Concreting finished - 12 tonnes, four days!

...including three window cills.
 

sheep shearing

Two six hour concreting shifts and about 3/5 of the barn floor is laid. Another cubic metre tomorrow then I need more cement and ballast for the last section. 

Sheep shearing is tomorrow and as normal 4 sheep sheep refused to go in the barn. Two and a half hours of chasing them and finally they're in. minutes before the drizzle started, so we should be good to go tomorrow.

Managed to get a brand new scaffold tower on "leboncoin" and saved myself 300 euros. The seller was a bit dodgy, but as long as I paid cash all was good. The scaffolding is still in its original plastic unopened wrapping. The plans for the barn construction stages are slowly taking shape, hopefully we'll be watertight and re-roofed before the end of the year.

Pointing almost finished..

Outside anyway! Inside the DPM, insulation and screeding rails are now in place.

 

more progress

A trip to the natural granite sand pit with the tractor and sieve this morning, then a bit of pointing (still wet). Will probably mix and pour the ground floor concrete slab next week.

 

Cour Vic

A wander upto Cour Vic last week before Michiel heads off to the Netherlands.  It started out as a hot day, but a strong ici wind was blowing about 1500m and in the end we had to put every layer of clothing we had. A rare sighting of a cuckoo was a highlight!

Cuckoo

A herd of isards watching us from above, or were they just sheltering on the lee-side of the ridge?

At the weekend the pipework for the below ground services (water, electricity and sewerage) were put in the barn - hard work and another mountain of rocks removed. The floor is now levelled and blinded, ready for insulation, DPM and concrete slab.

Squirrel

With medium spotted woodpecker

 

Atelier progress

A busy and tiring couple of weeks. After the large stone retaining wall was built with the stone from the demolished wall and manger in the barn, the next job was levelling the floor. A huge amount of pickaxing, shovelling and raking, yielded even more stones and slabs. Several more walls were constructed around gardens, until finally after about 50 barrow loads of surplus material had been removed the floor was more or less flat.

The next task was a level survey of the tops of the existing beams which varied about 15cm. About 50 timber blocks had to be precisely made to sit on the tops of the wonky beams at each joist position, so that the they would be supported at the correct height to make the floor level.  New timbers were resin anchored to the gable walls to support the joist ends as there are no beams here.

Michiel had gifted me a days labour as a birthday present, so yesterday he and I set about installing the joists. This progressed fairly quickly where we had blocks to set them on, but at the high end the joists had to be notched over each of the beams to become level. It took all day but finally it was done. 

Today after some perimeter blocking between the joists, the OSB flooring was laid which will eventually support underfloor heating. About 85% is done.

Unearthed this stone with masons name and date....C. J-P Aout 1886 - probably "CARRERE Jean-Paul August 1886"