Hornet Blockade

We have a colony of feral honey bees living in the void between our attic floor and bedroom ceiling. They installed themselves back in April and really have been no trouble at all apart from me having to call Bernard the Beek to see if he could entice them into a 'proper' hive, and if not, ask his advice about how to manage them. The answer to the latter question is simple: there is no need to do anything at all.

The other day I noticed that there was a large number of bees huddled around the entrance to their hive, and hanging in the air in a thoroughly menacing way was a group of Asian Yellow-legged Hornets Vespa velutina (Fr. Frelon asiatique). These are notorious for raiding honey bee hives and beekeepers get very agitated about them.

Watching the action (or, to be honest, the lack of action) it seemed to me that the problem for the bees was not so much getting captured and eaten, but being trapped so they couldn't fly out and forage. It was a very hot day, and they could not fly off to find water for a drink either, and neither could they effectively fan the interior of the hive to keep it cool. The hornets dared not approach too closely as they would have got overwhelmed by guard bees who would envelope them in a mass of hot honey bees, thus killing the hornet. So it was a standoff, with the hornets presumably hoping that if they waited long enough the honey bees would fly in desperation. 

I don't know how long the situation endured. After lunch I looked again, and there were only a few guard bees at the hive entrance, and no hornets in sight. The next day I did see a hornet bearing off a honey bee.

The hornets will be wanting to catch bees to feed their own larvae. Hornet and wasp larvae are 'carnivores' and will eat the soft parts of other insects, which the adults either catch or scavenge for their young. It could also include bits of dead animals, ham and such from your picnic, and fish from the fishmongers at the market. The adult hornets and wasps themselves feed on sugary substances such as nectar that they forage from flowers, and soft drinks and jam at your picnic.

At the back door, the Asian Hornets are staking out the German wasps too, but here they are themselves having to fight off European Hornets Vespa crabro (Fr. Frelon), who also fancy a waspy snack.

European Hornet dismembering a European Wasp Vespula germanica on our door mat. The hornet has stung the wasp in the head and has already removed the abdomen.

Treenails

Treenails, pronounced 'trennels' and called 'chevilles bois' or 'chevilles charpente' in French, are a key part of traditional carpentry, joinery and boat construction. Structural beams, rafters and braces are linked using mortise and tenon joints. That is where one element has a 'tongue' (tenon), which fits into a slot (mortise) in the other element. The joint is then fastened with a treenail, which is pushed perpendicularly through all the layers of wood by way of carefully drilled rabbet holes.

The grain of the treenail must be at right angles to the grain of the beam with the mortise, and the diameter of the treenail needs to be fractionally bigger than the hole into which it will be forced. In France both ends of the treenail generally protrude from the joint ie they are usually not cut flush. They are not glued. Treenails are structurally sound in spans up to 9 metres, but cannot be guaranteed beyond that.

A hard but flexible wood such as Robinia (Fr. Acacia) is traditionally used, but Oak and Chestnut can also be found (and would have been used before Robinia arrived in Europe in the 17th century). Treenails are subjected to tremendous force and must be able to withstand the natural movement in the carpentry joint as the Oak beams dry and twist. As a result they can't generally be removed, except by drilling out, and they certainly can't be reused, as they will have deformed in situ.

Before mechanisation treenails were made by splitting the wood then shaping with a drawknife. As a result they will be slightly faceted. Modern ones are about 35 mm in diameter and 24 cm long. The old ones in our house are variable and between 15 and 25 mm in diameter, and 21 to 24 cm long.

The smaller versions of treenails used in furniture making are known as dowels (tourillons in French) and are generally glued.

 

A broken treenail.

The photos are all of treenails in our attic, so are 19th century and handmade.

Reasons to be Thankful

One of the many reasons we have to be thankful is for having lovely Franco-Irish neighbours, Anne and John. On Monday John very kindly stacked most of our three tonnes of firewood that had been delivered that scorching hot day. I did half an hour of stacking and probably got about half a tonne done in that time, but it was as much as I was willing to risk in one go, with my torn shoulder tendon. Simon isn't allowed to do lifting and carrying until the end of the month.

John volunteered, and turned up at about seven thirty in the evening so he wouldn't melt. It took him around an hour and a half including raking up all the debris. We are so grateful and a cake is being baked for delivery over the road. John says he quite enjoyed turning a jumbled pile of wood into neat stacks, with the debris in trugs. I say he's a hero.

It's Been a Year

In all the excitement of our salon and bedroom being insulated we've almost forgotten that today is the anniversary of our double glazing being installed.

The new windows made a much bigger difference than we had expected - evidence, I think, of how bad the old windows were. The reduction of noise inside the house, lack of rattles, and absence of drafts has been really noticeable. We're too far past winter for the insulation to really show its effects, but we're hoping that this coming summer the house will remain comfortable for longer 'if' we have a heatwave.

The house still isn't completely in order after the insulation project. We're still debating curtains and placement of furniture, but we are slowly progressing.

Bed Matters

We bought our current bed in December 1998, when we moved from furnished to unfurnished rented accommodation in London. We chose it because it's a big solid piece in pine, and it looked interesting. Our plan was to paint it, but until last week it remained bare unpainted pine.

On Sunday night last week I moved the bed into the bedroom and reassembled it. As there was nothing else in the room I decided it was the ideal time to paint it, so I put it together over a drop sheet, standing on little blocks.

I made an error on Tuesday, by undercoating it with a brush. It was very thick undercoat, which means the brush strokes are there for all eternity.

On Wednesday we were in NOZ, who had V33 paint for 9€ a litre (normally about 30€ a litre). We bought a load of paint for not much money, then I got to work. I think I might have been suffering sleep deprivation and been a bit manic, because the end result is more colorful than we'd planned. But I did discover acrylic paint pens from Action (4€ for 12), so that's a win.

I don't know how long it will remain in this scheme, but when it comes to being repainted I have a plan...

Catching Up

On Monday (when I was talking about the colour of the red wall) I mentioned that the tiles needed cleaning.

Well - seven hours on my knees scrubbing, and a further hour wrestling one of those over complicated new-fangled plastic mops that never fulfill their promise, it's done. I have no doubt that when I get to the house today I will be disappointed, but hey ho...

Yesterday, (when I was talking about the colour of the blue wall) I mentioned that I had neglected to take a picture of the fireplace in the bedroom.

Here's a before and after.

Kind of Blue

Compared to the fun we had with the red paint, painting our bedroom was an easy choice. I wanted a kind of petrol blue - and that's what we got straight out of the tin.

The room during the day

The two big wins in the bedroom are the floor and the fireplace. The floor was sanded and given numerous coats of a soft wax look varnish.

How it looks after dark

The fireplace... I decided to use it to create a feature, and that's exactly what I did. I lined the firebox with plasterboard to seal it, the surround was painted grey and the interior a very matt black. I would post a photo, but I've neglected to take one. Maybe tomorrow. I will create a "hearth" from chipboard, and tile it with tomettes - but that's a project for another day.

Seeing Red

That was a narrow escape...

I chose the colours of our paint very carefully, especially the colour of the second (after the pierre apparentes) feature wall in the salon. Over the course of a couple of days I studied the colour swatches, compared them to the tiles, took spot colour samples from photos and ran them through colour matching programs, found the HEX value, matched that through encycolorpedia.com and came up with the paint reference number and name.

Except when paint met wall it was pretty obvious that the choice wasn't perfect. It was worryingly raspberry coloured, not the dark red edging towards brown that were we're hoping would match to the tiles.

We would have gone with it - we've reached that stage - but having an expert on the team that wasn't going to fly. So we spent 30 minutes of adding various amounts of ochre powder, doing test patches and drying them with a painter's hairdryer

In the end we managed to find the colour I thought we had chosen.

It's a colour I like to think of as "old velvet curtain red". It works really nicely with artificial light, as well.

Those tiles do need a clean, though.

Tiling

After my exertions on Tuesday doing the pierres apparentes, Wednesday was back to cutting tiles. I had finally got my head around how to do corners, so I set myself up in the garden and got grinding. It was a lovely day - t-shirt weather - so I organised myself a chair, and set to.

I was a lot quicker than on Monday but it came at a price. By lunchtime I had almost finished the the tiles, and the tiles had almost finished me. My arm was in absolute agony, caused due to spending two days holding a heavy grinder, and one day doing masonry. My wrist wouldn't rotate, and my forearm was constant pain.(Anyone who has had shin splints will know the feeling. Yes, forearm splints is a thing).

I knew I wouldn't be able to get the tiles laid that afternoon, but we had a deadline to meet. Once again, the value of friends was demonstrated. Susan phoned Huub, and he swung into action.

A couple of hours later it was done. Huub claims not to have done tiling before, but honestly you would never know. A bit of finishing and the job looks spot on.

Don't let the bright red strip worry you. That's an undercoat colour.

Pierres Apparentes

After cleaning out the wall in the salon it's time for pierres apparentes.

The wall before we started

All the cement render is chipped off

The joints between the stones are cleared out

Susan and I started at 08:30 on Tuesday, laying protection for the floor and preparing the tools.

Dennis came over to show me how it's done, and ended up staying the whole morning. This means that the job I was fearing would take two days of hoping I was getting it right, turned into one day of an expert and his apprentice. The process involves flicking the mixture into the joints, making sure it fills all the nooks and crannies, and partially covering the faces if the stone.

Dennis left just after midday, and I finished applying the mixture - referred to as enduit in French - at 15:30. The enduit is a mix of one part lime to 3½ parts sand. We used 115 kg of sand and 35 kg of chaux blanc (hydraulique lime) to cover about 5m².

I then returned to the house at 21:00 (9 pm) to rub back the enduit to expose the stone faces, finishing at 00:30 (half past midnight). The finished enduit and stones will lighten as they dry out.

The Sahara dunes at the foot of the wall is 45 kg of excess enduit which has been rubbed off. Susan and I bagged and removed that yesterday morning. I'm exhausted, Tuesday was the longest day of intensive physical activity I have done for many a year, but the signs so far is that it's been worth it.

Wot a Mess!

I was at our house on Monday evening, because the wall of the salon had to be made damp so that when we got around to applying the lime mix for the pierre apparent, the stones in the walls wouldn't instantly suck all the moisture out of the mix.

We've been aware that the house is filthy to the point that we can't actually envisage it being livable, but this photo really brings home just how lucky we are to have friends with a house nearby.

Cleaning Tiles

I spent most of yesterday cleaning tiles, ready to reinstate the ceramic plinth in the salon. I had to remove between 8mm and 15mm of hard cement from a soft cement tile. This I achieved by using a grinder with a diamond cutting wheel and cutting the old cement glue off.

It was raining when we arrived at the house, and as cutting cement is a dirty, dusty job I set up a temporary shelter in the back garden. A bit of rope, and old tarpaulin, and I was ready to set up my equipment and start cutting.

It went better than I feared, the only real problem being cutting tiles to match the spacing of the floor tiles. Doing it with the grinder is a bit hit and miss, but I got one done. It looks quite good - certainly better than the rather haphazard job that was done previously.

I have yet to work out how to get around corners. If I had the right tool for the job it would be pretty straightforward, but I'm not that well equipped.

Today I am learning to do pierre apparent on the salon walls. I hope my back lasts...

The Bedroom Floor

The secret to getting stuff done quickly is knowing people who know what they're doing.

In 2010 I sanded the guest bedroom floor. It was not much fun, and the passage of 14 years means that doing the floor of the main bedroom was weighing heavily on my mind. And knees, back, lungs...

Luckily we have met a man who has the right gear for doing this stuff, so the bedroom floor is sanded and has received its first coat of varnish.

It's an odd kind of colour, but that's what happens when you sand very old, very dirty wood that has lived a life. The strange shapes on the floor are bits of brass, covering blemishes and splits in the wood. They are likely to be quite old.

A Tale of Two Fireplaces

I wrote earlier about cleaning the fireplace in the bedroom, and discovering it's made from local stone.

It was blocked up a long time ago, we thought with foam blocks, but which turned out to be by the simple expedient of pulling down the metal shutter. At some later date someone had cut a hole in the shutter to take the chimney from a small wood burning heater, and this had subsequently been blocked with a foam sheet and plenty of spray expanding foam.

Yesterday was the day I decided it was time to clean this abomination. I wasn't looking forwards to it, nor did I have any plan.

Expansive foam is a tricky thing to remove so I started with that, slicing through it with a putty knife. Then, I just pulled at the metal shutters until they distorted enough to come out of their slots.

In a piece of excellent news, the firebox is in remarkably good condition, if full of stuff. The stuff was mainly rubble from when we had the top of the chimney rebuilt, old ash, cobwebs, two really tatty work gloves, and an almost new 8mm socket.

That filled three rubble sacks and two vacuum cleaner bags, and gave me an idea. But more of that after I try it today.

The second fireplace is the one in the salon that Mr Douady installed in 2009. It was looking sorry for itself, mainly through smoke and in ground ash.

I took a sander to it, and now it's looking much refreshed. Of course, that created more clouds of dust that I allowed to settle overnight before filling two vacuum cleaner bags. 

I'm getting good at dust, but the camera really doesn't like it. That's why some of the photos aren't really in sharp focus.

Colours Chosen

After much debate and many consultations we have chosen the colours for our newly insulated rooms.

If you're going to go bold, go bold big time!!

Renovation Update 2

Work on our house is progressing.

The plasterers have finished, but now the plaster has to dry. As is normal in old houses they have had to do a fair amount of thinking on their feet, the main problem being the ceilings. Of course, the house being a bit old nothing is either square or level, and in order for us to be able to open the windows a split level ceiling has been installed - a 5 cm higher section above the window opening.

In addition to working on the fireplace in the bedroom, I have done some further work on the stone wall in the salon. This is a dirty and dusty job, which involves removing layers of soot, grime and dust from the stone and cleaning the joints between them. Some of this appears to have been mud (I'm being polite) which either falls off in clumps or turns to brown dust. Most unappealing.

The electrician returned yesterday to do the lights (and light switch) in the salon then it's a couple of weeks of dirt, grime and dust before we start painting.

The wall mounted up lighters are in place

and they turn on (don't worry, they're not as

bright as it would appear in the photo)

Joy...