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We have renovated an ancient house here in France and I guess many of you are in the same situation. There are two reasons why I think I have some experiences that are valuable to share with others. The first reason is that I have done a lot of mistakes that you should not have to do. The second is that I, being a retired university professor in architecture, have the ability to reflect on my mistakes and learn from them. I might also have some abilities to communicate my know-how to others who are in the same situation.

The latest project I did and that rewarded me with a serious attack of lumbago was a pergola on the roof terrace. The reason we wanted to have a pergola is that I want the shade – my wife does not – but we both want a more sheltered place for our dinners and breakfasts. My wife has always dreamt of having some climbing plants and we don’t have a garden – thanks good - so a pergola was of great need.

The first thing you have to decide is the design of the pergola. I choose a standard construction that I like best. The difficult thing is however to decide the dimensions of the construction. The eye will easily fool you. If you go strictly on construction principles it tends to be to thin and it will not look nice. If you on the other hand want to be on the safe side you tend to make the construction too heavy and that is not good either. You like a pergola to look light but not spindly and when the plants start to grow they add some visual weight to the construction.

So I decided on a construction with two primary beams with the dimension 100x40 mm. The length was approximately 2.5 meters. On top of these I put three secondary beams with the same dimension and approximately 3 m long. The actual “roof” of the pergola was 2.5 m long planks with the dimension 100x25 mm with a distance between them of 200 mm.

Three layers of construction would be quite thick however if I had just put them on top of each other so I let the top beam always cut into the lower one 40 mm. In this way I could reduce the construction height from 300 mm to 220 mm which made it quite nice. I only needed 1 pillar and I found that 100x100 mm is a good looking dimension. Remember not to let the pillars have direct contact with the ground or the floor. It will draw water and by the time rot, but there are constructions that allow a distance between the supporting floor and the end of the pillar.

The second important decision is what wood to use. I decided on red cedar. In the French climate this wood is very good as it resist water and do not rot and it also contains chemical substances that different bugs that eat wood do not like. You do not even have to treat it. It is light, which is good if you have a bad back, it is very easy to work with and it looks beautiful. It is however poisonous so be careful when you work with it. Use gloves, do not get dust into you eyes of breath it in and be careful not to get splinters in your hands. It is allergenic to many people and I noticed my hands got very funny after a while. Off course I read about the hazards too late to benefit from the knowledge.

Another thing you have to know is that the wood is corrosive so you need to use stainless steel screws and nails and at least galvanized fixtures if you think stainless is too expensive – which it is.

A piece of advise when you cut the beams to fit into the lower one – cut the top beam, not the lower as that will cause pockets for water to get into. Also put the beams on place and mark where to cut in place. If you cut the beams by measuring where the cuttings should be they will not fit. It is easy to do these cuttings – just make two parallel cuts with a sharp saw to the depth you need (in this case 40 mm) and give it a blow with the hammer. The bit just pops away as the cedar wood is very even in its structure. Even the bottom of the cut a little with a rasp. If the dimensions are a little too thick to just pop off, use a chisel and take it a way bit by bit.

This is a step-by-step description

Build up the construction without fixing it by using clamps.

Raise the pillars and fix them with the primary beams with the help of clamps and you friend or wife/husband. You might need some provisional props or many friends and clamps at this stage.

Fix the secondary beams on the primary in the same way. Adjust it all until it looks good. At this stage you have just put one beam on top of the other without cutting them into each other.

To do this makes it easy to get the right length on everything. In my case it was necessary as I hade three walls, not perpendicular, to take into account.

Now it is also time to mark where to make the cuts. Use an angle and remember if you should cut on the inside or outside of the line. It helps later; believe me .

You take down the construction, do the adjustments and cuttings and start building it up piece by piece. Start with the pillars and make sure they are fixed firmly. I used two 190 mm long bolts to fix my pillar into the stone wall. To avoid moist from the floor of the terrace to climb I fixed a U-formed metal piece as a foot at the bottom of the pillar so I got a 30 mm distance.

Got the foundation you can start adding the primary beams and after that the secondary. It is enough just to put it together a jigsaw puzzle at this time – it will be firm enough without any fixations at this time.

When you have put it all together and are happy with the result you can start fixing the construction. I used galvanized angles and stainless screws. As the wind on my terrace is very strong in the winter I put angles at every place where too beams met. My concern was basically forces that could lift the construction rather than the weight from above which might be good to have in mind when you choose where to put the angles and what dimensions too use. Good luck with your work. I am very happy with mine and I just hope to get rid of my lumbago soon.

You can se detailed photos if you click the photo gallerie.

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Friday, October 5

How to procure construction work in south of France

by Jan on Fri 05 Oct 2007 10:50 PM CEST

First of all – French craftsmen are as good as any other in Europe – they might be different to what we are used to though. The worst thing you can do to get the wrong start in France is not to use local craftsmen or not buying local construction material. Our experience is that village people in France welcome anyone to be a part of the community if you are willing to contribute. The best way of contributing is to give opportunities for people to make some money. In most of the regions, where we foreigners love to spend our holidays, the level of unemployment is high so everything is welcomed.
I admit that there might be a language problem, but you can get a long way by pointing, sketching and using your hands and body. If you get a problem, get some help from someone. It is worth it - I promise you!
Our experience from dealing with craftsmen is Sète is that they might be a bit unreliable in terms of not coming on time or at all sometimes. I have talked a lot with a friend and colleague who is from Algeria and have lived in France for long periods and is now Swedish since a few decades. He argues that the problem we have had with craftsmen is only our problem as Swedes, as we have totally other expectations than a Frenchman would have. For French people this is not a big problem because the habit of not doing what is agreed goes both ways, so nobody really takes offence or get irritated.
Knowing this we contacted a number of construction companies to get their offers on the major job to redo the entire roof of our house in the Corbières. We got three offers and they did not differ a lot in Price. One company was from the village, one from the nearest big city with an office in the village and the third was from a neighbour village. Off course everybody in the village knew everything about our project, they followed it closely and every progress was carefully reported to anybody in the village grocery shop. We soon found out that the local guy had a very good reputation for doing a very good job. He also was the kind of person who finished things before taking on new jobs, unlike the habit of most construction companies. Mostly they have many projects going and jump from one project to another, so you had to hunt them with a torch all the time to make them finish your job. We also felt that it would not be taken well by the people in the village if we did not follow their advice to choose the local guy as there was no real difference in price. If someone else got the job and we got into problems there would be a lot of “what did we tell you?" Everybody would follow the progress of the work closely and if something went wrong or the work wouldn’t be up to our standard everybody would know. We realised this could work to our favour if we engaged the local company. We would have hundreds of quality controllers and the social reputation of the local guy would be damaged as everybody would feel a collective responsibility for his mistakes. It is also important to mention that we got a very good impression of the local contractor but the other competitors seemed very serious also. So, we signed a contract with this local guy and he agreed to do the job and we gave him the keys to the house and went back to Sweden.We also needed to change all the windows in the house as they were very old; some of them in bad condition and had only one glass. Our neighbour’s son owned the largest company in the area who sold factory made windows. We however were not happy with the detailing and the Price of the product he could offer. As the windows are the eyes of a house, and it is of major importance to the impression you get of the house, we wanted to make the new windows as close in style to the old as possible, only with double glazing. We asked our contractor for advice and he happened to have a brother who was an “ebeniste” which is both a carpenter and a cabinet maker. He could do both the windows and a new staircase from the attic to the terrace. This guy turned out to have a very good reputation, had a reasonable pricing and was also a very nice person. Nowadays we regard him and his wife to be among our best friends in the village. So now we have engaged two brothers in the project. The good thing is that we get the co-ordination of the construction work for free. If they, as many craftsmen do, make things difficult for each other or get into co-ordination problems, they can deal with it within the family. This was of course a great advantage for us, being in Sweden most of the time.
Later it turned out that the little brother in the family did plumbing, electricity and some interior building work so we engaged the third person in the same family for all the small details inside. The lady next door, with the son in the window business, turned out to be the aunt of these brothers so we contacted the cousin to deliver the glass house to protect the landing of the staircase on the terrace. And the whole project was co-ordinated by the main contractor we first engaged. Great!
There are some peculiarities about construction contracts in France that we are not used to from Sweden. First, if you have an old house there is a VAT reduction so you only pay 5%. Small one-man companies under a certain annual turnover are regarded micro companies and do not have to pay VAT at all on labour, which makes it all less costly. Another very strange thing with our contractors is that the Price in the offer is the actual Price you pay in the end. Even if we have made many changes on the way and even made it more difficult for them, they do not change the Price unless you add substantial amount of work. In Sweden the habit is that the final Price is around 40% higher than the offer and the contractor charges you for every little change even if it does not cost more and adds your own telephone number to the total in the end. That last thing was a joke!
I think the philosophy might be that dealing with an old building you can never know if something goes wrong or if you discover something that causes extra work so, calculating these risks is a part of the professional skills and misjudgements should not be taken out on the customer.
By the time we have engaged these three brothers in other parts of the renovation. Most of the work is now finished and we are very happy with the way everything has worked out. We have been a little worried from time to time, being so far away from the site, but it has always been satisfactory in the end. By the time a cousin who represent an electrical company has also been involved in installing a climate system in the House. Do I have to say they have done a great job. What amazes us is that the craftsmen clean up after them. WE have a joke in Sweden that you recognise a skilled craftsman on the mess he leaves after him.
The people in the village are very happy that we are happy with their “local sons”. From time to time they have however been worried when they have seen a stop in the construction work for a period and always reported to us on the phone. So we have had a strong social quality control of the building project.
One thing that makes people so engaged is off course that many families have a relation to this building and are very happy we do something about it. Many of them can however not understand why we insist on having these old fashioned materials like wooden windows when there are so beautiful new plastic windows that you never need to paint or anything. A house from 1762 is obviously not a big deal to many pragmatic people in the village.
Again a final piece of advice! There are a lot of negative stories about British people buying property and transporting both building materials and craftsmen from their home country. The French are not only insulted by this, they also think they do not get any economic benefit from being a place there people from other countries likes to settle down.

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