Köttbullar

I have been witnessed saying that I will never go back to Ikea - in fact all of the Ikea furniture that had survived since our 'young couple' days was either burnt or given away when the old house was demolished.
But humble pie tastes good and italian designer kitchens are for boom times. When the budget's stretched and you have the intention to DIY, Ikea does present the ideal solution of a system that takes everything into consideration at a reasonable price (no I'm not sponsored...yet).

So off we went, bravely.

It's not up there with moving house, or getting married/divorced or renewing your expired carte de séjour or any of those other traumatic life experiences, but it's not far off. A Sunday buying your flat packed kitchen from Ikea is up there in the top 20.
When we arrived, smugly clutching our Ikea Home Planner printout, with 20 minutes to spare before opening time, we were quickly taken down a notch by the sight of a good two dozen brave souls already installed in an orderly queue before the entrance. These people must be the experts. They had that hardened look of those that have seen frontline action before. They had what it takes. They hadn't gone for that extra 5 minutes in bed after the alarm went off, or that second cup of coffee. When the doors finally opened our worst fears were confirmed. We followed blindly behind, realising that we were in fact like new born lambs to the whole thing. These people before us, bunched up in a fast moving scrum and rapidly disappearing behind a distant line of Billies, had already discovered the Swedish furniture shop equivalent of the Northwest Passage. Borrowing routes previously only known to the yellow and blue clad indigens they led us on a trail behind 'babychange facility', across '25m² studio for cash strapped student', through 'finance waiting' directly to Faktum Land and a numbered ticket. All this without the use of any visible hand held navigation system. (GPS doesn't get a signal in Ikea).
From the front door stampede at 10am to the obligatory post trauma cup of tea it was 7 hours of hell without the help of a phrase book or even a break for a reindeer burger.
The overall experience was akin to having been the unwitting victim of a Walace and Gromit style assembly line without the advantage of a conveyor belt.
Eventually we were spat out onto a 1 in 8 loading bay ramp with 250Kilos of flat pack on a runaway trolley in search of our hire van.

The Client drove, and I was Mr Shifter.

Don't forget to tighten the screws.

ticking over

Not getting the respect you deserve at home? take some advice:

Man Tools

Remember it'll soon be Xmas.

Wave goodbye

This is the last photo taken before the larger than expected wave took me by surprise and permanently compromised the circuitry of my camera.

This, amongst other things, in part explains the recent lack of posting.

Interior joinery is now underway. The Skater has a partition and door to his room. A real kitchen has been promised for Xmas. The actual kitchen is made up of IKEA 'faktum' base units with no doors, which prompted the following heartfelt sarcastic comment from one architect’s SO (significant other) that visited recently: ‘oh, you’ve got an architect designed kitchen!.

The first furniture has been ordered by The Client. She has white card (carte blanche - ours avec moi) on choice and colour – the trade off for giving The Architect a free hand on the house itself. A lot of self doubt has been expressed since the order went in but I’m sure it’ll be just fine. We have 8 weeks to wait.

hot off the press

The scaffolding team arrive at seven. They are five. I am one. It is twenty going on thirty....


The scaffolding is attached to the house with an anchor every 20 square metres. As the façade progressed I worked around the anchors leaving holes in first the insulation and then the timber cladding. These holes now need to be filled as the scaffolding is taken down. So I fill in the missing bits as the scaffolding comes down around around my ears. My terra firma for the last 4 months starts swaying like an enormous jelly. I'm so used to my giant solid steel shelving system that the first time it sways I swear blind I'm pushing the house over with the screw I'm driving home.

By three all is finished.....

Everyone, with the exception of the cat, is pleased to see the scaffolding go.

It's just like unwrapping a big birthday present. The Skater says its 'futurist'. I think he really meant to say 'modern' and is not referring to the triumph of speed and technology over nature in early twentieth century Italy. But one never can tell with The Skater.

The Client will be pleased.

Stay tuned. This is not the end.

Roll of drums

Scaffolding coming down soon - just put in the request. One more weekend of up and down the ladders like an early version of Donkey Kong and it's all over. Well, at least the façade.
Unfortunately no respite in sight for The Architect as The Skater has put in an urgent request for a wall and door for his bedroom.
Really, the cheek, when I was a lad we had to make do with...........

Beige?

Saturday morning at 7 am work starts on rendering the end wall (or 'pignon' in French). The end wall is in 20cm clay insulating bricks with an internal insulation, so it needs a render finish to make it weather tight and finish it off.

The render is projected onto the wall under pressure with a flexible hose from the compresser parked in the street. The compresser makes an infernal noise so communication is impossible without shouting very loudly, which the team of 4 builders manages very well. My command of portugese being limited to approximate interpretations of menus, I presume they are only shouting important instructions about the pressure regulation or the mix of sand and cement in order to spare the neighbours as much as possible an unpleasant awakening. I suspect, however that they are more likely discussing a football match or the events of the previous evening.
By the beginning of the afternoon the work is finished and a calm, broken only by the sound of distant DIY, returns to the neighbourhood.

The English Neighbour admires the work and asks when it's going to be painted beige like all the other houses in the quarter. I presume she's just teasing me and smile back....or maybe she really thinks I'd paint something beige?

The timber cladding is finished. All that remains are the fibre cement panels.

Photos to follow when the tropical rain forest effect weather ceases.

Progress slow

Progress on the cladding is slow. Rear façade 50%. Front façade 80%.
The render to the end wall is programmed for the end of the week. Passers by stop and watch. Cars slow down. Lots of questions. Neighbours chart the progress and comment on my form for the day. The Client likes it - but can't wait till it turns grey. The Skater hasn't noticed anything different - maybe I should post it for him on facebook?

Dernière lignes droites

Back to black. The chevrons are hidden by a building paper.


A test panel to verify the spacing.


And off we go on the rear façade. The Portuguese Neighbour was there to lend a hand. The English Neighbour took a break from planting her busy lizzies (?) to witness the first batten. The Client handed large pint glasses of cool water through the open window.


The street façade is next. Maybe we should swing a bottle of champagne against the side and invite the queen.

Chevronné

The façade is now practically ready to receive the larch finish. Last little detail is to cover the vertical timber firrings with UV resistant building paper in order to make them invisible behind the hit and miss cladding battens.
The lousy weather, worthy of a British summer, looks like clearing up for the long 'ascension' weekend. Just what's needed.

MacGyver

The drums of bituminous glue are too large for me. Once the powdered hardening agent is added to the black liquid it goes off in an hour and a half – (theoretically). Which means it’s a race against time to slap the stuff up before I get left with a drum full of extremely thick unspreadable gunge.
The technical rep had warned me about the problem and suggested that I only tackle a half a drum at a time. However, the practicalities of decanting and measuring out something that looks and smells for all the world like sewage that’s been in a blender does not appeal.
On any normal building site there would be the builder and the builder’s mate (friendly lot, builders). On the Maison Camy site there is The Architect all on his tod. In the theoretical 90 minutes of spreading window allowed there’s no way I’m going to use that much glue. So, Inspired by French cult figure MacGyver* and having read the small print on the product warnings I hastily put together a device to solve the problem.

The drum of glue sits in a tray made from an old container (recycled from famous ‘F bracket’ box) and polythene (recycled from the insulation wrapping) filled with water, the drum is then covered in cardboard (also recycled) bound tightly to the drum with string. The bottom of the cardboard sits in the water. By capillary action, and a little help, the cardboard becomes wet.
An old fan heater (recycled from The Client’s attempt to stay warm in a house without insulation) on blow without heat setting is then placed in front. The air current aids the evaporation of the water from the soaked cardboard. In order to evaporate, the water requires a significant amount of thermal energy – called the latent heat of evaporation – which it takes from the immediate environment, i.e. the drum of glue. The net result is a lowering of the drum’s temperature.
Now that the drum is at 10 degrees below ambient temperature the chemical reaction will be slowed down. The hardener is added and away we go – a full three hours of sticking fun.
Am I boring you? I know this would certainly bore The Client.

Anyway, work has now progressed so rapidly on the insulation that we are now ready to start the timber cladding.

*The MacGyver series was so popular in France that the term Macgyver has become part of the language – meaning the improvisation of pseudo scientific solutions to life threatening situations using everyday household objects.
Beats the hell out of me why the series was so popular in France. It could have been the Canadian connection.
Also makes you wonder what life must be like in France if the average French person gets to use the word regularly in conversation.

Hell is full of tar

Feeling like a walking oilslick. The only thing that'll get it off is butter. Normandy butter with 'gros sel' - gives it that slight abrasive quality that does the trick. The idea is that there's more of it on the façade than on me but being a novice at tar slinging it's just not happening the way it should.


It's the dirtiest job I've had since changing The Skater's nappies


And as predicted the first panels of insulation go on the façade the day the heating goes off for the summer.


The Client will be as warm as toast next winter.

Dentistry

The Skater, on a break from serious revising, came to inspect the works. Even boring architect stuff is interesting when the only alternative is memorising algebraic formula and key dates from World War II.

He wanted to know what the smell was that reminded him of the dentists. We narrowed it down to the resin used to anchor the bolts into the hollow brickwork of the façade. Apparently it must be the same product that gets used for anchoring braces to The Skaters teeth. Puts a whole new perspective on what I'm up to. Drilling, pumping the resin in and bolting on steel brackets. Just like the dentist. Only things missing are the Vivaldi sound track, back issues of Tatler and the assistant in a white coat.
If I was being paid at the same rate per m2 as The Skaters dentist I could quite happily retire on the weekends proceeds.


The street façade is set out and bracketed. Next weekend the garden façade.

Setting out

In the time honoured tradition of all great French architectural masterpieces, very soon after having been delivered to the end user, the Maison Camy is now completely covered in scaffolding. The only exception to the tradition being the Centre Georges Pompidou where, despite very little scaffolding having been used during the construction, your average Parisian, Josèphe Souffle, is convinced that the building is made of scaffolding that has never been taken down.


The scaffolding is attracting attention from passers by (in a Tom Waits 'what's he building in there?' style). A tentative start has been made setting out the positions of the stainless steel brackets that will hold the timber cladding. The cat cottoned on rapidly to the advantage of scaffolding and now surprises The Client regularly with his plaintive cries to be let in at first and second floor levels of the house, hitherto completely inaccessible. The scaffolding, in feline reasoning, represents a serious increase in square metres of defendable territory and will no doubt become the source of elevated night time battles.


The Architect is testing out an entirely revolutionary building technique as yet untried by small building contractors in France. It involves unfolding a plan and looking at it before you build. Readers will be kept informed on the relative merits of the technique as opposed to the more traditional methods.

I will no doubt be punished for my arrogance, in reality I'm quite apprehensive of the whole thing, especially the timescale of what's to be done.

Floored

The Architect is taking a well deserved break from the works this week end to admire the long winter shadows across the newly laid parquet. The habitable surface area has been doubled and the dust relegated to the ground floor. The countdown has started for the facade.


Blogging will be resumed in march.

'To all my friends' Happy New Year (100th blog post)

The Architect has not lived up to his promises yet again. The Client had to suffer the cold spell that heralded in the new year with a pile of snow covered insulation gracing the back garden.
Façade activities have been postponed until the beginning of March when the scaffolding arrives.


Still, things are looking up on the inside. This week the parquet gets laid. This will double our surface area and (very nearly) end our cohabitation with concrete dust.



The task has very wisely been entrusted to the capable hands of a professional - no not the man in Armani back from his wedding, but a more sensibly priced joiner from the provinces.
The Joiner and his team are very efficient. They have exceedingly cool tools that make The Architect a wee bit envious.


At the end of the week the floor and the two staircases will be finished leaving The Architect and The Client to finish the decorating at the weekend.