Finally got the back porch roof finished!

It took an afternoon to slate each side of the 'join' between the house and the new porch roof.

And it has rained every day for the last week or two.

Note how the window drains onto zinc, which will drain directly into the gutter. Cunning, eh? Lets us slate over the bottom of the window without getting a build-up of water in the window frame.

Hugh tries out the wheelbarrow, and a cinnabar moth tries out the porch.

View from on high, of Pete cutting slates.

Roof nearing completion, and the final ridge tile put in place. Now we could do with some rain to wash off the bits of mortar.

 

The finished roof, phew!!

progress with roof

Things are progressing, between downpours, on the porch roof.

Fitted the voliges (planking) and got the slates re-hung on the roof sides of the zinc on thursday. We did the shaped slates on the porch-side of the roof yesterday, but haven't had a chance to take photos yet - pouring all today.

Have started to block in over the back door, and got he light re-fitted

Gertie is closely supervising all work - here Pete is fitting the zinc strip under one of  the rooflights -

Gertie checks out the rest of the work...

"of course, it never rains in Brittany"

From the sublime (weather, that is) on tuesday afternoon

 to torrential rain on wednesday, despite the forecast promising two days of decent weather.

the satellite image shows how nearly we missed the rain - just a wee tail of it crossed over us this afternoon - should be OK tomorrow!

back porch continuing...

 

Finally got all the A frames put up last week. Then we decided to use up a couple of spare (new, but unused) windows we have had around the place for a while to make roof lights. We took them out from their outer frame, and removed the bottom strip of wood to allow them to drain off properly.They fit pretty much exactly between two of the A frames.

Need to use zinc sheets now to seal round top & sides, and to drain them off the bottom. Will do this next, as we fit more woodwork to hold the slates. Very pleased with these, as it will give lots more light than we had originally planned.

So its beginning to take shape well now. Once we have bought the zinc to make the gutters and the weather stays dry for a few days we can take off the slates from the roof behind and tie-in the new roof gable. The front gable end is also going to be glazed - we discovered that it was possible to get triangular DGUs, so thats why the front gable doesn't have an A frame. We have put in the inside walls, using mainly beton cellulaire blocks. The front two gaps will have terracotta blocks, as they ran out of the others, and we had these spare in the hangar. The outside will be a skin of stone to match the house.

 

The floor will be slated with what is left of the  slate slabs we have found all over the garden, and which we believe were the original floor of the house. This is a preliminary layout...  Gertie obviously approves.

not-so-new ducks and start of roof

Mrs Noisy came down from her nest under the bonfire pile in the field on the 5th July with her new brood - two tiny ducklings. They are amazingly strong, as they cannot be more than 24 hours hatched. Mrs N. has lived up to her name ever since, quacking loudly at anyone who comes at all near her brood.

They were swimming in the pond almost immediately, having tried out the possibilities of the food bowl first. They are, of course much bigger by now!

 

and here is a picture of the first two A-frames on the back porch put in place. The fourth will go where the gutter is at the moment, and the front one will not have an A-bar, but a vertical central post, and be glazed on either side. We have used the old oak roofing beams that Claude gave us (for firewood) that came off the old roof of his house in Kermarec. They have some really wild and woolly shapes!

 

We are also hoping to be able to use two existing DGUs from a window we had spare, to put into the roof to give some more light. Just need to work out how to fit them so they are weatherproof!

oak frame completed at last

We have finally completed the oak frame for the back porch - still have the roof to put on it, but this is a start.  Most of the frame is either jointed or fastened together with oak pegs. We have found that any screws used to hold stuff together temporarily tend to shear off when we try to get them out again. Apparently this is because of the tannin in the wood.

I always imagined that oak frames would be fairly simple, but here is one-half of one the corner window sill joints. We have routed out a groove for the window units, and will fit the units so there is apparently no extra 'frame' showing, ie the window units fit directly into the oak frame. They won't, of course, but that is what it will look like.
The gaps under the window sills will be filled in with stonework to match the back wall of the house, which will also stabilise the whole structure. We are going to use slate paving slabs from the garden to lay on the floor.

oak posts and windowsills going up

We have cut the windowsills to fit into the notches on the upright posts for the first side.  Here is the first in position:

Then the second:

 

and the third:

 

 In the picture below, you can see the groove we have cut in each sill for the DGU windows. We will be using softwood packing, the thickness of the DGU, backed by a thinner piece of oak on the inside sides of each window. That way there will be no extra frame around each pane.

 Gertie has taken to sleeping on top of the tool shelves. When she wants to get down in the morning, she waits for Pete to supply a 'ramp' for her elegant descent onto his shoulder!

 

more oak frame put up

The oak posts for one side have been put up temporarily (three only shown here). They will need to be cut down to the right height and marked-up for the position of the windowsill pieces. This has to be done 'in situ' as the oak is changing shape just about by the day and no two gaps are the same. Each post is sitting on a nut and washer on a length of studding set into the concrete foundations (you can see the front corner one) to allow a bit of rotation to happen with drying out. This also keeps the wood off the ground and will allow a tiny bit of vertical adjustment if necessary. We have taken lots of advice from our friend John W. (ex building foreman for the Shakespeare birthplace trust before he retired to France), and who has probably forgotten more about oak construction than we will ever learn!

Pete sawing...

and me cutting one of the slots for the windowsill cross-pieces (not a bad tan for early June eh?). These will also be mortice & tenoned into the uprights. Next we will have to make lots of oak pegs to fix it all together... Don't use screws says John, they will fall apart in months, says John. So the whole edifice will be held together with oak pegs. I now need a piece of metal with a hole in it, the proposed diameter of the pegs, so I can hammer roughly-shaped bits of oak through it, to make the correct-diameter pegs - that's how its done!

See how wet the oak is once you get a centimeter-or-so into it!  Cuts like a dream though!
Its funny, but I'm really enjoying having a bit of interesting building work to do again. We are now talking about building a whole house using green oak one day perhaps, as it's such lovely stuff to work with, and relatively affordable, here in Brittany.
Keep looking - will update again soon.

re-start for the back porch

After a couple of years delay we have eventually found the time and funds to go ahead with the porch we planned in 2006.
Here we have close to two thirds of a cubic metre of green oak, which is more than ample for the frame, but because of the cutting required had to be that much - suggestions will be sought for the spare stuff later....
Pete hard at work measuring up. Not much to show yet but will keep progress updated.

Pete's orange melodeon

Yep, its orange! in three keys, A, D & G and he's well pleased with it! Mind you, it will be a day or two before he can play it well enough to venture out in public. Once he's OK playing it, we can play all the English tunes we used to play at the Dressers Arms on sunday nights. Pete will also be able to accompany/do intros for, many of the songs we currently sing, as loads are in A.  So now I have to get the fiddle going again, after a pause of some years when my thumb joint was a problem - that seems to have calmed down again now.

Fete de la Morue - Binic

We went up to Binic on Thursday afternoon for the first day of the 'Fete de la Morue'. The port de plaisance was crammed full of boats and the weather was glorious.

We were taking part in the repas chanté put on for all crews of the visiting boats. A pleasant afternoon and a good meal for the price of a couple of songs - fair exchange!

We are going to become members of the association 'Le Grand Léjon' - click the title of this post for the site link. This is an association that owns and runs a Lougre (lugger) built at Loguivy de la Mer, from the plans of an old boat, and launched in 1992. as members of the association we get to have use of the boat when it attends various events, such as the Binic fete, and lots of others throughout the summer. They also do voyages around the Brittany coast, to the Scilly isles and to Cornwall occasionally. For a very reasonable fee, we can go on these trips... We know loads of the people who are in the association already - the group 'Fortune de Mer' and Hervé & Hélène who are singing at our concert in June are members - have a listen to Hervé & Hélène on the Grand Léjon site.

Ducklings!

Seven ducklings have finally hatched out yesterday. Mrs Broody is very content with her new family, but she is going to get quite a surprise when they start swimming in any available water! The ducklings are surprisingly active, and already superb fly-catchers (and eaters - nice). Luckily the weather is due to be quite good for a few days, so they can take advantage of the sunshine to get outside & bask. Mrs B must be heartily sick of the little broody coop when she has spent the last 4 weeks!

Un Jardin Remarquable - Le grand Launay

On Friday (a bank holiday here in France) we visited a local garden - Le Grand Launay, only 20 minutes up the road, and one we had not heard of before. It was included in a series of gardens open for charity this weekend, which is how we got to hear about it. it is classified as un jardin remarquable and with good reason.
The first bit is the beautiful archway into a large lawned courtyard. The lawn is immaculate, without a weed to its name, and carefully mown in stripes. The owner, while taking our 2 euros, explained that is was une pelouse anglaise and that he had bought an English cylinder mower to get the correct effect.This is one huge courtyard! All round the edges are mainly foliage plants, plus some beds edged in low wavy box hedges and one massive tree as you can see in the picture above. Pretty breathtaking start. I could live in that courtyard...However, after a slow circuit of the courtyard we left it and came upon the back lawn. The beds surrounding the lawn are edged in undulating box hedging, with cloud-pruned trees behind. At one end (left in the photo below) there is a low mass of beech 'hedge' the same level as the terrace above & behind it. The house from this angle is pretty amazing too! Carrying on round this back lawn brings you out to the most amazing little orchard I have ever seen - there are box 'serpents' trained up each of the trees! The effect is weird in the extreme, and I think is designed as a witty reference to the book of Genesis.Further on is a sunken area with a 'source', the floor of which is paved with blocks to allow the water to trickle through in rills. There are lots of lovely candelabra primulas here.
The rills finally join together and empty out into a beautiful pond, surrounded by foliage plants and trees. This pond is the source of water for the next feature - a cascade within a gravel garden.This bit of the garden still looks very new and a bit contrived, but will probably mature and fit in a bit better eventually. The slope is surrounded by trees with mown paths through them, which are lovely to stroll round, looking at the sunshine through the new leaves.Finally we came out behind the first building, where there is a small potager and herb garden.
This is surrounded by espaliered apple trees, within box hedges with wild strawberries below them. Within these is a woven willow fedge which outlines the potager and jardin des simples, or herb garden, with a small pond in the centre - all just immaculate.We came away with our jaws hanging open and a determination to get planting lots more hedging in our own plot. I love the idea of undulating hedges, carefully trimmed but following their own varying contours. Of course we have neither the setting, the means nor the full time gardener to copy this place, but we have come away with loads of ideas, and a garden that is close enough to visit regularly throughout the year.
Click on the title of this post to go to the site: http://www.parcsetjardins.fr/bretagne/cotes_d_armor/le_grand_launay-858.html