Chateau de Firbeix

Now the first floor door is (nearly finished), they have switched to the ground floor opening. This is not for a door but a passage way between the living room (workshop now) to the kitchen. It is a little scary to see how big they make the "hole" but they're doing a great job and it should make a huge difference. The first floor door opening which just needs pointing with lime mortar. A further photo from today (Thursday) with the downstairs opening very close to being finished and looking great. This shot is taken from the kitchen looking into the living room, with the three huge oak lintels in position. There is about a 19cm height differential between the kitchen and the living room, so we'll raise that floor with insulation and concrete slab so there is a continuous flat floor across all rooms in the gîte for easy disabled access.

As planned, today the roof went up, the skylights were built (but not added yet), the doors were built and fitted and finally we put in three panes of glass. It was a really hot day and the greenhouse is well positioned to get as much as sun as possible so it was a tough day but it is looking great. Glazing tomorrow.

Today we built the 4 sides of the greenhouse and mounted them onto the frame,  which we finished over the weekend. There are so many pieces but they are all numbered correctly, nothing missing so far and pretty sturdy. For anyone interested, it is a LAMS Laurus 9900 which has a 9.84m2 base with an extension of 4.81m2 (total 14.65m2), measuring 5.7m long x 2.57m wide x 2.53m high (at the apex). We'll put the roof on tomorrow, then the two doors and skylights and then glaze it. It's a big greenhouse!

I don't recall if I've posted any pics of the greenhouse space but where the chicken shed used to I'm not sure if I posted pics of the greenhouse work but where the chicken shed used to be I've excavated by hand a level space for a 15m2 greenhouse.  In previous months I built the wall and yesterday and today we put in the 10x10cm concrete base with 30cm diameter x 40cm deep corner supports. We had to carry 22 bags of 30kg premix concrete up a steep hill which nearly killed us! Not to mention the water, cement mixer and everything else we needed. We'll carry on with the greenhouse as the guys working on the door openings are creating a ton of dust and noise with pneumatic drill, etc. so we'll vacate it until they're done.

Today they dug and installed the collection tank for the rain water from the barn roof and terrace. The hole they had to dig was enormous (well it is a 10,000l tank). In the first picture below, the pipe on the right is coming from the barn and the one of the left will take any overflow water into the garden. The red pipe is for the electricity cable which will allow us to install a pump. The blue pipe is for the water to extract from the tank by the pump.

As I've previously shared in other posts, in the PMR gîte we are creating two new openings in the stone walls. The first will connect the room above the workshop with the old games room, which will be the new bedrooms and bathrooms. The second will connect the workshop with the kitchen. The upstairs doorway will be standard size but the downstairs one will be 2mx2m, with no door.  They started on the first floor as we needed to remove the staircase in the workshop for the ground floor opening and that was their only access to the first floor. They turned up 3 days early which caused a lot of panic as the guys putting in the new sewage pipes had not even started in front of the gîte so had to change their plans. On the flip side, the guys doing the sewage pipes started two weeks late so it should never have been an issue. They used a manitou (below) to remove all the stone and also lift the new corner stone and new oak lintels into the first floor through the window.   This is ...

Just a lot of photos of their progress with the pipework   

Mostly pictures today as the guys are really moving quickly, mainly because the mason who is creating the two wall openings in the PMR gîte is starting tomorrow and needs to get his lorry close to the work.