Renovation project - we have a wardrobe and another rotten joist! - Tuesday 9th October 2012

Renovation project - we have a wardrobe and another rotten joist! - Tuesday 9^th October

Its back to work again and it’s time to start building the wardrobe, if you remember when we first started on the attic there were two bedrooms and both had a sink and units in them, we have now removed the wall turning it into one big room (we have realised that this was the best decision as the rooms would’ve been very small and not managed an ensuite with both) the sink unit in the second attic room was in a small room, this is to be our walk in wardrobe, and also house the big water heater.

First off John needs to remove the old pipes and taps and replaster the holes in the walls

We bought all the wood we needed yesterday and John sets to measuring, sawing and screwing, and surprise surprise we hit another problem. In the corner of this room the floor has dropped by approx 2 inches, this is due to a rotten joist holding the floor up. This joist will need to be treated and part of it replaced.

We use one of the acro’s that we have to lift the joist back into place and realign the floor; this will support the floor until we replace the joist. It’s quite amazing to watch the floor lift (as I was telling john when he had got the floor back to where it should be). If you are planning on doing this yourselves, we highly recommend you purchase acro’s (you do not need to bring them with you as they are very cheap in France) we borrowed ours from next door, and for those of you who are like I used to be and have no idea what an acro is, it is like a car jack for the inside of your house, these are very strong and heavy pieces of steel, be very careful of your toes, they DO HURT!

I start to clean the windows, which means taking them off their hinges and scrubbing many decades of dirt of them, but the room does seem to be brighter.

As with most things in the house the job does take a lot longer than planned and we spend a couple of days on the wardrobe, it doesn’t help that the walls are in waves not straight lines and John becomes quite frustrated, especially when his plane breaks so he is unable to make the shelves fit perfectly with the contour of the walls. At this point I’m so desperate for a wardrobe I unhelpfully suggest that it doesn’t matter and to stick a bit of trim over the edges so nobody will see it, the response to which is I will bloody see it and know it’s not right (there really is no appeasing some people!).

I then have the delightful job of scrubbing the ensuite floor, this is done by hand with a piece of wire wool, it takes ages but the outcome is amazing, the floor looks fantastic.

After 2 days the wardrobe is finished, again we have to leave it without decorating or varnishing, but we will be in England soon and will get all of the varnish and paint that we need.