Monday August 15

Granted, the world always looks better with a buzz. But after my sleepless night, we’ve made progress on the plans, and also with the wood piles. There is still a load of work ahead, and we’ll need every day at ten hours. But according to a rough calculation we can get the frame cut, the night before the crane comes. There will be an interesting mix between mill rule layout, square rule layout and scribing, for all those trying to figure this frame out in a couple of generations. Whatever gets the job done...

Just down the road lives a Compagnon menuisier. That is a journeyed cabinetmaker in the French tradition. We were over at his place for the Aperitif this evening. An occasion we all showered for! He’s retired, and therefore has plenty of stories about the little hamlet that La Garelie is, his professional life and over the top jobs for opera singers and the occasional story from his traveling time.

He’ll make us some wedges to key the scarf joints together, and has resurrected Emmanuels chisel that had lost both corners in the hard oak. Other treasures include the very french bisaigue as well as the more useful demi-bisaigue, or Stossaxt ( as we Germans call it) with my middle name for a makers mark.

On the whole the neighbors are very excited to see this ruin resurrected. Many have seen it go from being full of life to being abandoned but for an old couple over the span of a generation or two. All wish us bon courage. You can figure out what that means. My reply to that is that we’ll need it!

Stay healthy and don’t make any mistakes is the other thing to go by.

Looking for shade where ever.

Assembling the longitudinal walls...

...one little post at a time

Work continues on a tight schedule. There might be just enough days to complete the framing before the crane comes. A little bit of a nail biter is the wait for the crane. Since it is August in France, pretty much everyone and their grandmother are on vacation. Including the crane driver. We need him three days after we know that he will be back.

But.

We have no reservation.

Every day after that gives us less time to do the roofing.

On the other hand we need him to come as soon as possible to tell us that, Yes! it will be no problem to pick up trusses that weigh about a ton and are eleven meters wide over these crumbly walls and that his crane isn't too big to give us room to stack the trusses.... Yikes!

Impressions from La Garelie

Sunsets

The weather side. West. Always keep an eye on it.

The Kitchen.

The office.

With Le Ricard at L'heure de l'apero.

Tool storage. And sausage.

Saucisson sec, cendre et d'ane

La bagnole..

R4L

A classic.

Pictures

Controlled violence.

And another one.Just like that

Lien de potelet

Scribing the lien ( brace)

The wall assembly. One of eight

Finally weather as expected in August in southwest France

Plenty of wood waiting behind the house as well

Pottet flowers at 6m?

The stoic optimist

A roundabout view from two pieces of scaffolding

Daunting...?!

Traditional tech

The spoils of heavy labor. 2700 pounds of oak.

Le trait de Jupiter

Sturdy horses. A lesson learned in Poland.

One of many.

Job side beds are a scary place

The clock I have in the corner of my mac tells me that it’s four thirty six am. I am sittin on what will hopefully be a tiebeam in a few weeks time, with the computer on the wall post assembly that got fitted up. The moon is just about full and helped me on a good long walk I already took, after tossing and turning in my bed for however long.

Although we have made progress in the last three days ( since my last panic attack ), lying in bed gets the mind rolling. Things would not be half as dramatic as they are playing out in my head, if there were not the fixed time frame. We have four weeks to cut and raise the frame and then to sheathe and roof it. The original time plan allowed for one week of roofing and one week for raising. Two crane days and then plenty of rafters.

This leaves two weeks of serious cutting and fitting. Also in that time we’ll have to figure out where to put the crane and the assembled bents ( even though we are in vaes rural France, of course the job site is not nearly as vast) and how to secure them once they are at their destination. The original scheme also made use of both masonry gable triangles, one of which as collapsed since the owners were last here. So improvising here as well.

The side walls are not even demolished and the stone cutter friend that was going to help with foundations and stone stuff bailed because he was too busy with other work. So there is at least a ton of stone to remove from heights between 12 and 18 feet. and to be evacuated, and seats for our timbers to be made. In what order and form this all has to happen is pretty much up to me, which is why I have trouble sleeping sometimes.

Add all this to a moderately optimistic time estimate, and it starts to look more like a wildly optimistic one. I seriously underestimated time for foundation layout and measuring, timber handling and tooling up. And I have to be careful not to get angry about that.

Steve is a great guy and one of those stubborn characters that persist and eventually get things done. It is not the first time that I work for someone like this. Ignorance of the scale of the task is an advantage to these people. But not even having a decent shovel and broom when you are fixing to build a house drives me nuts.

I promise there will be more pictures together with all this text. The timbers are beautiful and it is a joy to work them. The first wall assemblies are coming together and it gives me a smile. I really hope that in a months time I can look back at a beautiful and covered frame, protecting walls that have been there for centuries. Hopefully more to come.

On that note I’ll try that bed again.

I can hear the first rooster.

Thank God tomorrow’s off.

Thursday 8/10

Thursday August 11

Today was a better day than yesterday. It was hot, no breeze until late in the afternoon, but no rain interruption. Emmanuel and I were busy laying out and cutting timbers, even fitting a small assembly together. There are eight of those to do. One is ready to be fitted, so six more to go. This includes the little posts that will be buried in the walls but for one face. They, next to the four king posts in the center of the structure have the most number of joints in them. So getting them done is a good dent in the joint count.

I am still a little worried about how our power tools will hold up. We have tuned the used chain mortiser to the point where we are no longer concerned that it might melt. It would probably benefit from being taken apart and having new brushes installed... But we won’t get that crazy if we don’t have to. The skill saw is a great work horse, a Mafell that is probably twenty years old, and if we don’t abuse it, it will do without problem. The blade will need sharpening.

Anyway. If we can keep this pace of layout and cutting, then we can make up ground that was lost in the initial days, with tool tune up and acquisition.

We have wonderful little concrete foundation cubes. They seem so out of place in this messy organic building that I am reminded of Stanley Kubrick for some reason. A few more days of curing, and they will be loaded with plenty of weight and disappear under the frame.

Two of the holes in the walls, which are to receive the big beams are pretty much made, which is encouraging. The rest of them might be done tomorrow, but it will be Sunday or Monday before we will start raising the first floor. With the inside of the building cleaned out to the point that we can wheel our cart in, as well as some of the scaffolding set up, the ideas for how to get the big beams up in the air are less panicked and more constructive. We still have to think backwards from the end date to the roofing, to the raising in order to determine how much time we have to cut this frame. It will be tight. I’ll be looking at my estimate and joint count to see how things look for us.

Wednesday August 10 Quick note

Since the time at the internet connections are short and slow I’ll prepare a sort of diary to write some thoughts offline and post them quickly with pictures!

Yesterday evening I realized that because of measurement errors, we pretty much need to redraw all our sketchup drawings. That on top of getting our behinds handed to us by 450 to 500 pound oak beams made for a very uncomfortable night.

Our accommodations are rustic at best as well. That little tempest destroyed what was supposed to be our shelter for rain days, soaked tools and ourselves, and only strategic positioning of bedding and suitcases prevented them from an equal fate.

The improvised ridge that Emmanuel and I put on the building has kept us dry in the more than usual rain showers, but most likely would not have helped in that storm either. Now I have a sheet stapled to the ceiling beams to keep the grit from falling on my bed every time Emmanuel moves on the floor above. A curtain for the doorway will help with the draft.

Electricity is shifted to the living quarters after work and the one drop light gets hung on a nail in whatever room is the most important.

On the good note: We have foundations for our four posts. They were poured today and will soon be up for the considerable task of carrying the dead weight of green oak.

A quick delve into Sketchup provided us with three pieces to rough cut and lay out. So tomorrow we can start cutting on everything that is part of the roof framing, while I continue to lay out.

It’s ten pm. After a short trip to Chez Patrick for emailing and a couple beers we made dinner which is now served. I hope that I will be awake enough to do more drawing after. Good night.