Scaffolding and Beam Banter

This morning we put up the scaffolding that arrived on Friday, It had been imported from PSB Scaffolding in the UK, normally I prefer to source items in France but scaffold doesn't seem to exist for self-building in the form we use in the UK. We got lots of parts and like a huge meccano set set up two bays this morning of scaffold:

This afternoon we removed the beam from the barn that was specified for removal:

 Unfortunately the falling beam beat the photographer ...... :

Renovation or Conservation ?

One of the questions Adam Farndon asked us was whether we wanted to renovate or conserve the barn. We hadn't thought of the question before let alone the answer - we'd always used the term "renovate" to cover all options. It's been an important question this week however as the initial clearance and demolition work turned to putting things back into the barn.

Renovate or conserve came up as soon as we climbed up to assess the condition of the major transverse beams - there are five of them being kept in the finished design - and we had our suspicions when we first bought the place as one of them had a very permanent and solid looking oak beam propping it up. The state of beams in French country properties should be, and for all I know already is, the subject of a book and there are lots of opinions around. Ours each have an individual character so let me introduce them to you,  counting from the house:

Number 0: This one is coming out - an increasingly wise decision by the architect when we saw the condition of the end by the existing door/ lucarne window!
Number 1: this is oversize at nearly 35cm square, in very good condition and well squared off.
Number 2: Standard sized at 30cm square, solid with some worm but square
Number 3: This is the one that is propped up, the top of the beam at both ends has been hollowed out (we thought it was rot but it's much too precise a shape). The north end has quite a bit of worm attack and is flaky wood, the prop beam is directly under a complex knot.
Number 4: I call this one a cranked shape as it twists about 25cm over its length. This also has hollows on top of the beam - something to do with how the roof was put up? - and looked solid at first glance. Deeper inspection showed that it has a couple of long and deep cracks through it of unknown provenance. This beam has had the ignominy of deep slots being cut in its top to adjust the floor for the wayward shape of beam 5.
Number 5: This one appears to have been installed from a completely different building - it's a different shape to the others, twists down significantly over its length and is fitted into the wall at least 15cm below the others. Current theory is that this one was added after the others - either it's a Breton bodge or we haven't worked out its purpose yet.

So the weakest beams are 3 and 4 - the two beams that will be taking the main load of our two first floor bathrooms - not good.

So do we conserve by rescuing the beams or replacing them (not an easy task when the span is nearly six metres) or restore by allowing modern building techniques to give us and the old building a hand. We went for restoration and on Friday morning CMB delivered three 6.5m steel beams to go into the walls to support the floor loads upstairs. Adam had prepared the walls and knocked through a gap on the north side to allow us to "post" the beam through from the outside. Sounds easy doesn't it? Here's how we did it in pictures:

Adam supervises the unloading of the steel beams

The three beams are stored ready for moving

Two entry holes prepared in the wall

The scaffolding system arrived from the UK in the middle of beam work

Nothing to do with the beams - photographer got distracted !

Lots of scaffolding ...

The first beam through the wall

Beam 1 balancing on the wall opening

Drawing Beam 1 through on the inside

Adam checks the position of the first beam

The second beam is brought up to the prepared entry hole

In position ready for the final lift

The hardest part !

Beam 2 gets brought into the barn

Final positioning checks

Beam 2 in place :o)

Update on the Barn

The whole of the ceiling is out now,the smaller beams have gone to be stored for future re-use, into Adam's trailer for his winter's heating or onto a huge fire that Barbara has been tending for four days. The space in the barn is very cathedral like, the attached pictures don't quite do justice to the space but give some idea:

0

The north side of the Barn and ceiling

The roof exposed in all its glory

 

 

 

South side of the Barn

Looking towards the main barn door

Barbara's fire

The east wall of the barn - this will be left pierres apparants (exposed stone) in the final design

Looking down the barn from above the beams

These beams and roof have stood for at least 220 years ......

As we've worked through clearing the barn Adam and I have often found ourselves speculating about the people who built this barn, how they set about their work and what their life was like. It's been a bit like Inspector Morse as well as we've also had a chance to turn detective and work out what changes have been done since 1789. Mostly they are apparent because the quality of work isn't as good as the original building or because the builders took a short cut they didn't think would be apparent - until we came along.

It's a bit disconcerting when bits of a main beam that we'd hoped to build our bathroom floor on come off in your hand. In the next entry I'll talk about how we're using modern technology to complement the original craftsmanship to hopefully create a building that can last for another hundred years or so.

The Barn Renovation Commences

Monday 5th September 2011 marks the start of phase 2 of our construction work and, in many ways, the real objective of us being here. We've started work with an English stonemason, Adam of Farndon Restoration, on the construction of our barn renovation.

We started by knocking out the ceiling and small beams in the roof. Part of the ceiling was made with lath and daub: hundreds of short chestnut stakes had been painstakingly rolled in a mixture of mud and straw, then put between cross beams and the whole thing had been plastered from below with lime to create a ceiling. This must have taken a long, long time for whoever built the barn. The construction of the barn is interesting and more and more it seems as if it was built originally as a residence due to the detail and care taken in the construction. For the first time in probably 220 years the barn is open from the floor to the ceiling.

It was dirty, horrible work but has already made a huge difference as the attached photos show:

Work starts on pulling down the ceiling

The high gable end to the barn is visible above the white stones

Adam at work

Ceiling out, just befor the small beams came out

A busman's holiday

We were back in the UK last week - after a year of renovating a house we went back as Adam and Charlotte had just bought their first house and we spent another week intensively renovating. I installed my second IKEA kitchen (unplanned - the existing one was just too terrible and dirty), put in a shower mixer and painted all the tricky long reach parts above the stairs. A&C took the sensible approach of knocking everything out and starting from new - Adam's seen us do that enough to know things turn out OK in the end.

Being back in the UK allowed me to reflect on some of the differences - and similarities.

As always I was really struck by the volume of traffic on the road, our corner of France doesn't have many cars as soon as you get out of the summer season or away from the coast. I was driving a French registered car and I found a lot of drivers left me more space and time than I remember having before. I continued my one-man crusade to improve the image of drivers of French-registered cars by signalling early and frequently and letting other drivers through whenever possible - it's always worth it for the strange looks and double-takes - "A frog; letting me out? What's the world coming to?". I suffered the same thing in reverse when I moved from UK to French plates; the previous gaps and time disappeared in a flurry of eager drivers trying to see the tread depth on my rear tyres at 90kph!

The other thing that was really apparent was the much more dynamic commercial process in the UK - parts we ordered for our Dyson machine turned up the next day with free postage, Sky arrived on the day and at the exact time promised to fit the dish and Waitrose and Argos had our shopping ready for collection when specified. It's not that you can't do this in France (Super-U offer in-line shopping for example) but every service like this is charged for as an extra. I also bought a trailer in the UK at a much better spec and much cheaper than anything I'd found in France - when I explained that I'd need to insure it in France and I'd need a manufacturer's specification and certificate, Karl at Trailertek said "No problem, I know exactly what you need - we sell loads of trailers to people in France". But France's economy is doing better than Britain's ........ ????

The harvest continues .....

There's a saying in France that if you can always see the people with no friends - they'll be buying courgettes and tomatoes in the supermarket in August!

Courgettes and tomatoes have been one of our few failures in the potager. The courgettes didn't like the alternating hot and wet conditions in June and even the intervention of Lucien, our neighbour, failed to pull them round (he sprayed them with something he said he kept for emergencies - "you can't buy this normally"). The "Sweet Million" tomatoes that I'd grown carefully from seed sown on 15th March grew really well and produced their first tiny sweet fruits at the start of August. Then in the space of 48 hours the damp weather accounted for them as they caught blight and fell over.

On the plus side the runner beans (haricots grimpantes) are producing huge quantities of beans and filling up the freezer. And the peach harvest has been exceptional - they've gone into the freezer and Barbara has made some wonderful peach chutney and today I picked the last 18 perfect fruits from the tree, the largest a cricket ball sized one that smelt divine .... :o)

Vingt-cinqieme anniversaire de mariage

It was our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary today - how did all that time pass?

It's been really hot today (31C) and the afternoon gradually subsided into a thundery, humid evening.
We did no special things today but this evening we had a barbeque and ate outside with a bottle of Limoux sparkling wine from our Pyrenean holiday.

The menu was:

Selle d'agneau (saddle of lamb) with rosemary and garlic
Baked potatoes
Green salad (lettuce, beetroot leaves, spinach, parsley and chives) with walnuts, garlic and shallots

Cholate éclair with raspberries and strawberries

The lamb came from a farm in Noyal Muzillac so less than 3km from us, the éclair 2km from the village bakery and everything else less than a hundred metres from our garden.

Low food miles :o)