Painting finished, kitchen started

Finished all the painting in the gite yesterday. Two coats on the walls and ceilings. It covered very well. I think having a good undercoat helped.

Today I started to fit the rest of the kitchen. Four more base units and three wall units that we bought from Ikea. You hear alot of jokes about assembling Ikea flat pack stuff, missing bits, vague instructions etc., but everything when together very smoothly. Nothing missing and pretty good quality.

Fitting the sink unit carcass was a bit fiddly as I had to fit up the waste water piping for the sink and the dishwasher next to it. Just a lot of measuring, cutting pipes and holes and dry fitting. The carcass went in and out half-a-dozen times before it was sorted. The wall units were very easy as we had fixed thick plywood to the back of the plasterboard and it just involved getting everything level and putting in some large screws.

I should be able to fit the rest of the units tomorrow then make a start on the 'return' wall for the units that finish of the last side of the U-shape

 brittany gites

 4:14:37 PM   Painting finished, kitchen started   

Dehumidifier

Borrowed a dehumidifier from a friend to help dry out the water leak. It has extracted about 10 litres in the last 24 hours. It already feels more comfortable in the gite whilst working.

Hopefully I should finish the second coat of painting tomorrow.

 brittany gites

 8:42:35 PM   Dehumidifier   

Painted undercoat in Gite

Gite staircase

Gite living room

The undercoat is now finished and I've started the cutting-in of the topcoat. The fan is doing it's job drying out the bottom of the plasterboard but the concrete is still very wet. I think there is still quite a bit of water under the floor. Hopefully now the weather is warming up a breeze through the open windows etc. will speed up the drying process.

Gite kitchen

Gite stonework

The photos show the progress so far and by referring to the floorplans you should be able to work out the layout. Only a couple of kitchen units have been fitted. This was to allow the gas man to come and fit the pipework for the cooker. Once the painting is finished there are more units to fit to create a U shape kitchen extending into the living space. The units will follow the line of the suspended ceiling above. Make sense ?

 brittany gites

 6:40:31 PM   Painted undercoat in Gite   

Water leak in the Gite

Last week I finished all the plasterboard filling downstairs ready to start painting the gite downstairs. It's a bit of a daunting job because the kitchen, sitting area and dining room are one large space with very high ceilings. The walls are about 3.5m tall with exposed beams, so there is alot of cutting in around all the beams whilst working off ladders.

Whilst I was painting the sous-couche (undercoat), I noticed in the kitchen area where the sink is due to go quite a bit of dampness on the floor and at the base of some of the plasterboard. Very strange because the concrete floor has a waterproof membrane to prevent damp, so the only possible explaination was a leak in the kitchen plumbing. The plumber had finished his work about a week before and capped off the pipework for the kitchen waiting for me to fit it. Everything seemed OK.

However, after a bit of investigation, and removing a large section of plasterboard from the kitchen area in the gite revealed an unsoldered elbow on the copper pipe! Opps. The leak was pretty bad and had been flowing for about a week. All the water had flowed down behind the plasterboard and soaked into the concrete floor above the membrane. In places we could see water had risen up to the tiled floor and darkened the grount between the tiles. We hadn't noticed before as the floor is covered in tarpulins.

A fairly simple fix, but a bit of an issue trying to dry out the gite. To start the drying process I put an osillating fan in place and turned up the VMC to maximum to help extract the damp air. Fingers crossed it will dry out in time.

 brittany gites

 7:37:49 PM   Water leak in the Gite   

Chauffe eau electrique

Electric hot
water tank

As part of the on-going hot water saga from last week we decided to add additional capacity to boost the current gas heated supply and act as a backup in the event of failure. The new electric hot water tank has been put in the laundry room and is plumbed into the existing hot and cold water feeds. The idea is to serve the two gites furthest from the existing tank to provide hot water faster and prevent any suppy problems.

The water is heated up overnight (takes about 6 hours) whilst on cheap rate electricity. The tank is 250 litres in capacity and as you can imagine, very, very heavy once full of water. It is resting on a stand and bolted into the water with 4 large bolts.

The water installation was fairly simple as the existing pipes run through the laundry room. The electric was a little trickier as I had to drill some holes through very thick (70cm) stone walls to get back to the fuse box. A bonus was that while working in the loftspace I came across my childhood Scalextric set. Yipeee

 6:29:23 PM   Chauffe eau electrique   

Roof insulation

A horrible job, but it's got to be done. Roof insulation.

Put 200mm of glass fibre insulation in the roof space of the new gite this week. Yuck!

Ventilation mecanique
controlee

The good news is that once I finished that, I could finally connect up the last of the ducting for the VMC and install the unit in the roof space. The VMC unit is a small box with an extractor fan that sucks all the moist/smelly air from kitchens, bathrooms, toilets etc. via a series of ducting and pipework running down the walls and over the ceilings.

The unit runs 24 hours a day replacing air and keeping out damp. The unit I bought has a humidity sensor so that if the humidity increases, i.e. someone takes a steamy shower, the extraction speed increases to suck out more air. There is also a two speed override switch in the kitchen.

 5:50:47 PM   Roof insulation