This Easter we visted the house with the intention of not doing very much in the way of work. The weather was fantastic and the roof started calling to us. We already had more than a pallet of slates available (around two and a half thousand) so up onto the roof we went.
I can't remember why now but we decided that it was time to bite the bullet and replace the kitchen floor - or at least put a new one over the top of the old. The old floor was a poor form of concrete that had been laid decades ago and it allowed damp to pass through it causing the house to become damp in periods of absence.
Also there was a slope on it of with a difference in height of 21cm from one side of the room to the other in one direction and a difference of 5cm in the other direction.
We used hardcore to level the room - I think the French name is 'tout venon' (they say it quite quickly). In the far corner you can see there is no hardcore at all as this was the highest part of the room.
Hardcore - 21cm deep at the far side - time to cut the bottom off the door before the last hardcore goes in.
After the hardcore, a layer of sand is put down so that the hardcore doesn't puncture the plastic membrane that is to be laid.
It was suggested to us by a friend - Eric Brehin, that we should put down a layer of insulation - something we had not considered. So I purchased this polystyrene insulation that interlocks side to side and end to end. It cost as much - if not more than the concrete.
Steel for reinforcement - this is cheap - around £2 per sheet of 2m x 1m.
I paid the company - Lafage - to deliver and pour 2 cubic meters (room area x depth of concrete - 30m square x 7cm [0.07m]) of concrete into the kitchen.
When the truck arrived on the day, it was an hour late and it was very close to lunchtime. The French shut down for 1.5 to 2 hours at lunch. I showed the driver where I needed him to pour the concrete as agreed with his office and he shook his head.
The truck that he had would only chute the concrete for 2 metres. Our kitchen door was 4 metres from the truck. We had 2 options - send him away with the kitchen half done and not know when we could get a second delivery - or my mum's suggestion, barrow it in from the truck!
One and a half hours later with an angry truck driver missing his lunch, the concrete was in the room. All we had to do then was level it!
We were so pleased to have a new floor that our enthusiasm moved to the walls. I chose to use a wooden framework here as later I will need to fasten kitchen cabinets to it, note the wood at a height just above my head.
I also took the opportunity to install electrical sockets and a TV outlet. You can see where there has been a door in the wall on the right - probably a century or more ago.
This will be re-opened when there is a reasonable dining room on the other side instead of a barn.
You can see the electrical outlets here before I wired them into the circuit.
This was taken when all the plasterboarding was complete. You can see on the left, the door frame in place for the opening of the doorway at a later stage. I installed a lintel for the new doorway in the stone wall before I plasterboarded over it.
The electrical outlets now connected, providing lots of power around the room. For the last five years we have used just 2 sockets hanging on cables for around 8 or 9 electrical items.
The roof carrying a few hundred extra slates. The remainder of the hardcore spread out to level the ground a little. The plan is to build a wall and a parking area here in the long term.
