Friday, January 28, 2005
Electrics, plumbing and enduit
On the gite front things have been progressing very well.
Over the last few days nearly all the metal studwork has been finished upstairs, with just a couple of bits of plasterboard added. The insulation on all the outside walls has been installed and I've started the first fit electrics in one gite. My plumbing friend Ian has started the first fit plumbing - well cut a few holes in the floor. There's been a little bit of room redesign - which slowed us up a bit - because the architect plans were not very accurate and also we have changed a few things to make the plumbing (waste pipes) a little easier. As it turns out most of the bedrooms have actually got a little bigger with our jiggling about.
The enduit (rendering) guys came on Tuesday to render the breeze block parts of the building. They came first thing in the morning with a big mixing machine, which they unloaded about 50 bags of enduit into and then pumped the enduit onto all the walls. The enduit is a lime based coloured cement render. Because it's coloured there is no need to paint it. For the older wall (pictured) they added a 'resin' to help the enduit stick. A quick skim over with a float and they left at lunchtime to leave it to go 'off' before the finish is applied. It was a very cold day and the two of them ran everywhere, partly to keep warm I think.
About 4 PM they returned and ran over the drying enduit with a 'nail board' to give it a rough textured finish. The final product has transformed the building. It looks very smart and much more like two gites now.
| 9:31:40 PM
Electrics, plumbing and enduit
Where is the W key
I've been a bit lax with my entries for a few days because we finally got round to buying a new PC, the old PC crashed once too often. Reconfiguring, copying data, reinstalling programs, remembering passwords etc. takes ages. For some reason decided to buy a French PC, i.e. French Windows XP and French keyboard. The combination is absolutely driving me nuts. I can't type anything because all the letters are in the wrong places, you need to press the shift key to enter numbers from the top row and to cap it all I need a dictionary whenever Windows pops up a dialogue box or error message. It's really really frustrating. As an example typing http://www.google.com comes out as http/::zzz;google;co, Bizarre.Until I get used to the new keyboard layout my verbosity may be curtailed somewhat.
| 8:58:48 PM
Where is the W key
