ere is the mezzanine sleeping deck with placo in place and the wood in the office painted to colour. You can see where electrics and fittings are to be finished off. 







There will be a door through here made of the same wood into the storage area.







The hidden stairwell up to the sleeping deck 





This shows the outside wall in the office now insulated with 75mm Quinntherm behind and placo in place/. 
The V shaped gap above the wall and below the roof is stuffed with insulation of all sorts. 







This shows the sort of hidden stairwell in the office that leads up to the sleeping deck. I was going to do a sort of James Bond bookcase that slid away to reveal the stairs but MrsB quite rightly suggested that it would be the worst kept secret in history as I would forever be showing it to people.  





All of the exposed wood beams in this area will be painted the grey colour as it complements the slightly reddish hues of the chestnut floor and douglas fir paneling. 
It will be the same in the shed room as well.


It is a joy to see parts of it coming together to look more house like rather than building site.
Still a long way to go but slowly and surely we are getting there.

The Shed Room takes shape

The Shed Room 

The large dorma extension at the rear of the house has always been known as the “shed room” and the intention was to clad the interior with wood in homage to the sheds we live in and love. 
The sheds themselves will come down as soon as the house is habitable ie the toilets and plumbing and heating all working. 

We decided to leave the ceilings in here vaulted but thought that it might become a bit “woody” or “sauna” looking if we clad the whole thing in wood so a compromise was reached where the inner gable would be plaster and the three walls would be wood. 

Here it is bare naked when first constructed 



And here with its full outfit on apart from finishing under the eaves

 


Here is a side shot so you can get an idea of the angles and shapes of the roof and the amount of space it affords us inside 




Here is the interior as it was and has been used for a while as a “Glamping” room when pals come to stay and is very popular. 
The interior size is 4 meters by 4 meters and the window is 2 meters by 120cm 




We have had to leave this bit of the insulation incomplete as it is where the flue form the log burner downstairs will exit the roof through one of those angled roof things. It will be a double skinned insulated stainless flue coming up from the fire which I have seen before that you can easily touch as they don’t get too hot.

A good mate of mine in the UK fitted a lovely wood burner into his lounge (which was in a small end of terrace place) by building an inglenook outside and then beating through to it. He then place d the wood burner in that and had one of those double skinned insulated stainless jobs running up the outside of the house. 
The fire inside would be roaring but you could touch the flue outside with no burns. It is a great way of fitting a wood burner into a room if limited on space. 
Anyway I digress




Here is my son and I installing the thick stuff (125mm) over the chevrons . Like the roof all over the house it is tiles hooked to batten, over a plastic membrane, over chevrons. 
The insulation is 30mm Quinntherm between the chevrons (and level with the bottom of them) leaving a 25 to 30mm air gap above. The 125mm Quinntherm is screwed and counter-battened to the chevrons. 
Then it is placo and followed by plaster. I have 180mm screws which means with the thickness of the batten 10mmm plus the insulation 125mm I have at least 35mm of screw holding into the chevron which is plenty. 
You have to make sure you mark the run of the chevron well as with screws that long it can be easy to miss if you don’t have the drill at the perfect angle. 

For the “must use breathable membrane” converts the air gap above the membrane and also below it ensures there is never any danger of condensation. 
I am aware that some would prefer to use breathable membrane which is fine and dandy however with proper air-gaps there is no problem doing it the way we have. 





This shows one side insulation complete and the other side not started.
The top end of the gable is made up of 22mm Douglas fir, membrane (roofing felt I had spare) then 10mm airgap, then 75mm of celotex, then multi layer foil (35mm) then 10mm air gap then placo. 





This shows the Celotex/ Quinntherm going in on the side walls of the shed room. 

The triangular gap leads down to the lounge and will be insulated with 100mm acoustic/thermal rockwool type stuff from the other side once the wood cladding is up inside the shed room.

The wall is made up of on the outside slate on batten over membrane (plastic) then 10mm air gap then 75mm celotex / Quinntherm then 35mm multi foil, then 10mm air gap, then 22mm douglas fir on inside.





Here you can see one of the walls and the lower end of the gable ready for the wood cladding on the inside, with the roof insulation above in place and waiting for the placo. 





Now the ceiling gets it placo


 
[


And the internal gable gets its placo





And the walls get their wood cladding (and before I have had chance to get any photos of the empty room it is full of stuff again ha ha 












None of the beadings are in place yet until after we have skimmed the ceiling with plaster. (we are not fans of the taping and jointing malarkey and would rather have a proper coat of plaster) Once the ceiling is done and we have painted the beams the beading and fiddley bits would go in to tidy it up and finish the job. 

The wood (Douglas fir) has been treated with 2 coats of 5 star wood preserver and has had 2 coats of Danish oil / thinners 50/50 mix and one neat coat. 

It will probably get another neat coat or two once all the beadings are in place.





So there we are that’s the “shed room” 75% done . The window has been made in hard wood and is comprises of three even sized panes, with the outer two opening and we will be fitting that when I get home. 

Cheers
Bentley

Magical transformation under the feminine touch

I have just received the latest photos in from MrsB who has been busy creating the semi circular area and step that leads from the terrace/patio and then blends into the garden. 
It has involved cladding the first part of our outside fire and oven in stone and creating a natural progression from the terrace into the garden space utilising stone that has been taken from the various works done on the house. 

I am well chuffed with the work she has completed and the way it joins the two spaces. Even though I might be a bit biased it is still a quite stunning piece of work that adds a beautiful natural feature to the project.
I always thought it would be impossible to be able to love or admire her more than I do but I do believe we have just gone past 12 on my love dial and it only went up to 10 in the first place. 



It has been transformed from this scraggy pile when I left for work 4 weeks ago 




Into this today



You can see in the photo above two of the homemade slabs that are undergoing field trials (ie getting walked on a lot) to make sure they will be robust enough for the main job. 






I am aglow with great pride.

(ps the semi circular bit will be slabbed with the same as the terrace ie our homemade coloured slabs)

Love and Peace Bentley 

What a Slab

Finding the slabs for the terrace/patio (call it what you will) 

Despite a fairly exhaustive search we found nothing of interest for ‘sensible’ money at any builders merchant or Brico sheds. To give you an idea, one fairly ordinary contoured slab we spotted was

Sit down and wait for it......

“The “very special price for you Mr Bentley” because I am a good customer at this builders yard”

75.99 euros a square meter!!!!!!

FFS I could carpet it with Axminster pure wool cheaper than that.

So we flashed up the computer and started searching on line for something that would be to our taste. 
The best looking and most suitable paving slabs for what we wanted were (surprise surprise) sourced in the UK and were imported “Indian stone” that had some plant fossils in them as well. 
Not sure about their carbon footprint, what with all the volcanic activity and the tectonic plate movements that resulted in their making, plus the extraction, trimming and then transportation to the UK from the sub-continent, but they looked very good. 
A mate of mine who is landscape gardener has used them on many occasions and vouched for their durability. 
They looked great had colours similar to our back wall and came in at about 23 quid a square meter. However then we would have been faced with getting them to France and at about 7 or more tonnes in weight, not particularly cheap or convenient as they would only be able to be dropped at the front of the house then lugged through by sack truck, and so the cons started to outweigh the pros.

Having read about people making their own paving slabs we did some research and decided to have a go. I remembered seeing some slabs being made on this site a few years ago and after showing MrsB the idea on line she agreed that while I was at sea she would be able to make a few every day and also add some flourishes of colour and inlaid objects in the slabs, to give them some of the quirkiness and originality that we prefer.

As usual the end of the time at home came before the end of the jobs I had to do and so I quickly made some molds on the morning I flew back to sea. Unfortunately they proved to be a bit awkward and fiddly (because I had rushed them a bit) (bloody hell I could have had a lie-in instead), so with some advice gained from the pages from French Entree (an expat living in or connected to France website  that is a rich mine of information an all sorts of subjects) and the help of Sylvie (a long standing friend who lives nearby and has created and built her own beautiful and quirky house)  MrsB worked out a system of manufacture and they are looking jolly good judging by the photos I have seen so far.

The design is simple enough as we have used the three size approach, with a square 400 x 400, an oblong 200 x 400, and a square 200 x 200, that way you can lay them how you like, in whatever random pattern you like (as is our want) and they always end up fitting together. 

MrsB soon came up with a more productive method of manufacture than the three molds I had left by utilising some of the many bits of timber and concrete blocks we have hanging about.

After a few experiments with various mixes she finally found the one that gives good results every time and is currently undergoing stress testing by placing a few in the main route in and out of the house so they get walked on a lot to see if they are thick enough (about 4cms) which I believe to be plenty.

As is normal with MrsB and concrete or render of any kind it provides a home for the many varied pieces of metal that we have found in the house and the varying colours are exactly what we want. 

Although it is many people s choice what we didn’t want was a load of perfectly square slabs all laid in exact lines forming some regimented, controlled surface that was millimeter perfect. Dont get me wrong as it can look great in a shopping malls, around swimming pools and in many other paved floor settings, but not for us. 

We are both already thrilled with the way it will look and when complete we are sure it will add yet another original dimension to the house the Bentleys built. 



Here are the molds as made by Mrs B

These were the first ones released form the molds and “yes” I did have a small attack of the vapours at seeing one of my best wood chisels being used to open the mold. 





I didn’t moan as much about the rasp being used to tidy them up as I also use it for tidying up the edges of newly cut plasterboard. 





These were made using white cement and with no colouring added 










On checking the price of white cement MrsB decided to have a go using normal colour cement and then adding some colour using either poster paint or powder paint and some nits of metal etc and these are the first results of that experiment 







MrsB has now been to the “Pigment” shop in Ploermel and is starting to produce some even more interesting effects. Once aged down it will (in our opinion) create a quite marvelous terrace. 













So the next time you see them will be when we start laying them and I am not sure when that will be yet but it wont be long. 


Love and Peace 

Bentley

Shed 3 from Two Sheds Bentley

Shed Three from “Two Sheds Bentley” 

The house has slowly but surely become full of bits of wood, beams, insulation, tools, bits of furniture, scaffolding, tools and materials of all sorts and as we progress from upstairs to downstairs it was becoming obvious we needed some storage space that would cope not only with the current “stock” but also become the “workshop” once the project was finished.
As cosy and well organized as the current workshop is it also happens to be in what is to become the utility room and MrsBs studio, an concept I have been reminded of on several occasions . 

We also need to get the kitchen floor laid with the water main underneath it, along with the UFH, other plumbing and electrics to the various areas of the kitchen, plus the drain our from the sink etc. 

We toyed with the idea of putting up a temporary shelter in our bit of land across the lane because we own a massive “eurocamp” tent but were not sure if it would do the whole winter erected. 
In the end, rather than sort a temporary fix, we decided to go for as large permanent shed, as big as allowed under what we understood to be the current planning law. 
General consensus was that if it was under 20M2 we didn’t need planning permission but that it was polite to inform the mayor of our plan. 
We duly popped into to see the mayor to be informed that we had to submit a plan and that I would not be allowed to use corrugated iron or corrugated cement board (as was the original plan) for the roof or walls. This is despite the fact that there are half a dozen buildings sporting such materials within eyesight. 

Anyway rather than spend any pointless, and somewhat gormless, time arguing against the mayor or logic of the French planning system we submitted plans as requested only to be told that we couldn’t build it where planned (I wanted to leave a meter around the back for mowing strimming etc and also for some rainwater butts) but it either had to be on the boundary or 3 meters from it. 

Although I think it doesn’t make any sense to do it that way, they are the rules and we were not going to get permission otherwise, so with some new measurements of the location ie right on the back border, but 3 meters in from the sides we just ended up with a longer thinner shed rather than a shallower deeper one. The end result of floor space is the same 19.5 meters.

We also decided it would be built in concrete block (which was acceptable to the mayor ) and then clad it in wood later when we take the sheds down form the back of the house that we currently live in. 

I had already graded the land down to near level and so now we had to try and peg out Mr Pythagoras 3-4-5 to get the right angles we needed . My son is doing the ground work while I look important (and inot the distance) on the digger. 






We went for the measurements of 3.5 x 5.6 to give us about 19.6 M2 floor space and so then it was a case of putting in some rudimentary footings to take the blocks. It is only going to be one skin of blocks, so we laid out some footings and then went through the task of leveling them with the laser level. We used an upturned rake and a bit of tape to work out higher or lower and applied some “boofing” (using the rake to tamp down high spots) or putting in and leveling extra cement where required .

Here is MrsB on the rake and me trying to get the laser level itself to be level. 






And here is ZFB getting his own bit of “lazing about on the digger”. 


 



Here goes up the first days blocks running to a string line. We had 4 pallets of blocks delivered and placed as close to the job as we could get them. It made for a few awkward turns with the muck filled wheelbarrow though.






Here it is after day two







After a couple more days it is starting to look a bit more like it








So the plan was to have a simple sloping roof, during the planning palarva we were told that we had to use the flat metal f roofing (with ridges) so we bought enough to do just the roof of the shed for now.
The plan is to overhang the chevrons to create a lean to later as you will see .

Once I had fitted the door frame ( a railway sleeper is the bottom bit) sleeper I then laid on the extra blocks for the height differential to give the slope. I then fixed heavily treated chevrons to the top of the wall for the roof supporting chevrons to sit on (and be nailed to)



 



You can see the idea here with a 5.2 chevron laid across the span, although we did go up another block course





Here you can see the treated chevron on top of the wall and the supporting chevrons holding up the roof. We treated the wood with a mixture of creosote engine oil and some black bitumen stuff all mixed together. I think they will still be there long after the concrete blocks have crumbled to dust. 







The roofing material is flat metal with pressed ridges. We double treated the wood where it will be in contact with the ridges to make sure it didn’t rot. We used 68 x 43 chevrons (or near as dammit) and the 43 bit just sits in the ridge perfectly. 






I will fill the sloping gap with blocks at the end shown and with timber on the other end that you can see in place in the second photo







This is the overhang that will become the wood store when roofed. Didn’t roof it straight away as unsure of the rules regarding lean to’s so we may just wait a while and do it at later date when no one will really notice. The chevrons will be extended a bit further and guncked up with treatment. 


 


Once I had done the roof I thought it was a bit “bouncy” so decided to retro fit a support beam. The lateral span for the chevrons is about 3.6 meters which is a bit long for a chevron so I bought a 250 x 50 for the 5.6 meter longitudinal span to add some “beef” to the roof and also give me a solid beam to act as lifting point inside.


 






Here it is before the doors so hopefully you can now see that it will have the extended wood store roof on the right hand side and on the left hand side it will also have a lean to roof with wood paneled fencing sides that will become the home for our Harry Chuffer the tractor





Here it is with the doors on and the scalping floor down. I will probably lay a concrete floor and when we do the kitchen we will order an extra cube or so. (a golden rule I have learnt during tis is that if you are getting concrete delivered for a floor etc then always have another job that they can put the excess in, because they wont take it away with them and the last thing you want is a big blob of unwanted concrete hanging about) 





It will also have one of the three spare small wood burners installed for using up old wood when I am in there in the winter months creating masterpieces. The wood cladding will come later as will the proper work benches and tools etc. WE don’t intend to run a separate supply down there and will just have a heavy duty extension with its own plug and breaker up at the house to cope with some high kilowatt machinery in the future. 

So Shed three is nearly complete apart from its wood cladding and the side lean-to roofs.
It has already swallowed all the excess stuff we had lurking in the house and has bags of room to spare

Simple design, easy to build, total time 8 days total cost 800 euros. It has already proved its value.

Love and Peace
Bentley