Right now, I am sitting at home looking out into the garden of clear blue skies and bright sunshine as we enjoy the most amazing late summer / early autumn weather.
I love this time of year and it is a fantastic time to come and explore Finistère as the crowds, such as they ever are in this expansive region, have left and you can take things at a gentle pace.
David’s Dad, Roger, arrived with us last Friday and today we went to the fabulous Sunday market in Plestin-les-Grèves (almost as good as that in Daoulas) before walking short circuit around the Pointe de Locquirec (a town definitely worth a visit when you’re here) and enjoying refreshment in 20-plus degree heat on a café terrace. You could almost be on the Mediterranean.
Pleasingly, it has been a productive week too and I did manage, as hoped in my last blog, to get as far with the roof on the storage space as I could with the wood that I had. It took a little longer than I’d hoped as I had to remove the 2 sheets I’d already installed and square them up a little better to the building so that the others wouldn’t start to move further and further away from the wall!
With the storage space roofed, we hope it will benefit the yews and hollies we have planted on our rear boundary with Streat al Louarn as the rainwater is diverted closer to their roots. They have certainly put on a lot of growth since we cut down the enormous leylandii prior to building the pool and can only benefit again when we cut down the last of the self-set sycamores and what’s left of the chestnut – which we can then store in the newly built storage space.
They have certainly put on some good growth since we planted them in 2016 / 7 although sadly we have lost a couple of hollies in this year’s drought.
I managed to progress the preparation required before re-pointing the wall behind our wood burner. While I haven’t yet cleaned off the face of the slates (although I have bought some tools that may assist this) I did spend hours raking out the old ‘mortar’ between the stones.
From what I could tell, this was a combination of proper lime mortar (not much); cement mortar (thankfully not as much as I’d feared); and general soot and dirt. On the sides of the fireplace, above the wooden beams, the slates had been covered with some sort of mortar / plaster to give them a smooth surface which was covered in soot and dirt. I have now removed this as we will just point it and try to make more of a feature of the stone.
It became obvious that even when this fireplace was constructed, which we can’t date very accurately but we think likely in the early 19th century, workmen cut corners and left large holes where slate probably should have used! One particular hole, almost perfectly central to the back of the fireplace, we assume was intentional as it seems to line up with a feature inside the wooden lintel as if something was supported between the 2 from which to hang pots. The hole at the rear had been filled with an old piece of wood but I will try and keep it visible (although it is likely to be behind the new flue) as a talking point!
Because the next step, trying to clean the slate surface, is likely to be more dusty, I will begin tomorrow and, as I did when I took the register plate down, I will put up a plastic sheet to prevent too much of the dust spreading into the house. I should then be able to actually start to repoint which will be only my second time using lime mortar – and the first time I will have to mix it myself!
While I am pleased with all of the work we’re managing to progress and are especially happy with the big things like the interior of the pool house, this week I have pleased myself with a couple of smaller things, both lock related.
One was fixing the antique lock that keeps the Priory mezzanine wardrobe closed. Recently it had failed so the deadbolt didn’t stay out and so the door didn’t stay closed. I dismantled the lock which exposed a very simple mechanism with 3 moving parts and showed the failure was due to one sprung element breaking. With the aid of small spring I’d doctored from a retractable ball point pen and drilling a small hole in the lock housing, I seem to have fixed it. We’ll see for how long!
The second was the front door of Granary which we had made some years ago. The door is wood and has a locking mechanism that relies on a hook at the top and bottom of the front edge engaging with a recess in the door frame.
Being wood, the door has dried over the very hot summer and warped so the top latch wasn’t easily engaging in its recess so to lock. The door needed to be manipulated a little and a lot of force applied to the handle which had, in turn, worn the spindle so the handle had to be turned more and more to close leading to knuckles scraping against the frame and a concern, for us, that it will fail completely locking guests either in or out! With new guests arriving this evening in Granary we were keen this didn’t happen.
After a bit of exploration, I replaced the spindle with one a couple of millimetres wider than the old, swapped the inside handle for the outside, and cut a new recess in the frame for the hook to engage to – and it seems to have done the trick. We’ll see for how long!
Small tasks perhaps, but very satisfying for me to have sorted them.
With Roger with us we should have a sociable week ahead and the weather looks like it may become more autumnal forcing me indoors – so I can progress, and hopefully finish, pointing the fireplace.
Salut.