Spring Visit - March -April 2021

The plan for this visit was to apply the scrim to the plasterboard in the attic of La Maison and a thin plaster coat to all the joints, as well a being there to see the West Side Exterior Wall rendered.  Well, the best laid plans can always go wrong!!

Firstly, the English guy who gave me a quote and delayed the work multiple times let me down at the last minute and a local French company I had previously used on La Grange did not respond to my request for a visit and devis!  But as luck would have it, I was visited by a team who had approached me 3 previous times to render the wall and went with them.

All was going to plan as they commenced to remove a layer of the old rendered applied over the 500mm thick stone wall, until mid day, when I heard a loud rumble and discovered a 6m2 section of the wall had collapsed, about 2/3rd deep....Ahh!! PANIC.                                                            The problem was the water ingress had liquified the mud/sand mortar, probably caused by the cracks that appeared and the beating of the rain and wind on this elevation.                                                                      They responded really well and fortunately, my acro props were at hand to be used and some old boards I had saved to support the structure overnight, with a tarp as covering to protect against the expected evening rain.

They got a Mason colleague to visit the following day and used the stone and concrete to fill the hole and some big beams applied with the reinforcement of the acro props to hold all in place for 3 days whilst everything dried.  

Fortunately,  we had no rain and a heat wave started with blazing sun that saw the mud slurry start to dry even as the concrete layers were being applied. 

The following week, the rendering layers were applied, with added resin and waterproofing to the whole wall, to avoid disturbing it any more.  

This was followed by the Weber Render to the external surface to create the final finish and I decided to have the back and front completely rendered as well.

So, having delayed my visit by two weeks the end result is pleasing, albeit costly and not planned.  As a result, I also got near the Schengen 90 in 180day limit!  When I return in the Summer I plan to paint and refit all the shutters and tidy up, before commencing the completion of the La Grenier later this year.

Finally, here is a short video, that was cut short due to my iPhone yet again crashing!!