access from the top floor. This was causing me concern as my original plans for a grand mezzanine we stopped when I discovered that the roof truss would prevent any access. I could not think how to get access to this space in a tidy and neat manner. trap doors and ladders might work but where to put them, there certainly wasn't room for a staircase. Hervè once made some comment about getting access from beside the fireplace but I never understood until today. I thought that the wall behind the fireplace was going reach to the ceiling but it doesn't. It stops. So I can have my stairs by the fireplace leading up to the mezzanine overlooking the kitchen, dining room and salon.

These are the stairs up to the second from top floor.
I show these as it took ages for Robs chalet to get the stairs installed. I don't know why this was but it seemed to take months. Maybe because my chalet is being built towards the end of the season they seem to have done most of it at the same time. I know this seems logical but they just took ages finishing off Robs place and I kind of expected the same story. Well they are not quite finished yet so I will still wait and see. The concrete needs to be rubbed down the the misaligned edged need to be ground down to look smooth.

I must say that I am not impressed with the quality of the concrete. Well the actual concrete is OK I suppose but the quality of the placement is pretty bad. There are holes and misalignment's everywhere. One example of this is the missed door I mentioned before another is this window:
OK, I mean the house is probably not going to fall down because of these but it just doesn't inspire confidence.

Even more important is the fact that people have been paid! The builder got his money and the architect has finally had the balance of his money. That means all is well with the bank and that I finally have the mortgage sorted out. I was a bit worried as the bank had not responded to my emails.
The bank has only just got email after years of faffing about with faxes and phones I know have a slightly more direct line to the bank, well easier for me anyway, although I it still seems a bit one way as I have yet to hear from him via email.

All on for Saturday

2006-10-19T14:56:00.000+02:00

Ok I now have a meeting with Hervè. All set for Saturday at 12 noon in his office.
The whole family is going (even my mother in law!) so we all get to see whats going on.
Interested to see what Matt has been doing on Robs chalet as well.

Still no meeting

2006-10-18T17:11:00.000+02:00

Rob has been down to visit his chalet and see what Matt has been up to. He says the concrete is all finished now and has taken some more photos. With these and the early ones that Matt has taken I should have quite a good selection during the construction.

I have been unable to meet with Hervè do to family comitments but I am trying to arrange a meeting as soon as possible.

Try again

2006-10-09T16:34:00.000+02:00

Trying to sort out another meeting with Hervè for Friday 13th October (unlucky for some). That is going to be a busy few days. I have to get to Morzine on Thursday night. Get up early and meet with Hervè, leave around 12 ish and get back to Zürich before 5 in order to catch a flight to the UK for the weekend. We will see how it all goes but at the moment Hervè is in Paris and I cant arrange this meeting yet. I have sent phoned and sent email but I need to speak to him personally. Will try again tomorroworow.

Wow the spell checker on this really messes up when I use the acented characters.

Misinterpretation or what?

2006-10-03T11:38:00.000+02:00

I have been talking and emailing Hervè, He tells me that the electric ducts were not installed because I said I wanted to do the electrical installation all my self. Hmmmm... I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but having a hard time. Hervè says it is the work of an electrician to install the tubes and all the box outs for sockets and switches in the concrete walls.

I told Hervè in June that I wanted the concrete guys to take special care with the electricity cable ducts when they where concreting, as Rob had had enormous problems threading his cables through blocked tubes. and it was only on the 27th September that I said anything that could be really misinterpreted as "I will do ALL the electricians stuff myself".
Hervè sent me outrageous quote from the electrician and I replied I would do it myself. BUT this is after they had built the ground floor walls. See the first photo. So they had already decided not to include the cable ducts!

God it is going to awful.
Can you imagine chasing out all the cable runs up through the concrete and digging holes in the walls for each of the switches and plugs. God it will be a real balls up, horrible work, dusty and dirty as hell.
I have to at least get the box outs installed and might as well get the tubes as well.
But what to do about the existing walls?

As for the drainage and the doorway, Hervè is going to check today and get back to me as to what happened.

Robs Place

2006-10-02T00:01:00.000+02:00

Robs chalet, situated just up the hill from mine is looking great. They have had a guy named Matt in (that's his van) and he and another friend have varnished all the bits that hadn't been varnished before and they have painted the concrete. The place looks really nice.

Rob found this "paint" called Crepy and we were hoping that it would solve numerous problems concerning the quality of finish of the concrete both inside and out. After seeing the outside painted in this stuff, I was very disappointed. It is actually just sand textured paint. I thought it was more like artex and would be a lot thicker. It would have smoothed out more imperfections and achieved a better finish. Never mind, I will have to find out what they use here in Switzerland as I want the same finish I have here in my apartment inside my chalet.

Who is paying for all this and other questions?

2006-10-01T23:38:00.000+02:00

Well, my son and I went to Morzine yesterday and met with Julian, who is a very nice man. We arranged the buildings insurance and I gave him the two invoices from Hervè and he said they would be paid early this week! Fantastic I have the money sorted.

I was also supposed to meet Hervè and have a look around my building site. Well Hervè told me he was busy Saturday morning but would be free all afternoon. His office was closed all afternoon, He used to live next door and apparently doesn't any more and they had no idea where he was , and the hotel that his family own was all closed up too. So the man who is organising the building of my chalet and the man I have just sent a large sum of money has basically disappeared! No it cant be that bad. I will speak to him on Monday cos I have a few questions.

Like where the hell are the electric cable ducts ?

This is the cave or storage room in the garage, now all the services for the house come in here and are distributed from here, telephone (grey ducts at the back), water (Black pipe on the left), sewage (small orange stub sticking out of the floor at the back on the left) and electricity. The electricity comes in via the big darker orange pipe/duct at the back next to the telecom ducts. That's fine, but in order to distribute the electricity a large number of smaller ducts are usually embedded into the concrete and weave there way through out the whole house allowing the wires to be passed through them and go from the distribution box (in the cave) to the appliance that needs the power. All these smaller ducts appear to be missing.

There are 2 holes in the front side of the building that are a bit strange. I want to know what they are for. There is one wrapped in blue plastic just below the window on the left and the other is a square hole near the timber in the middle of the picture. The first pipe connects to the sewage drainage for the back bathroom and the kitchen and directs all that out side. My problem is that it is basically at ground level. On the right you can see the windows in the garage, so how deep underground is the main sewage line for my chalet going to be ? A whole 100mm maybe 200. Strange and its stuff like this I needed to ask Hervè about but that is a bit difficult when I cant find him!

Some other interesting stuff that really inspires confidence in these guys is the fact that they appear to have forgotten a doorway and then had to cut it out of the wall slab. Not the greatest photo but you can see where they have cut the door out . The other side of the hole is the same. So what happened there then?

First Pictures

2006-09-27T12:07:00.000+02:00

Apparently this was taken today. You can see the double garage and the bedrooms behind that. Hervè has also sent me my first official invoice for the construction and an outrageouse quote for the electrics. I think I will be doing them myself.

Ohmri (my 7 year old son) and I are going to Morzine this weekend to see for myself. We are meeting the bank manager. Apparently when the Notaire said he wanted assuarance he didnt want my life assuarance he wanted building assuarance ! So I have to get this and send details to the Notaire quick so that I can pay Hervé!

I think we have movement

2006-09-21T12:55:00.000+02:00

My spy on site tells me that some concrete has at last been poured. No photos yet but they have been promised.
Matt, a friend of Robs is staying in Robs Chalet and fixing it up. He has reported to Rob that some floor slab and walls have been poured.

In other news, about a week ago, the Notaire sent me my receipt for 11900 euros and a request for my assurance details. So off those go to the notaire in the hope that this might be the last thing they need.

Meeting the notaire, paying the notaire

2006-08-30T20:03:00.000+02:00

My discussions with the Notaire resulted in the need to change the way we own the land before we can sign the mortgage agreement before we can have any money. Now in order to change the way we own the land all the owners have to sign the document. Before our holidays I arranged a meeting for all of us.
We have just returned from our holidays eager to discover what is going on as Hervè has promised an imminent start to the construction. Well as I said we now have a hole in the ground.

We arranged this visit to Morzine to coincide with Rob and Sharon being there. It is really hard to get all four of us in the same place at the same time but we all needed to sign the Notaire's documents in order to change the way we own the land.

In order to split the land between us we have to pay a fee. This fee is 7000 Euro's ! Each! Now I wanted to get an invoice from the Notaire and get the bank to pay this money after all I cant start building until the land is split, but no the notaire had other ideas. He wanted the money before he submit the documents so straight there he phoned the bank and spoke to Julian (a very nice chap, at the moment, who arranged my mortgage) Julian explained that no way could this fee be paid for out of the mortgage. Oopss.

Upshot is the Notaire allowed us all to sign the documents (thank god as getting us all together again would be a real nightmare and probably not possible for at least a couple of months) he is waiting for all his fees before he signs and submits the documents.

As well as the land split there was the actual mortgage agreement and that is going to cost us another 3900 Euros. Again I thought his could be invoiced and come out of the mortgage, OK that is perhaps a bit naive thinking that the mortgage would pay for its self (if you know what I mean) but now I have to come up with 11900 Euros!

Well, we moved all sorts of money about and sent the Notaire his 11900 yesterday so we should have our hands on the mortgage euros quite soon !

What with going on holiday and not getting paid whilst I am not working (contractor) and the moving money about we had to do to pay the Notaire we will be seriously skint this/next month.

...a hole in the ground. Luxury!

2006-08-29T22:44:00.000+02:00

Well they have finally started. After 6 years we have a hole in the ground !

On your marks, get set.....

2006-06-12T23:28:00.000+02:00

Well this is a busy site!
One post in January and the next is in June!

Well the good news is that finally My architects might be about to organize someone to start work on actually building my chalet. Next week !

I will believe it when I see it.

The money is very nearly sorted out. After over 6 months of wrangling I have finally sent the final (I hope) forms back to the bank and now have to sign a guarantee. The next problem is the guarantee. The notaire has written to us and is actually being proactive which is frankly amazing, he is asking if, because we jointly own the land do we wish to start proceedings to split the land. Well this is the day before I was going to phone him so now I can tell him yes.

We shall see how all that goes.

I have a meeting with Hervè (the architect) on Wednesday to discuss things and so that he can finally show me the construction drawings.

Keep you informed.

Money

2006-01-16T17:34:00.000+01:00

The time has come to finally sort out the money side of things. We are getting a mortgage from Credit Agricole, a local branch there is sorting out the details. I have to find lots of documents and send them to the bank. One intresting thing was that they might be able to do us a loan in Swiss Francs with a lower intrest rate than Euros. Not sure how the repayments work out but if it comes off it should save us a bundle.

2006-01-16T17:08:00.000+01:00

This is Robs chalet sometime in July 2004

First Post !!

2006-01-16T17:01:00.000+01:00

This is the first post to this new blog. I have thought about this for a long time but never actually got round to doing something about it.

At some stage I will try to expalin the long story of how I got to where we are now. In the mean time I will say that a friend of mine, Rob, his wife, my wife and I all bought a piece of land in the French Ski resort of Morzine in the year 2000. It was our intention to build 2 chalets on this land, one each. Rob has at this time built his and is busy, when time permits fitting out the inside. My chalet should be built this year.