It does seem like they are going very slowly now...

I can show lots of progress; but since a week ago - nothing. They've disappeared.
Any road up, keeping to the positive, here you can see the inside insulation installed. Each panel is held to the wall by a couple of star shaped thingies. Then they are all sealed with tape. You can see all this better if you enlarge the picture by double-clicking.
The brick tiles then form the inner wall before they are plastered.
The picture here is taken from our bedroom looking towards the dressing-room, as a walk-in wardrobe is now called, apparently. The ledge in the ceiling is the extent of the old house and will be where the dressing room wall will go.

The other garage door.

That's the other door, not the other garage. The garage is 15m long, long enough for 3 small cars. It will contain the trailer, lawn mower etc. as well as our cars. The entrance from the road is very steep and very dodgy coming out virtually blind. We have therefore decided to knock through at the back so that we have a front and back garage door. They are knocking through today and then putting a lintel during next week so that it has good time to go off prior to the door being put in.  The wall is stone and I didn't get the impression that he was enjoying it.

Upstairs ceilings done

The plasterer has done all the upstairs ceilings and starts on the apartment tomorrow. Once that is finished he will start on the partition walls and the doubling of the external walls with loads of insulation. When he's done all that we will be on our way to being a seriously well insulated house.

Ceilings are good!

As you can see the ceilings are going in. I still find it a bit odd that they go in before the partition walls, and the partition walls go in before the underfloor heating, but, hey, who am I to question these things.
Had a meeting this with the architect and the inside doors and cupboards man. I asked the architect if end of February was still on. He said he thought it was "un peu juste". This means "No".

The false ceiling is now in and the insulation too. The ceiling, which is the floor of the loft, is concrete block and beam. This would absorb a large amount of heat to no purpose. So our house is gradually becoming cocooned.

The first fix wiring for the ceiling lights is now in as well so the plasterer can come back and plasterboard the ceiling. He then will start on doubling the exterior walls with insulation there as well.

I know it's been a long time

It's been about three weeks since I last posted stuff to the blog. That's because the progress has been difficult to describe.
The false ceilings have all now been put in with the insulation. The next thing is the electrician. We have to identify where we want the lights, the switches, which ones are two way, which ones will be on dimmers etc., etc.
That's hard enough but he also wants to know where the plugs are to go. All a bit intimidating.
We have almost decided on floor tiles. We have found a Spanish company that has a depot in Carcassonne. They are about half the price of their French equivalents and as we want about 270 m2 cost is a critical factor. We have ordered a box of each tile so that we can look at them in position before we make our final order.

Progress will begin again soon!

The windows went in, but not all the blinds. The doors went in, but not the garage doors. The front door went in but they broke the glass panel. Then they went.
Today met the electrician and the internal builder plasterer.
The latter starts next week and he has a mammoth job. Ceilings throughout; doubling of the walls with insulation throughout; all the internal walls and then plastering the lot. This has to be dovetailed with the electrician so he can run all his conduit in, through, up, down and round.
All beyond my ken.
Oh, and the architect brought round a raft of bills. Eek.

The windows are in.

Getting round the hiccups that they had created, they have put in all the windows now. The ones in the new part have been no problem but the sub-lintels containing the roller blinds were not the correct type so they have had to order others.

I thought it might be the time to have bit of a look inside, so here are some pictures of the main areas. The first one is the living room. I've had to use a panorama shot to get it all in. You can see that the windows are all waiting for their roller blinds.

The next one is of the kitchen and dining room. This across the hall from the lounge and I will be continuing round the house in an anti-clockwise direction. The french doors lead out onto the barbecue balcony.

There will be an internal door from the kitchen into my lair which is shown below. The door on the right leads out onto the bedroom balcony.

The next picture is of our bedroom. It looks enormous, but this end on the left will be a walk-in wardrobe area (or dressing room as they are apparently called now). It is the far end that will be our bedroom. Obviously the french windows open out onto the bedroom balcony. This goes around both external walls of the bedroom.

Finally, across the corridor from our bedroom is Brennie's lair into which we have added a north(ish) facing window (the left-hand one) because apparently photographers need that.

Now it's the windows

They were there at five to eight to start on the windows. They of course stopped for lunch (this is France after all) but were there through until 5.30. They managed to most of the upstairs windows and also the door from my lair out onto the bedroom balcony. If you zoom in (double click on the photo) you can see how much insulation is going to put inside the walls by looking at the surround to the door. The lintels above the windows are hollow to take the roller blinds. These will also add to insulation. For those of you wondering about insulation, here we have to take note of summer temperatures in the high thirties. We need to stop the heat getting in as well as stopping the coolth in winter.

Brennie went out onto the balcony to take a picture of me inside my lair door. Apparently one gets quite a lot of reflection from double glazing!

Actually, she took the picture deliberately but I'm hoping you don't get this far down the blog.

The roofing is getting on well

You do not often get a shot from the other side, but you need to see how the slating is getting on. Also, and more importantly, you should take a good look at the crane. It's coming down!
Yes, the crane is no longer going to be a feature of rue de la résidence. The heavy work is now over. Actually the couvreur and zinguier, that is he who does the slating and the zinc work uses his own JCB type thing as you can see. His man is collecting another load of Spanish slates to put on. They use elongated S-shaped clips  so there are no nails except for the bottom sides and top. Fascinating to watch.

The solar panels are in place.

The panels arrived today and have been put in place. Also met the man who provides the grants for all this sort of stuff. The greater the insulation, the greater the grant. Seems like the right way round to me.

Tomorrow they crack on with the slating and we have to make a trip to the bank. Money is required. It was going to happen sooner or later.

They've done some more roof

After failng to appear yesterday, they turned up again this afternoon, finished off the one side and started on the second. At this point they stopped because the solar panels are going on. This happens, I think, on Thursday. Quite whether they will crack on with other sides I am not sure.

We are using slates from Spain with a curved lower edge. This is the style of rooves round here albeit they are made of blue schist like the photo below. Rooves like this have to have a steeper pitch than ours but new ones are almost impossible to get hold of anyway

The roofing goes on apace.

The membrane has been put onto most of the roof now and the outside guttering is well under way. We are getting a real sense of what the outside of the building will look like. It is interesting too to see how the scaffold supports are done at the top of the walls. Not something I have ever seen in the UK.

They will finish off the covering tomorrow and start on the gulleys etc.

The solar panels are integral with the roof on the right as you look at it, so they will need to be attached so they can be slated around.

This has been activity day!

We had a meeting with the architect and the roofing man today. A little bit disappointed because the light-wells that we had looked are not going to be practical. The overall cost (bearing in mind that the floor of the loft in the old house is reinforced concrete!) was going to be ridiculous. We could have a low energy bulb on all the time for twenty years for the same price.
That said, the roof carpentry has gone on apace. The picture below is a panorama from two shots so the apparent curvature in some of the beams is an illusion.

Mostly done in Douglas fir, the biggest beams are so called manufactured. This factory gluing together of planks so that long beams can be made. You can also see that  tiles have been stripped off the old roof.
This is perhaps the most surprising feature, two trades working on site with one another. The couvreur, he who puts the slates on, has taken the tiles off three sides. The far side he has already put the membrane on. He has also scaffolded round the whole building at gutter height ready to start slating next week.

It really is beginning to come together. The picture below doesn't show very much but does show that I climbed up much, much higher than my scaredy-cat brain told me I should.

September has arrived!

The carpenter/joiner doing the roof came last week to check on some measurements and then they arrived in earnest this morning. I went over about three o'clock to see how they are getting on. Wow! Scaffolding had gone up, the first of the framing was there, five of them all beavering away.

Thierry, the boss was just getting the timber ready to make an A-frame. If you look closely (click on the picture to enlarge) you can see the enormous tenon joints.

These couple of  photos are from a sequence of the A-frame being assembled. Please forgive the Iphone cover (or my thumb) over some of the pictures, I was trying not to be too obvious. The whole thing was put together in about half an hour. It was all put together with enormous steel bolts and then joints were secured with dowels.

 

Then the crane comes into use. It was made off the property, in effect on the road.
 Then lifted up over the trees..

Over the extension, where it hung for a a few minutes whilst Thierry went inside to supervise the installation

Maneuvering it into position through thee other stuff was tricky to put it mildly.

 Done inch at a time...

Until finally Thierry climbed up to bang the dowels into position. For those with concerns about Health and Safety and people who have to carry out risk assessment have a close look.








Then, when we went back at six o'clock...

Large portion of tarte aux humbles

Yes it's August, and yes they're working. When we arrived back from the UK they were all there, working.
After all I had said about August. In the centre of the picture below is the new kitchen window with the entry porch to the left. Going round to the other side (see lower photo)

You can see the downstairs balcony clearly now with thedoor that will lead out onto it. All the acros are out from the apartment downstairs so we can see what that is going to look like

They're back!

After the mother and father of all thunderstorms last night, this morning it tipped down, but they're back.
They've started on the the exterior wall of the kitchen and they've made the second window in Bren's lair.
The roof has been taken back so that they can remove the brickwork above the kitchen and bedroom in order to put in reinforced concrete beams. The ghostly figure of Bren is standing in our bedroom; all the white bit above her will go as will the one on the left going into the kitchen to be replaced by the beams.

All quiet on the western front...

No-one there Thursday, no-one there Friday, no-one there today. August has come early.

Some building but more demolition too...

They have now knocked through from the original house into what will be our bedroom. Bren is standing on the balcony outside what will be the sliding doors that will lead from the bedroom. That bit of balcony will be covered by the new roof that will come out as far as the concrete pillar that can be seen on the second photo, below.

The view from outside shows the pillar just left of centre, the gap behind being the one that Bren is standing in, in the picture above. (Some of you may wish to rearrange the previous sentence into a representation of good English.)
The roof will be the same pitch as the original and both the new and the old will all be done in slate, so the join will be less obvious.

The roof-plates go on

The crane lifts another shot of concrete into position for the roof-plates

It's all getting a bit scary...

The whole thing is causing a few collywobbles. All the upstairs windows are now out. This means the new sills can be formed once the interior insulation has been done. It has been a bit cooler so they have been able to do some more blockwork.

They have also done more demolition. The roof is now held up by jacks. This can particularly be seen in what was the kitchen corner of the house where the corner no longer exists, as you can see below. The kitchen will extend out to the little concrete foundations yopu can see on the right-hand side.

More demolition and more discussion...

It has been too hot to do any blockwork, up to 40 degrees in the shade. The blocks are actually too hot to hold!  So they have got on with knocking through into the house. We were astounded that they could wield sledgehammers when we were sheltering in the shade. The hole they are making joins the dining are to the kitchen. The big piece of shuttering is the pillar that will hold the corner of the new roof. On the right is the circular cardboard shuttering for another circular pillar. This will support the other corner of the roof.

We were there for the site meeting. The windows people, the roofer and the "zinguier" who does all the zinc hips and channels joined us and the architects to look at how progress should be made from now on. As suspected, with August shutdown looming the roofer will not start till September.

 The nearest on the left is the zinguier. On the near right is the roofer. The four behind are the architect, one of the window people, the builder and the other from the window company. The demolished wall behind the roofer is from the kitchen into the dining area. The same hole as in the top picture, from the other side.

OK, so I've been away for a bit...

Actually we have been in Northern Spain, near Bilbao celebrating Maureen's X0th birthday. (X is thefirst number you can divide by 1, 2, and 3).
Whilst we were away they got on  a bit.

It's all getting a bit difficult to explain now but the window on the first floor above the window on the ground floor will be the window to my den, with a glass door out onto the bedroom balcony. The next one is actually taken from the bedroom balcony looking through the bedroom window.

The far end will be the window into the dining area and the gap on the left just past the scaffolding will be the the french doors from the kitchen/dining room onto the barbecue balcony.
We have a site meeting Tuesday to see what can be done before the end of July. Why then? 'Cos France closes for August. Hey-ho.

They don't hang about!

Today they started on the walls of the first floor, and got on very well. We were originally going to build in terracotta blocks but the price was too high. The objective is to have a house with the minimum energy consumption so any green objectives in the build had to be balanced against our age. Currently, for instance, the cost of photovoltaic cells are unlikely to ever be recouped by someone of our age, but solar heating is.  Anyway, the picture below shows where our bedroom extension will be along with the french doors onto the balcony.
 As you can see it is a glorious day, although the thought of doing block work when it is over 32 degrees in the shade (and there's no shade there) doesn't appeal.
The second picture is from downstairs. The kitchen is being extended towards the road as well as into the extension. For the former part to be done they need to put a reinforcing beam under what will be the new wall. The cutting out for that was done today too.

A lot of tidying up.

They've done a lot of clearing today. The windows that were on the ground floor of the house have been filled in. Bren and I went over to go on the new first floor. The picture shows her standing in what will be the dining area of the kitchen/dining room. The weather is all a bit grey. That's how it is today, really steamy. A good thunderstorm would clear it well. See you Monday.

I've just realised it's only 2 months...

...since they really started. It barely seems possible that all this has been done in eight weeks. There is a bit of a lull at the moment whilst the first floor screed thoroughly dries. Not as big a lull as there will be in August when all work will stop for the summer holiday.  The problem is what stage we will be at by then. Tradesmen will not want to start something that doesn't have a natural break. For instance, the roofing people won't want to be half-way through come the big shut-down. Hey-ho.

The next stage..

Or, as they would say in France, the first stage. "La première étage" is the first floor. The ground floor is the rez de chaussée - roadway level, if you like.
Not a fascinating photo today, more a record of events. The screed for the first floor was laid. The balcony outside what will be the kitchen/dining room is lower because it is over the bathroom downstairs and needs an insulation layer. As Bren took the photo it was in RAW format. The conversion program I have is legit but not registered, it therefore leaves a watermark. I'll get Bren to convert in future.