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Our Grand Design in Montemboeuf, Charente, France

Category Archives: Montemboeuf Plot


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You will always find us in the kitchen at parties – Vous nous trouvez toujours dans la cuisine aux soirée

Kitchen hunting

Kitchen hunting

We’ve been kitchen hunting in France and for some people (as you can tell from the photo above) it was more exciting than others.  Wandering around kitchen showrooms, it is very hard to keep in mind that we will not necessarily be living in this house and it is very easy to get swayed by the shiny taps (again) and gloss white cupboards with the soft-close hinges. I have to remind myself that we can’t go for a very high end kitchen (but soft close hinges would be nice).  It seems, however, we have been looking at kitchens at the right time of year because there are a lot of bargains to be had.  So much so, that we actually bought one…..yes reader, we bought one- and it had soft close hinges.  It will be delivered in April 2015, I just hope there is a house built to put it in. I think we will be putting the kitchen together ourselves, so if anyone fancies a holiday in France putting together flat pack furniture, just let me know.  Hopefully, the kitchen will be so nice that people will want to spend time in it, at parties or otherwise.

 


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Let’s face the view and dance – face la vue et danse

83 Molly and Tom check out view

Molly and Tom check out view

Just a quick post to say that we have now visited the site ourselves and it is even more exciting than I imagined it to be.  The elevation of the slab really makes the best of our view and we couldn’t be happier.  This was one of the things that drew us to the plot in the first place and we definitely made the right choice.  Seeing as we will see it on our sofa by a log fire or when we wake up in the morning is fantastic.

We also manged to meet out timber frame guy on site who is happy with all the work and will hopefully start next week.  He and Tom had to iron out a few remaining design issues, but this is all sorted now, so we are good to go! This week we will be having more site visits, choosing our log burner (poêle à bois) and trying to arrange meetings with tree surgeons.  Tom is also working on the specifications and scope of works for the internal joinery to get some quotes.  We have a busy few months ahead….

Poêle à bois – Log stove

Parpaings – Blockwork
Concrete – Béton
J’ai  une faim de loup – I’m a hungry Wolf.   I’m reading (or attempting to read) ‘Tintin au Tibet’, in the hope it will improve my French.  (From this you can read that I am just doing it as an excuse to read Tintin)
Hors d’eau – Water tight
Hors d’ait – Air tight
La poute – beam
Poussez les dents – teeth coming through!
Baies coulissantes – Siding doors
Casque de chantier – hard hat.
Sous-sol – basement
La Renouée du Japon – Japanese knotweed


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How do like your Agilia in the morning? – Comment prenez vous votre Agilia le matin?

LaFarge truck arrives on site

LaFarge truck arrives on site

On a dark early morning in late November, two big white whirring trucks turned up on our site.  Finally the time had arrived to lay our concrete slab!  This was such an exciting moment in the build process and neither of us can wait to see it.  Our builders have done a fantastic job throughout the build and have always kept us informed with photos and now a video!  The finish is so smooth it looks like water.  It is probably a good job i’m not there because wet concrete is s bit like ‘a moth to a flame’ and i’d be very tempted to write my name.  I don’t think Tom or our future guests would be too impressed because it is likely that (all be it with a resin on top) that this will be out floor finish.

Below is a video that Stuart our builder took of the concrete being poured.

To the right of the video you will have seen a big hole in the ground.  Don’t worry, we haven’t missed a bit, this is where our pergola/terrace structure will sit, and where will will eat cheese, drink wine and look at the view!  Seeing the guys smoothing out the slab, you can see how amazing this Agilia is.

Our foundations are now complete a great achievement with no problems, we are now ready for our timber frame.  We also managed to avoid the classic Grand Designs mishap of spending all our money just to get out of the ground.  Now where’s that bathroom and kitchen catalogue…..

 


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Insulation, I love you – isolation, je t’aime

Insulation, polythene film and service pipes

Insulation, polythene film and service pipes

First of all, apologies for the slightly tenuous title of this post, but I used it because I thought that it would be a good excuse to post the song at the end of this entry – enjoy!

Since we last wrote our builders have put down a wire mesh, which will to help reinforce the slab, some (plenty) insulation and finally a layer of polythene film.  The polythene film has been put down to keep the concrete slab and the insulation apart to allow movement between the two.  You can see the design of this as a cross-section in a previous post.

To make this house as energy efficient as possible, Tom has designed in quite a lot of insulation, both in the floor and the walls.  This means that the house will not need to have any central heating. We will have a poêle à bois for when the weather gets cold and because they are a warming addition to the living room.  This should be all we need! Also, as mentioned earlier, the use of the concrete slab will help with the thermal mass of the house.

The next stage of the process will to lay the concrete slab. We hope that this will be complete by the end of next week. Although, continuing with our obsession with the weather, it looks set to turn over the next few days. Thank heavens for Agilia concrete!

The song

As promised here is that song I wanted to add – if you can think of a better title using Insulation, please let me know.


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u-block the sunshine of my life – u-block le soleil de ma vie

Foundations looking east

Foundations looking east

Did you ever see such a beautiful set of foundations?  What to some may be just a load of concrete and concrete blocks to us it is the very foundation of our house – literally! As you can see things are still moving quickly on site and the foundations are nearly finished. Our builder has placed a u-block on top of the concrete block wall to help support the timber frame. Hopefully the foundations will be finished in the next week or so.  I am really looking forward to being on site again because I think I’ll get a better impression of the scale of the build. I had thought in a previous post that I had an idea of the size of the house, but seeing these pictures, I don’t think I have.  It looks quite small to me, even though I know it isn’t!  I will have to do my ‘Grand Designs gawping’ when I get there after all.  Montemboeuf looks to still be bathing in glorious sunshine, we just hope that this great weather stays for when we head out there and for when the timber frame starts to go up at the end of the month.

Tintin update – I haven’t got much further with my attempt to read Tintin in French – it is harder than you might think!

In honour of our last post, I couldn’t resist putting up a little video.  It is also quite appropriate here, considering the name of the band.


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Rock stops play? Roche arrête le jeu?

rock

Rock didn’t stop our trusty builders

Fortunately not as it turns out!  Our builders did come across some rock which I thought meant disaster when Tom first told me.  I had visions of vast costs involved to remove that rock in some very unenviromentally friendly way – and that roll top bath becoming ever further from my reach.  Apparently tough it would have been a good thing – rock being a good base for foundations.  This could have meant a saving in the cost of foundations – that bath was on its way back….In then end, the rock was just in a small area and was nothing to worry about or be thankful for.

Our builders continue to make good progress and as the sun still seems to be shining in Montemboeuf, hopefully there will not be any delays due to bad weather.  I just hope they don’t get the weather we’ve had in London any time soon, or that pool that we want will be built a little earlier than expected.

Trench footings

Trench footings

The photo above shows the start of our foundations and Tom tells me the metal caging has also gone in which reinforces the foundations.  I don’t have much more to say about that, apart from it is very exciting – more so than just your average hole in the ground with bits of wood in anyway.  Hopefully in the next post I’ll have some photos of something more concrete as it were…..


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The builders have started on site – Les constructeurs ont commencé sur le site

Building access on to the site

Building access on to the site

I never thought i’d be so excited by a picture of a digger, but I am.  The picture above shows a digger on our site, starting work on the access road.  Stuart from SLM Construction kindly sent these through so that we could see his progress.  It night not look like much at the moment, but it is the first sign that we have that work has started and that we really are building a house!  The building of the foundations should take about 6 weeks and then the timber frame can start – just as long as we finalise the designs!  We will be signing the contract with Marandat next week, so we need to stop tinkering soon!

The sign to the left of the picture must be displayed as part of the planning process and is therefore a legal requirement.  Unfortunately, for the first two months that it is displayed our planning permission can be contested by third parties.  Hopefully, this will not happen, but I will have my fingers crossed until mid-November! The photo of the sign is just as important as seeing the digger.  If we did not have this sign in place, and the proper form, potential opponents would have the right to contest the planning decision.  The obligation to prove that the notice was placed on the site in a correct manner, and for a sufficiently long duration, lies with Tom and I  – so hooray for the photo as proof.

The new driveway looking north

The new driveway looking north

We wrote to Grand Designs about our project but unfortunately they are only covering projects in the UK.  They only ever did one season of Grand Designs Abroad and I think they should think about doing another one!

Now that we’ve started on site, more posts and photos should appear, keep you eye, we’ll keep you updated as much as possible!

 

New French words I have learnt  (I will expand on this as the weeks go by);

Baies coulissantes – Siding doors

Casque de chantier – Hard hat.
Sous-sol – basement
La Renouée du Japon – Japanese knotweed


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The building begins – la construction commence!

Perspective Image © Thomas kyle

Perspective Image © Thomas Kyle

So, here we are, nineteen months after our initial plot search, we are about to start building!  Please, don’t get me wrong, this hasn’t been a slow and laborious process, these things just take time.  We had to find the plot, buy it, work up designs, take them to the planners, work on the designs some more to get them right before submitting them planning permission.  Then, once planning permission was granted 2 months later, more detailed designs had to be drawn up to take to the builders and we then had to chose our builders – which is definitely something you need to take time over.  The time it has taken to get this far has nothing to do with French bureaucracy – which contrary to anything you may have heard was very quick and efficient – or us dragging our heals (although having a baby may have slowed things down a little), it is just that building a house takes a long time and we haven’t even had the metaphorical brick laid yet.  This is about to change though!

We have chosen our groundworks builder and have written to the Mairie notifying them of our Déclaration d’ouverture de chantier, basically informing them of our plan to start on site.  Tom had a long chat with our preferred groundswork builder and all being well we will start building on 16th/17th September!  We are both excited and nervous in equal measure, but really pleased to be finally starting on site.  We will try to post as many progress photos as we can to keep you updated, it just depends on when we can get to site. I just hope it doesn’t go all ‘Grand Designs’ on us with adverse weather and dodgy ground, but because we did our etude de sol the later shouldn’t be a problem, the former, well we just have to hope that the Charente doesn’t suddenly get some odd weather patterns……

See you soon, hard hats and hi-vis jackets on!

New French words I have learnt  (I will expand on this as the weeks go by);

Casque de chantier – Hard hat.

Sous-sol – basement
La Renouée du Japon – Japanese knotweed


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Builders, joiners & carpenters – Constructeurs, menuisiers et charpentiers

Tom, Molly and I have just got back from a lovely trip to SW France.  Even thought the first few days were all concerned with the house build, we still managed a few days in (yet another) lovely Chamber d’hotes.  The French seem to do these very well and we have never been disappointed in where we’ve stayed. Maybe this could be the theme of my next blog…..

Anyway, this visit allowed me to finally meet the other potential builders and timber frame companies that Tom met on his last visit.  We crammed a lot of meetings in quite a short space of time and also managed to squeeze in a few that we hadn’t planned on!

Timber Frame Companies

First was Batis Paille whom I have met before as well and was very impressed by.  They have a very interesting system of build which includes straw bale insulation (hence the name, paille being French for straw).  We then met Marandat another Timber Frame company based near the plot. They seem to have quite a big operation going and were also very professional and came up with some great ideas and solutions as to how we could get the house built.

We also met David Lestage from Charente Maison Bois at his home/office. A lovely timber framed house, in the middle of nowhere.  It was a great place to meet him because we will get an idea of the quality of the workmanship we’d get on our own house.  Our last meeting was with Desmortier Maison Bois.  They are based slightly further away from Montemboeuf than the others, but still local (ish) which is something that is important to both Tom and I.  We are not only keen to employ French trades, but ideally ones located close to the plot.

One of the builders that we met recommended that we contact a menuisier that he knows called Debessac.  We met him at his factory, which was even closer to the plot than Batis Paille or Marandat.  The quality of some of the work he showed us was amazing (as it was for all of the companies that we met), but you could really see some attention to details.  He showed us a headstock that he was making for church bell housing he was making for a local church. Clearly a talented man, we will await his quote and see if he is the man to build our house.

Builders

We also met three general builders on the plot, one from SLM Construction, one from Cesar Constructions and another chap called Domingos.  They will build the foundations for us and create an access in to the site.  While they were there we discussed the possibility of building a basement or sous-sol.  The site is on a slope, so it seems an ideal opportunity to create some more space, just by digging down an extra meter or so.  This may mean going back to the planners though and I not sure that this is something either of us want to do.  Still depending on the extra costs involved it is something that we can discuss with the planners to decide if it worth our while. The builders we have met so far are either English or Portuguese, which goes against our plan to use French trades, but we have found that this is not always possible.  We are still open to tenders, so if anyone knows a good local French builder – please let us know! 

All in all this was a useful trip.  It enabled me to meet all the builders and timber frame companies which will help me feel more involved in the whole process.  We now have a better understanding of the quotes and can start looking in to them more thoroughly before we make our decision. A few of the timber frame companies are so busy that they can not start until next year. This is great news for them but mot so much for us.  On the plus side, it does mean that there is a demand for high quality timber frame houses in France!

We are still awaiting a few quotes, but in the meantime we can go through the ones we have, line by line!  Tom will also be working on designs for the basement.

One slight problem I discovered while we were there was that there is some Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica)  near the plot – not something you want around when embarking on a house build!  We told the Mairie’s office, who fortunately knew of the plant and the problems it causes, they took our details and said that they would get back to us.  I am not sure what will come from the meeting, but at least we have told them.  Hopefully something will be done, although it did look as though the verges had been cut recently which is slightly concerning. By the way, in case you need to know, the French for Japanese knotweed is La Renouée du Japon! It seems as though it is just as much a problem in France as it is here….

New French words I learnt this holiday (I will expand on this as the weeks go by);

Sous-sol – basement
La Renouée du Japon – Japanese knotweed


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Time to meet the builders, Part two! Le temps de rencontrer les constructeurs, la deuxième partie!

Not sure I can lend a hand on this!

Not sure I can lend a hand on this!

So we’re off! All three of us this time (Molly Tom and I) are off to Montemboeuf soon to meet the builders and the timber frame companies.  We have had most of the quotes back, so we have just been going through them to work out where we can make savings and if there is anything we need to add and/or remove from them.  The companies that Tom has met all seem really keen and are also full of ideas as to how we can make it a Passivhaus or as close to that as possible.   They have all been very helpful and I ma excited to meet them.  This is quite an important trip because at the end of it, we will have probably chosen our builders and timber frame company and will be ready to employ one of them.  This then makes the whole thing very real, but also very exciting.  I know Tom’s French is already up to it, but as I have said before, I think I am going to have to gem up on a few important building terms for when we start on site! Passe-moi le marteau s’il vous plaît (par exemple)

We have also heard back about our étude de sol (soil survey). They told us what I, the local farmer and a few others already knew, the soils isn’t clay, but loam. It is fine for building on, i.e. no complicated foundations needed, and is great for growing plants, fruit & veg etc.  Ideal for my lovely brother-on-law, Al who will hopefully be doing our landscape plans.  We did buy our land from the owner of Pépinières Charentaises,  so we hope that the land is fertile!

Watch this space, we’ll let you know how we get on…..