Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Long-time followers of this rubbish will recall ...

... that the front of the house looksjust as it does in this photo. But not any more.

In fact this evening it looks like it does in the photo just here. And if you look very carefully and compare the two images, you might notice that the windows are different.

In fact, this morning Terry and I fitted the new windows that I bought in the spring.

It all stemmed from Terry saying the other day that he is going to change a door and a window in his house in a couple of weeks time and how it needs two people to do it, but Liz is a busy woman these days (I don't think that I mentioned that Liz has passed a Diploma or something in teaching English as a Second Language and is now gone back to teaching but in the French educational system) and so he will be stuck for a hand.

Cue the "well, I'll give you a hand willingly and you can help me with my windows some time" which brought the reply "we can do your windows on Monday". And here we are.

The old windows came out bit by bit as you might expect, and once we had cemented in where the frames had been,the new windows went in pretty straightforwardly, and that was impressive.

I have to go into Montlucon on Wednesday and what I'll do is to order the one for the ground floor. And if Julie can cut the shaped glass for the front door, I can fit that as well and that will be a vast improvement if I can fit those before it all goes cold around here. The weather is still holding up by the way - a beautiful day in fact.

    After lunch we struggled into the attic with the new woodstove and that's now fitted in place of the old pot-bellied stove.

This is big and heavy for its size - it's clearly solidly built and Terry reckons that it will burn me out of here if I load it right up.

You can see the oven bit too - the lift-up lid and the bit that goes down to the crease just above the window. That will be plenty big enough for pizza,rice pudding, baked potato and the like. I hope that it works as well as it looks. 

Terry also helped me get the hydro plasterboard upstairs to the first floor as well. It's of heavy fabrication and it's also 13mm instead of the standard 10mm that I use. I can manhandle 10mm plasterboard  upstairs on my own just about but there was no way I could have done it with this stuff.

Terry also brought some of the scaffolding around and left it here for me. I'll put that up tomorrow in the lean-to and once it's up it will speed up the work pointing the wall. It's much easier doing that from a decent and comfortable position.

We shall see.   

2 comments:

  1. Looks good all round Eric. The Stove looks like it'll keep you all toastie this winter. Which from the stories in our newspapers will be just as well. They are forecasting a siberian freeze up for us and parts of europe in a few eeks time. I do hope they are wrong for all concerned as the way the government is cutting the winter fuel payment and fuel costs are rising there will be some avoidable deaths this winter, because people won't be able to afford to heat their homes.

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  2. Yes, it's not just the heat but the cooking bit that's exciting and I'm looking forward to that.

    I'm not looking forward to Siberian weather conditions and I feel sorry for the victims of the nation's economy drive. It's always the weakest who are the hardest hit because they aren't powerful or organised enough to fight back.

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