Makita tools for home repairs.

For those of you who are thinking about buying a decapitated palace and renovating it, it is worth factoring the cost of tools and equipment required. (If you're in the building game, then you'll be exempt from this advise!)



(Slate and Stone French Property)



I have seen over the years many renovation project fail, or take a very long time due to the lack of knowledge of what's fully required when renovating.

From a tool point of view, realistically I would recommend budgeting for a decent set of tool if you are thinking about buying an old ruin, especially if you are thinking about buying a Cottage in Brittany France.

Tools in France are very expensive, even the cheep DIY stuff like a common Black and Decker Drill. 5000Euros worth of tools (purchased in the UK) may seen excessive, but think about it this way; it will save you time in the long run when doing up your stone and slate cottage in the middle of the French country side. Also, if you buy a quality brand, like Makita, if they break, they are very easy to fix, and resell once you have finished your building project.

Just a note about some of my tools, in particular the cordless combi drills. My Makita BHP451 has technically died, (though I did manage to revive it back to life). In fairness the amount of abuse that baby has received in the last 4 years is quite astonishing. I now understand why Makita tools are coloured black and blue, it matches the colour of most things if you beat it hard enough!

Anyway, as I stated before, good quality tools can be fixed and spare part available online, for example, replacement parts for my combi drill can be found here - http://www.powertoolspares.com/tool/makita/spares-and-accessories-for-bga452/bga452/spares/, though my repair just required a loose wire to be replaced.



(Makita combi drill BHP451 - stripped and serviced)



However, I have invested in a replacement; Makita DHP458 Body only, (I have loads of spare batteries.) I chose to get a replacement as my tools are my bread and butter. When something plays up, I can't afford to waste time.

There is a big difference between both the Makita BHP451 and the DHP458, though not obvious straight away. The main highlights are length, DHP458 is shorter, power; 10% more; has a better hook and has reduce the speed options from 3 to 2. (Having 3 speeds on the 451 required a larger gear box, thus making it longer and not really a usful feature!)



(Comparing Cordless Drills -  Makita BHP451 and DHP 458)

 

Brittany Cottages Couetilliec - Week 2 renovation.

Cottages and Holiday Gites in Brittany are all similar in design, usually consisting of stone wall structures with traditional black slated roofs. When it comes to interior renovations, the one thing that's nice to preserve is the available original features. They are simple constructions using a lot hardwood timber.




(Brittany Cottages Couetilliec)


Hardwood maybe obvious building material but often I have seen this overlooked when highlighting the original features of your property. The current project in Brittany Cottages Couetilliec has a beautiful chestnut flooring and timber roof frame. This will be made into a feature by removing all the paint, tile adhesive and anything else the previous owner chose to add and reveal wood in its original state.

Week 2 was a simple week, stud out the ceiling, set at the new height of 2.4m (this being possible after raising the Collar beams) and sanding the floors and common rafters.

Studding out the ceiling was the easy part, mostly it's just banging sticks together, (setting out every stud at 400mm centres. However sanding the floor was a real pain in the ass which was a first!

Usually, sanding the floors before you install walls is a straight forward exercise. Having a large space going along the wood grain, is slow but rewarding, seeing the natural wood reveal itself is very satisfying, especially if it's a pine wood floor.

When it's a chestnut wood flooring, which is a hardwood, that has never been loved since the day it was laid (some 50 plus years ago) and to add insult to injury having at some point in its life lino glued to an inch of its life, this took some time to sand. 3 LONG days to get 50m2 to a reasonable state.

We hired a drum sander for the main area of the floor, from Kiloutou, which are good well-kept machines. The cost of the sander is reasonable; though remember the costs starts to spiral when adding the sand paper, and dust sack. However if you break down the cost of sanding a floor compared with tile/carpet/laminate flooring, per square meter, sanding is the cheapest option as well as the best looking (in my opinion!).

Finishing off the edges, you use an orbital edging sander. As with the drum sander, start with 24 grit, working your way up to a 120, using a 40 and 80 grit on the way. Just be careful when using an industrial orbital sander as it has a tendency to bite into the floor is you don't keep it moving or if you put too much pressure on the edge.



(Sanding the Floor with hires Kiloutou hired drum sander.)




Floors and ceiling done, in week 3 we can build the walls and install the first fix of electrics/plumbing.

 

SparrowLegs Renovates holiday Gite, Collar Beam - End of week 1.

By the middle of the week one, the first floor had been gutted. This gave us a clean canvas to translate the design done on Sweethome 3D to the first floor. This was a rough translation as the real world environment highlighted faults with the CAD design and the inaccuracies with the original measurement plotted on the CAD program. (Actually, this was only out be 30mm max.)



(SweetHome 3D CAD Software)

The existing Ergonomics of ceiling height was to low, sitting at 2.15 meters. Increasing the height was possible, but governed by the Collar beam.

The Collar Beam in this project is under compression rather than tension as it keeps the Common rafters from sagging. If the Collar Beam was a around a third up from the base of Common rafter, then this would have been under tension, preventing the weight of the roof pushing the walls out of possition or the Header Beam (Wall Plate) from detatching from the outer wall. This is also called a Collar tie, generally a misused name for Collar beams under Compression.

(Collar Tie)

 

(Collar Beam)
 

Also another point particular to this project and a factor regarding any decisions moving the Collar beam was the understanding of traditional roofing techniques in rural France. This roof spreads the load on the Wall plate by using a Hammerpost (or internal Sprocket) scarf jointed to the Common rafter. These where both then held into position using a Hammerbeam and some bolts.

(A - Common Rafter, B - Hammerpost, C - Bolt, D - Hammerbeam.)

By measuring the distance between the Ridge beam and the Hammerpost and knowing that the Collar beam in under compression, I was able to increase the ceiling height by 250mm by moving the Collar beam. This wouldn't cause any issues and increases the ceiling height to become standard. (Well, standard in the UK! - In the uk, the standard ceiling height is 2.4 meters, or 8ft - 38mm difference. This height is why plasterboard in the UK 2400mm * 1200mm.

Collar beams raised ready for the new ceiling studwork to be installed on week 2.

Brittany holiday Gites & cottage Renovations - Week 1

SparrowLegs first week!

Week one has been and passed. In fairness this is the easiest part of any renovations, its to knockdown, remove and clean the existing internal structure.

(Walls Removed - Sorting of materials)



Before anything was removed, for example -Walls, a few things needed to be ascertained and carried out. Disconnecting the electrics and powering of the master Fuse (RCD). I usually disconnect everything, just to be sure that there is no possibility of electrocution when taking down the walls.

Second item to ascertain is working out where you are going to take the waste. This may sound silly but it is important to know this. In France, especially Brittany we don't have the luxury of skips. Not to say they don't exist, but at 600+ Euros per skip, this is expensive and generally difficult to hire.

I have a crap old van, so this gets used and abused, but it does force me to think about wheatI'm disposing of (dues to size and will it fit tin the old girl) and whether anything can be recycled?

Once you have located you nearest dump (dechetterie), its worth popping in and finding out what if any are the weight limits and if materials have to be separated.

Last thing not to forget is disconnecting the water and plugging up any exposed evat (waste pipes.) Working around the smell of shit really doesn't appeal to me, especially the clients! ;)


Removing walls, door and generally anything that isn't holding the house up was done in a day of two. To the inexperienced renovator, this doesn't mean that it's a frenzied attack! You will miss a trick if it were.

When renovating, there is an order to assembling, ceilings, studs, doors, electrics, plumbing, plasterboard etc etc. By removing these items in reverse order you'll be able to stockpile materials such as doors, metal/wood stud and recycle. (This method does take a little longer, but it can pay for itself in reducing the number of trip to the local dump, as well as saving money on buying new materials.



(Clean and tidy workspace)

 

 

Items needed:

 

Safety gear - Gloves, Glasses, dust mask, etc.

Something to ferry rubbish to the tip - Van/Trailer

Rubble sacks

Hammer, Crowbar (Wrecking bar) Impact Drivers and basic general tools.

MANPOWER!!!

 



 

 

 





Central Brittany Holiday Gite Renovation - 10 Week Challenge

The 10 week Challenge!

What's the challenge I hear you say? Renovate 100m2 Gite Cottage in 10 weeks. And when the word renovation is used, I mean complete and utter remodelling of the abortion which was erected 20 plus years ago.

Two guys, a boat load of tools, to rip out and replace everything but the exterior walls and roof. To start off you need to DESIGN!

For a successful build it is important to have some sort of design work finalised, it will never end well if you try and make it up as you go along.

If you're on a budget and can't afford an interior architect, I recommend Sweet Home  3D - http://www.sweethome3d.com/. It can be used in conjunction with other software such as Sketchup, or solely for just mapping out the interior layout.

One key point about designing a layout for a future renovations is it will allow you to estimate to some accuracy the amount of materials one might require.

 (New Layout proposed.)