Gîte kitchen floor levelling and insulation

A very busy day! We cleared all the rubble from the gîte floor (from the block wall we removed and the door opening I added for the PMR bathroom). We must have filled 15 wheelbarrow loads for a skip I have coming this week.




Then we shipped in 10 or so wheelbarrow loads of hardcore so we end up with 20cm below the slab top (the bottom of the 2 doors on the left and the top of the foundation on the right). This will allow 10cm of insulation and 10cm of concrete.


Then finally we laid and glued the insulation, extruded polystyrene panels, 125x60cm by 10cm deep. They fit like tongue and groove with glue to keep them in place.


We now need to lay the thick plastic sheeting for moisture protection then the steel mesh/rebar and we're all set for the concrete to be delivered. We'll get this room (the kitchen/diner) and the bedroom done at the same time. I will do the bathroom floor by hand (mixer) as the slab needs to be lower than the other rooms as it is a wet room and so the shower needs to be at the finished floor level.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The chateau has doors and windows

Image
After being on order for 4 months, the doors and windows for the chateau were fitted this week. It is now sealed except for the gaps between the roof and wall tops (in the roof where the B&B rooms will be).  The bats have relocated from the pool equipment room to inside the chateau so hopefully they will vacate soon so I need to leave a door open.
Read more

Repointing stone walls in upstairs PMR gîte bedroom

Image
The exposed stone work in the PMR gîte is not the best quality, it was originally a horse stables, or perhaps for cows and also storage/workshop.  Not surprisingly it turned into a very dusty and dirty job and our arm/wrists were aching at the end of each day. We has to remove all the sandy/crumbly mortar and then repoint with chaux (lime) mortar. This allows the walls to "breath" whereas concrete creates a solid barrier. For the upstairs bedroom we used 34 bags of mix, 850 kg! The different darknesses of the mortar are just where some is older and dried out more! Small stone wall in downstairs bedroom Next repointing job is the living room and joining wall with the kitchen.
Read more

Raising the barn roof beams

Image
The previous owners had planned to convert the barn into a cottage with a second floor so had put four extra horizontal beams as the floor support. To have two floors the beams had to be quite low which made the ground floor a bit claustrophobic.  The plan was to remove the four redundant beams (added to support the first floor) and raise the three structural beams 50cm. As we had the electrician is the gîte to cable for the wi-fi network, I decided we'd finally get this job done.  Nearly a year ago Dan and I had designed the supports to join the raised beams to the diagonal roof trusses. A local metal works made the custom supports  As the beams are around 5m long and made of oak, we needed a machine to support them as we cut the ends and then raise them again into place while we attached them. As usual with oak, they might look rotten and wood worm ridden but under the first few millimetres it is sold and very hard. We rented a machine to do the job and it was...
Read more