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Insulating, plastering and pointing..

Next big job was to insulate and plaster board the main lounge room.

First the multi foil insulation is stapled to the rafters

Then battens are screwed into the raters for the plasterboards to sit on...

Next the boards are all cut to fit round the beams which is a very laborious job as the beams are not at all straight. Any gaps between the roof/beams and the edges of the plasterboards are filled with expanding foam to prevent drafts and give the plaster a surface to adhere to.

Then the tape and jointing plastering job...

Will need 2 coats of plaster with tape on all the joints to prevent cracking, then sanding and painting whilst we have loan of the scaffold tower.

The bedroom is getting plastered at the same time...

The end wall of the living room is being pointed at the same time the plastering is done...

Another laborious job (about four or five days to do this wall) but the exposed granite wall will be a great feature when it's finished.

Tiling the kitchen/bathroom

The new concrete floor in the kitchen and bathroom needed tiling:

Nearly finished, just need the edges doing and grout to finish off but cant find the photo of the final floor!

Wood burner install

Now winter is approaching it's time to get the wood burner installed in the gite.

First the tiles are removed:

Single wall pipe was installed out of the wood burner to allow more heat into the room and for aesthetic reasons. An angled pipe was used to allow the flu to exit between the rafters. The tile battens were cut to make way for the twin wall pipe

A lead flashing was fitted under the remaining tiles and the twin wall flue was fitted through the roof

From the outside a collar is fitted over the flashing and then siliconed around to prevent water ingress

The final tube is fitted and clamped on with a hat on top to protect from rain.

Off road motorcycle holidays

Work was postponed on the gite for the spring and summer as we decided to offer off road motorcycle holiday packages providing the bikes, the clothing and helmets and all the body armour.

Here's a few pics of the bikes and some holiday group shots:

A group from Guernsey:

Australia:

And from UK:

Further work on the gite

Another concrete floor over the dirt and stone floor in the room that will be the kitchen and the bathroom:

The beam above the fireplace was protuding too much into the room so we removed it from the wall:

Then it was shortened with a chainsaw so it sits flush with the granite stones it's resting on...

A brick hearth was then made for the antique wood burner to sit. We used the reclaimed bricks from the dismantled bread oven.

Fixing the roof leak

Before we could finish boarding the bedroom we needed to fix the roof leak as the water was getting in via the ridge beam and dripping into the bedroom.

The roof was missing the ridge end caps so we needed to fit these to help keep the rain off the ridge beam. the ridge tile had to be cut down with an angle grinder as it was protuding over where the end cap fits:

New end cap fitted to protect ridge beam:

Unfortunately the water was still getting in after fitting the cap and sealing round it with mastic so more work was needed. A good friend lent us some scaffolding so we could take a closer look.

The render was broken around the ridge beam so we re-rendered the gable wall to keep the weather out:

Whilst the scaffolding was up we took the opportunity to paint the wall:

2 coats later....

If you check the photo above you can see we also covered all the main beams with lead sheeting, this further protects them from the rain. So far no more leaks so fingers crossed!