Roller blind fun

Last time I was over at the Gite I replaced the pull cord mechanism on the roller blind for the French windows that lead to the patio.

We have roller blinds on all the windows of our Gite and they're not little lightweight blinds, they're almost more of a security shutter, they're heavy plastic with lead weights in the bottom so if you let them drop quickly they come down with a bang.

Since the pull cord was fraying I replaced the whole mechanism with a new one which is easier said than done, not least because getting the cover off the blind mechanism at the top is really difficult as it all clips solidly together, and then you have to deal with the considerable weight of the entire roller blind as you thread the new pull cord into position.

Anyway that one was done last time and I bought a couple of spare new mechanisms (good old eBay) and brought them over with me this time.

Good job I did because the roller blind pull part of the blind next to the toy box had also failed and needed to be replaced as well. And so the fun began, took me perhaps an hour to prise the box containing the roller mechanism apart with several screwdrivers, flat bladed knives and a considerable amount of banging with a hammer.

Finally got the box opened so I could wedge the roller blind into position, unwind the old pull cord and replace it with a new one.

Here's a photo of it work in progress, the new mechanism in place and the old frayed pull cord shown in the bottom right. Wouldn't have wanted that to snap.

All finished now, box clipped back together and new pull cord works fine. Until the next one wears out of course...

First sight of the newly decorated Gite

Back in May I wrote about the green flocked wallpaper in our Gite being removed and the lounge, stairs and upstairs hallways all being redecorated. 

The work was all finished that month, but despite having had perhaps 10 sets of guests staying since then, we hadn't seen the results ourselves. 

So when I arrived at the Gite I was excited to see the results of the decorators labours, and not disappointed, it all look really great and a big improvement.  Very clean and fresh. 

Goodbye green flocked wallpaper

Time to say goodbye to the green flocked wallpaper in our Gite.

Decorating tastes of course vary around the world (witness the enthusiasm for Scandinavian minimalistic for example), but to my knowledge there hasn't ever been a fashion craze for French decorating. 

When we were house hunting to buy our Gite in September 2003 we saw a number of "interesting" wallpaper styles in the properties we viewed, and fortunately the Gite we eventually did buy was relatively "normal".

Except for the little girl's bedroom in pink and purple that is, but several costs of paint and it's all neutral cream now. 

The lounge, stairway and upstairs hallway were all wallpapered in what I can only describe as a flocked like material.  The paper must have been expensive at the time and in a green colour was liveable with. 

Over the 14 years we've had the Gite there have of course been minor accidents, a few places where a drink has been spilled, and being a fabric you can't easily wash it off the wall.  Also I think the flock is slowly starting to come off, it's not visible, but we do get dust in the lounge quite a lot and we think its from the wallpaper.  

And so now it's time to say goodbye to the green flocked wallpaper.  Tomorrow Simon the decorator starts and all the wallpaper will be stripped off and the walls painted a neutral colour.  

So for old times sake, here's a couple of photos of the lounge as it currently looks before the green all goes. 

Stepping up without sliding down

I had to look it up, but it was back in August 2010 that we had a new set of railway sleeper steps built from the pool up to the garden and climbing frame.

For some reason I never took any photos of the construction of the steps, so at the bottom of this posting I’ll correct that and share what I do have.

But the topic in hand was improving those steps.  The steps were made of used railway sleepers so they were as tough as anything and certainly not going to rot anytime soon.

However what I had noticed was that they could collect grease, wet leaves and moss and become slippery, particularly in the winter or autumn times.

To fix the problem I bought a load of non-slip treads that could be simply screwed down onto the oak steps, and job done.

Unfortunately not quite job done as I didn’t buy enough of the non-slip treads for two on each of the steps,  so had to buy some more from the UK and fit them next time I went to the Gite. So here’s the final non-slip treads being screwed down.  

And here are some photos from August 2010 of the steps being built. Originally there were wooden steps set into the slope but they were badly decomposing and were sliding down the hill so we decided to have them rebuilt properly from scratch.

Alan proved to be better than Geoffrey and Liz at using the digger, and it was a good job we had a digger as all of the stones that now line the up the side steps were dug out of the small area of ground when the steps were built !

Photo taken in August 2009 from the roof with the old steps in the background behind Alan's van:

And from April 2010, a few of the completed steps (the bushes at the side are a lot smaller):

Tiling the downstairs bathroom (part two)

Following on from fitting the new shower cubicle, the next job in the downstairs bathroom was to tile the other walls to match those of the shower cubicle. Here’s how it looked at the start, on the opposite wall is the toilet, vanity unit and washing machine, with tiling part way up the wall beside the toilet and behind the basin.

 

First job was to cut the silicon sealant off from around the sink, disconnect the taps, and carefully remove the sink.  If I had of dropped it then I’d be in the do-do for sure:

In France, unlike in the UK, they don’t fit isolating valves underneath the sink.  So when I’d removed the vanity unit and wanted to turn the water back on, I had to then re-connect the tap to the pipework, tie the tap handle down to stop the water coming on, and work around it as I continued work in the bathroom.  What a pain.

Stripped all the old tiles off the wall using my SDS hammer drill, great fun and quite quick and easy to do:

And then on with tiling the wall, using the bottom of the existing mirror as the reference point and ensuring that the tiles line up horizontally with the others in the shower cubicle.

Its a bit fiddly but basically you count the number of whole tiles required down the wall, and allowing for the tile gaps and grouting, cut a part-tile to go in as the bottom row.   Lots of use of the spirit level and repeated measuring to make sure everything is square and true so that as you tile up the wall it all lines up with the required height.

Grouting, lots of grouting, and then I could put everything back into the bathroom.

 

Putting the sink vanity unit back in place proved to be troublesome because I moved the vanity unit a few cm to the left as I’d originally installed it too close to the washing machine which meant that it was really difficult to jiggle the washing machine out from the gap if you ever needed to get to the back of the machine.

Moving the vanity unit slightly to the side meant I had a bigger gap for the washing machine,  but then when I had fitted and silicone’d the sink in I found that the flexi tails on the taps weren’t long enough to reach the pipework.   Grr, another trip to Mr Bricolage to buy some longer tails for the taps ...

Although I’ve written this as one continual sequence of activities, it actually took me about 4 days of solid work over a week to do all this.  It does look a lot better though.

Hole in the fence

The garden of our Gite is (or rather, was) fully fenced in. Here's a photo taken from the country lane that passes by the Gite in 2016 after Toby and I had spent a week cutting down the pine trees at the end of the garden:

Unfortunately that's what things used to look like. This morning I received a text and series of photos of the garden today.

Looks like someone has come down the hill, lost it on the bend, perhaps due to ice, then straight through the fence, across the lawn, and finishing up with taking out one of the apple trees.

All very upsetting, and more repair work for me next time I go to the Gite. Grr.

Rather than wooden posts which are liable to rot I intend to replace the fence with green metal posts and fencing which will match the new fencing along the front of the Gite:

Getting organised to go to France

The garage is definitely getting fuller as I start to get myself ready and organised for some more ‘holiday' time in our Brittany Gite.

As we don’t live close to the Gite, each trip I have to make sure that I’ve got everything I need to take with me. For the last few years I’ve been using Wunderlist which is a cross-platform ‘to-do’ list. I used to write down what I needed to take with me on a piece of paper but inevitably the paper would get lost, mangled or whatever, and so I moved with the times to Wunderlist (actually I first used a to-do service called Astrid but then Yahoo bought them and promptly closed it down :-( )

So I’ve been with Wunderlist since 2013 and what I particularly like is that you can create a list, share it with other people, and it automatically synchronises whenever you make changes. I have Wunderlist on my iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the Android app all work seamlessly together.

Because I have been known to forget to take things I need to France, or vice versa, leaving some tools over there - which is really annoying, I’ve now got super-organised in Wunderlist with folders for what I need to buy ready for France, what I have got and need to take, things I need to buy in France, and then a to-do list and a longer term rennovation plan (where things can languish for years!).

Since I wasn’t able to get to the Gite in the back end of last year, the ‘bringing to France’ list on Wunderlist now stands at 42 items, a mixture of things to be replaced in the Gite itself, and things for the ‘project’ that is rennovating the other half of the property. Here’s a subset:

All I need now is to get the time away from work to actually take a break and go over there.

Completed new shower cubicle

White silicone around the edges of the shower tray, transparent silicone around the outside edges of the frame (so if water gets behind the frame edges it will run back into the shower area), check adjustment of the doors, put the shower bar and shower outlet back up, and we’re there.

One lovely new shower cubicle.

I’m really pleased with this, compared to the previous shower cubicle which was showing its age, this is much more spacious to use and looks really smart, modern and is perfect.

From start to finish took 3 days to install.

Fitting the new shower cubicle

“Fitting the new shower cubicle”,  sounds innocuous doesn’t it.   I mean, how hard can it be to fit a new shower cubicle, its just a matter of carefully following the instructions and assembling everything isn’t it?

As I mentioned earlier, I’d bought the new shower cubicle from an eBay seller, nothing wrong with that in terms of quality of what I’d bought, but when it came to installing the cubicle I think this particular seller had bought the instructions from China and quite possibly the Chinaman had never seen the cubicle he was drawing the plans for!!

Of all the work I did on the shower following the instructions proved to be the most difficult part. I like to be logical,  lay the parts out, identify what is what, and then start at step 1.

IKEA must love me as a customer. Laid all the parts out, compared the parts to the pictures, and they don’t match.

Yes I have mostly the same number of parts as in the plans, but some of them bear no resemblance to the installation instructions.
The uprights in particular have a completely different profile and I spend perhaps 3 hours dry assembling various parts of the shower trying to work out whether I have a door part, a glass surround part, or a frame part !

Eventually I conclude mhy deliberations and can actually assemble the cubicle in situ.  I then find that I’m missing some of the self tapping screws and silver screw cover caps - not enough to seriously jeopardise the installation, but enough to mean that some corners of the cubicle have to be screwed together with my own screws that will need replacement parts from the eBay seller. Take photo of offending missing parts, and carry on ...

 

Tiled and grouted the remainder of the shower cubicle

Tiling the rest of the shower cubicle was a fairly straight forward job.   Checking all the time that the tiles were level and true, it was made easier by the choice of large wall tiles and 10mm right angle tile trim to finish the edges off neatly.

 

I originally planned to just tile the shower cubicle area, but having seen how quickly it took me to tile this section and how much better it looked with tiles on the wall I decided to continue tiling along the wall up to the doorway.

Waited a couple of hours for the adhesive to dry,  then cleaned any adhesive off the tile surfaces and from the cracks (found that if you leave this job to the next morning then the adhesive sets rock solid and is a lot harder to do),  and then grouted the lot.
Top tip, buy a proper rubber grout float and use power-mix grout. The ready-mix may be easier to use but its too lumpy and with the powder mix you can get a much better grout result.

New shower tray and starting to tile the shower

Having stripped out the old shower, next job was to start fitting the new shower tray.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the original shower tray and cubicle was quite restrictive as it was a standard 800mm square size.  Measuring carefully I worked out that I could fit a 900mm deep tray with enough clearance before the existing wall radiator, and looking around I could get 1200mm wide tray, so 1200x900mm wide it was.

Slight aside, I have discovered that you can buy most bathroom things like shower trays, glass screens, toilets, sinks and bathroom cupboards at very reasonable prices on eBay. Plenty of suppliers so the prices are keen and the quality is fine.  So eBay it was for this shower tray and cubicle and I brought it all over to France in Liz's Ford Galaxy.

As a result of putting in a larger tray this meant that the floor tiles had to be cut back to accommodate the new tray size, so out with the angle grinder - made a lot of dust in the process !

Of course the trap on the new tray was in a different position to the old one, so more cutting with the angle grinder and chiselling out with my big SDS hammer drill. And yet more dust.

I made several dry runs at assembling the waste and trap before applying pipe solvent glue to the pipework. The trap was then screwed on, a bed of mortar under the tray, and silicone around the trap to seal it to the tray. Fitted the tray and left it all overnight to set.

Then I started on tiling the walls. The tiles again came from the UK, B&Q in fact, as I had some left over from tiling our utility room at home! I did have buy several boxes more and bring them over to France, but as we liked them already it was easier to keep with this style.

One challenge I had was the shower bar that was in the middle of the wall. Unlike in the UK, French regulations don't seem to require you to have shut-off valves before water outlets so I had to turn the whole house water off when I removed the shower bar. I didn't have any stop ends that would fit the pipe, so made an impromptu loop with a washing machine filler hose which did the job a treat!

 

 

 

Removing the old shower cubicle

Downstairs in the Gite is a large bathroom with toilet, washing machine and a not particularly large shower cubicle. In fact when I looked round the Gite prior to buying it, the previous owners had stored their daughter's toys in the cubicle,  and whilst it has been used a lot more than the previous owners did,  the shower cubicle was starting to show its age and so I planned to replace it with something bigger. The old cubicle prior to starting work:

 First job was to strip out the old cubicle, tiles and tray.  Smashing fun !

 

Another little repair job to the patio door blind

On arriving at the Gite I found that unfortunately the roller blind above the doors onto the patio had been broken at some point.  These blinds work really well but they are quite heavy and if you let them drop down at high speed they can get damaged which results in the blind coming apart.

It is a bit of a pain to fix this as I have to take the cover off the roller blind on the inside, unscrew the bottom weight,  and then manually feed the rolled blind back up through the slot at the top into the house,  then when the blind is all inside,  have to slide each blind slat out sideways and then you can slide them all back together. As I said, a bit of a pain.  At least it gave the opportunity to wash all the blind slats as I put it back together again.

 

 

Back to France for Easter week

I'm currently sitting on the harbourside at Dover, waiting for the 10:40 DFDS ferry to Calais.

Just me going for Easter week. Toby is off to grandparents and Jack is, well Jack. So Mum at home to keep Jack in check and feed the pets.

Good drive down to the port although I could see it will be hazy on the channel.   Yesterday I flew my microlight to Damyns Hall near Dartford Crossing and it was very hazy until late afternoon so I expect the same today - not much fun flying when you can't see much in front of you.   I'm sure the ferry captain will have GPS and Radar to ensure we don't run into anything on the way.

Despite thinking that there is not much to take to France the car is completely full !
Bringing over a new freezer,  flatscreen TV,  a big pile of laminate flooring and more tiles and trim to complete tiling the downstairs bathroom.

Not a quiet week ahead of me then ...

 

PS: Thanks for the free wifi Dover harbour, much appreciated