THE FIRST COTTAGE - part 3

Over the next few weeks, the rest of the stud partitioning went up and the cottage began to take shape. As you can see from the photographs the layout was worked around the existing exposed beams. The others were installed to reintroduce more character into the cottage. Some oak joists removed earlier were used as uprights for forming the room corners - this gives the new partitioning the appearance of a more permanent and original structure.

A shower cubicle was used for the bathroom - more expensive to install, but less hassle to connect. Note that gravity fed hot water systems are very rare in France except where they are run from the main heating system of the house. The majority of systems are electric and connect directly to the mains cold water supply. They offer a number of advantages over the gravity feed system. No header tank needed so there's a substantial saving on pipework, the tank can be positioned virtually anywhere, (in our case its on the next floor down). They come in both vertical and horizontal mountings and a variety of sizes. We have found the most suitable to be 200 litres, which is sufficient for a family of 4 to 6. There are two types of heating elements - thermoplonge and steatite. We chose steatite (slightly more expensive) because the element is isolated from the water so there's no calcium build up, and you can change the element without draining the tank. Of course at this point we had virtually completed all the plumbing and the bathroom, but still didn't have a septic tank to connect to - very frustrating.

The bedroom ceilings were laid flat with exposed beams. As the beams were pretty straight, and to avoid having to plasterboard between them we came up with a novel idea. Lay the plasterboard sheets across the beams and line them up, then lay the timber chevrons on top of the plasterboard, and screw up the plasterboard sheets. The ceiling structure "floats" on top of the exposed beams. As the ceiing doesn't take any load to speak of, the method has worked very well.

The standing joke in the village was that the small access hole to the attic above the bedrooms (just visible in the photo on the left) was actually a bedroom for the mother-in-law. It appears that mother-in-law jokes are as popular in France as they are in England.




The finished product after staining and varnishing the beams, again with satin acrylic varnish, and plastering and painting the walls. Shop around for paint, its invariably expensive in France, for a reason I've never been able to fathom. We've usually brought back around 60 litres of matt white emulsion after each trip to England.

The doors for the bathroom and bedrooms were made out of good quality tongue and grooved floorboards, of which there is enormous choice in France. In fact I use floorboarding for much of my timber work. Because it's produced in such large quantities, good quality boards are much cheaper than buying different sizes of finished timber. Invest in a decent table saw and rip them to size for everthing from door trim to shelves etc. You'll soon recoup the cost of the saw.

The one great advantage of renovating an old property is that it is a distinct advantage if you can't plaster well. Rough plastering definitely looks better in a property of this vintage. Only finishing plaster is available in France, the traditional method being to lay a smooth coat of mortar first rather than a base coat of plaster. Slow setting plaster is very expensive, but there is a way around this which I discovered by trial and error. This involves making a mix of finishing plaster and the plaster based mortar used for cementing plaster blocks. You'll find details in the "Tips and Tricks" section. You'll also find out how to save a small fortune on wood stain. Brou de Noix, which is sold by most supermarkets is commonly used by furniture restorers in France and is a tiny fraction of the price of traditional wood stains It's superb at restoring the colour of old oak and for matching in new timber, including pine.