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Tuesday, October 23
How I built my pergola
by
Jan
on Tue 23 Oct 2007 01:07 PM CEST
 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.
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.
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.
Sunday, September 30
Buying property in France
by
Jan
on Sun 30 Sep 2007 10:57 AM CEST
 One experience we like to share with you is how we bought our first property in France. Having experiences from Sweden we found that the French system was very much in favour of the buyer. Unlike Sweden the real estate agent has a very minor role in France. They merely find the objects and connect the buyer with the seller. In Sweden they also do all the legal stuff, which, due to a quite bad reputation among some of them, is not very safe for the buyer – or the seller. In France everything are taken care of by “le notaire” who is a trusted legal advisor without any stake in the transaction. “Le notaire” checks that everything is correct legally, like ownership, mortgages and debts. “Le notaire” also initiates certain controls of the property, which depend on the area and the age of the house. (When we bought our second French home in Corbières it was mandatory to check for lead in the construction and fittings and for termites). Off course “le notaire” charges for this service, but it is a set percentage of the prize and it depends on the age of the building. An older building means more work for “le notaire”. Our first home was a little studio with a fantastic view of the Mediterranean – it was just a fair drive from the balcony (golf drive). This was in 1991 and we went down to look at a different object that we did not like and found this new building just at the old fishing harbour, facing the pier with the light house and the guest harbour – lovely! The rules were that we could make a small deposit and reserve the studio until we had checked our financial resources with the bank. We got a few weeks to think it over and if we had not decided to buy or had got problems with the financing we could have pulled out, only loosing the interest on the deposit. They said this was the French way of dealing with the problem of people signing contracts on property without really thinking it over properly. Maybe the sun, the good feeling of being on vacation or a very smooth talking salesperson makes us a little irresponsible. This had resulted in quite a lot of legal and personal problems when the buyer “wakes up” and find themselves owner of a property they can not afford or do not like. This might not be the only possible procedure for buying. You can find more information on http://www.french-property.com/ which was the website we later used to sell our studio in Sète.
Anyway, we bought the studio, loved it and had many fine summers. Our friends and children spent time there with us (cramped) or by themselves and everybody came to love the fantastic city of Sète. We really bought the little flat just to see how we would like to be in the same place every summer and also try out if we would like to move to the area permanently after retirement. We kept the flat in Sète for twelve years and through friends we found our house in Corbières. We sold our flat (we got over 60 answers on our web add) and the money covered the prize for our house.
Saturday, September 29
How it all started
by
Jan
on Sat 29 Sep 2007 08:17 PM CEST
 I am sure that you now have understood that we have settled down in Corbieres, but how did we come to do that. This is how it all started more than 15 years ago.
Our first vacation home in Sète was quite small but had the most marvellous view of the Mediterranean. We and all our friends loved it. One reason we bought it was to see how we liked coming back to the same place every year. We were planning to get something more permanent by the time, but were not sure in what area or what kind of location we were looking for. We will share some of our experiences with you today.
Sète is lovely – one of the favourite places for French people to go on vacation. It has fantastic seafood, one of the best beaches in France and a lot of atmosphere and culture. And maybe the best, there are relatively few Scandinavians, Germans, Englishmen or Dutch people that has found Sète. It is very genuinely French unlike some places on Côte d’Azur. It is not that we do not meet people from other countries, but never in such masses that they dominate the culture. On the contrary, there are more and more tourists coming to Sète and we enjoy meeting, talking with them. Sometimes it is nice to talk to someone who understands every word you say. Coming down for a few weeks to relax from work is perfect. We experienced a lot of things in a short time, we always had people around us – summer and winter – and it was always something going on. We were really on vacation!
We became however more aware of the fact that living in such a place all year around would be different. It was very easy to go to a restaurant instead of making your own meals. It was more attractive to take a walk along the beach than reading a good book. Shopping was always an attractive option if nothing else showed up. We felt that we would like to live in a place there we would not be on vacation all the time. I should however not be too far away from all these fantastic attractions we got used to. So, whenever we visited places around in Languedoc we kept our eyes opened and asked ourselves: How would it be to live in a place like this? We knew we were looking for an old house and we were not afraid of doing some renovation on it. We rather preferred that than a house someone else redone in away we did not like. It took us 12 years to find our house!
We were lucky to become very good friends with three most lovely cousins that owned the local restaurant, ice cream café and delicatessen shop in our neighbourhood. These three ladies had a lovely old house in a little village in the Corbières Mountains. Their house was a part of the oldest part of the village that was built on the remains of a medieval castle in turn built on the same ground as a Roman fortification.
Their neighbour house was the oldest in the village and also empty since a few years. Unfortunately in a condition that worried some of the neighbours. We were quite shocked when they suggested we should buy that building and renovate it. No way! An old building, Yes! But that was too much.
Next summer we visited our friend again and they announced on the phone beforehand that they had managed to get the keys to the building next door. All the way down to our friends we convinced ourselves NOT to by that house. We knew that we needed all our talents to justify our lack of interest in the house to them.
It did not work out quite the way we had planned! When we entered the house it was love a first sight! We had a very good old lady friend with us from Sweden and the women were running up and down the stairs totally charmed by the lovely rooms, the old staircase, the original terracotta tiles from 18th century and how reasonably well everything was kept despite being empty for some years. I, being an architect, was more concerned about the condition of the floors, walls, roofing, plumbing and electricity.
To make a long story short – we bought the house and we will continue our story soon.
Tip of the day: If you are looking for a house for retirement. Do not rush, take your time, travel around and find out where and how you want to live and try to get French friends. It makes things much easier and nicer! They know so many things that you can never find out yourself. The way we did it, to get something small for a start, worked very well. And above all – have an open mind!
Thursday, September 27
Struggling with French
by
Jan
on Thu 27 Sep 2007 08:05 PM CEST
I took a long walk though the vineyards today. I picked some pears from a tree I found on the Garrigue[i], collected some laurel leaves, same thyme and a grenadine apple. I ended up in a dead end with a high fence and some farmers were harvesting their grapes on the other side of the fence. Now I had to exercise my almost non existing French.
- Ce possible a passé?, I asked, without knowing if it would make any sense to them. An old farmer with very few teeth and a great smile opened the fence for me and before I knew it I was involved in a conversation about the harvest. I had no idea I knew so many words in French. On the other hand, I understand French better than I speak and my experience from all over the world is that if you just listen and nod at the right place, toss in a few safe phrases now and then, they think you speak the language quite acceptable. Afterwards I realised I spoke some sort of pigeon French, but what the heck; it’s a great victory to be able to communicate at all, isn’t it. I learned that they harvest the grapes manually then it is not room enough to turn the harvester around in the end of the rows. This is mostly the case in the old field with very old vine. They also told me that the quality – meaning sugar of the grapes is very high this year but the quantity is poor. So – look out for 2007 wine from Corbieres in your local shop.
I started to explain who I was, which was totally unnecessary. They knew that we live in the old house of Mr Pistre, that we are from Sweden and have a fantastic terrace with the view over the whole neighbourhood and the Cevennes. Talking about living in a small village.
Being Swedish I am quite lucky as we are custom to foreign languages from non dubbed films and TV and also pronounce our alphabet as most people do in the world. That helps up the pronunciation anyway. I feel pity for the English sometimes that have to learn totally new way of pronouncing the letters wherever they go. I can tell you it is hard enough to have a wife who is fluent in French, German, English and all three Nordic languages and on top of that she manages to communicate in Italian and Spanish. You can imagine how long people bother to listen to my pathetic stuttering in French when they can get to the point much faster by talking to my dear wife. I have to get out more on my own!
Anyway I bought a bottle of propane gas for my grill today and started it up just to test drive it. One of our female French friends calls me Mr Gadget – I can’t understand why.
Tomorrow we will grill some confit de canard, which is the leg of a duck which I prepared in such a way that the meat just falls off the bone – so lovely and tender!! I hope? (Sounds like an old song of Elvis Presley)
[i] Garrigue is the name of the bushy forest areas that are so common in south of France. There you find pine trees with an under vegetation of thyme, basil, bushy oak trees and other low growing vegetation. Lots of flowers, mushrooms and wild asparagus in season and now and then you find a mimosa tree or a wild olive or almond tree.
Wednesday, September 26
French charcoal sucks
by
Jan
on Wed 26 Sep 2007 11:22 AM PDT
 I bought myself a fantastic grill today. It is a Weber gas grill. Yes I agree – grilling on a gas is cheating. No real man would do that. It is for yuppies with no sense for tradition. I have always used charcoal in Sweden and my dream was to build a real genuine charcoal grill on the terrace – maybe I even could burn wine-wood down to a very hot wine smelling heat there I could grill my sirloins and sausages.
So – why on earth do I by a gas grill? The only reason is that my French friends are getting annoyed at me because every time I invite them to a grill party I complain about the French charcoal. Honestly, it is absolutely useless. It must be made from the most fast growing wood that they can find. Even if you load the grill with lots of charcoal and wait until it gets white and nice, I could sit on it with my bare bottom without putting my family happiness into jeopardy. No I have not done that as, at my age, I have to be careful with what I still have. If I look at our neighbour when she grills some sausages she puts them about 1 cm above the heat to get them ready. That’s the way they do it here and they do not know anything else. If I did that with the charcoal we have in Sweden the sausages would be burned to ashes before I could count to three.
The important thing is that French people do not like that you complain about anything in France as they are – just like Americans – absolutely convinced that however lousy it is in their country, it is far better than any other place. So – to keep my good relations to my neighbours I have got myself a gas grill. No complaining about bad propane gas – If there is something like that.
My new grill is NICE! I have put it on the terrace and next week I will build a pergola over it. I have already got a wine plant that should cover it. A little problem was that the plant had some decease – said one of our expert friends – so I had to spray it with some terrible sulphur smelling solution last Saturday. Hope it gets well so I can get some good grapes next summer. Maybe I could deliver a bucket to Le Cave Cooperative and get a bottle of my own wine back.
I have seen some families picking their grapes manually. A lovely picture seeing everybody from the 10 years old daughter to grandfather filling the cones they carry on their back with grapes. Most of the harvest is however done by machine. I was fascinated when I imagined a machine that could pick the grapes gently and put them in the tractor trailer to be delivered to the pressing. I am still looking forward seeing how this kind of machine works.
Today we had a cloudy day with a bit of rain which is very unusual. It is my fault as I washed my car yesterday.
Tuesday, September 25
Introduction to France-Midi
by
Jan
on Tue 25 Sep 2007 12:54 PM PDT
 For the last 15 years we have spent every summer in our little studio in Sète in south of France. Four years ago we bought a fantastic house from 1762 in Corbières that we have been renovating. We are now living permanently in the village and we think our new life is fantastic. The village is quite small, very traditional and have a fantastic wine. We are not the only ex patriots in the village. There are a few British couples an Irish family, Americans who come here every summer, Norwegians who have bought a huge house with an even larger Norwegian flag and a few Belgians. During these years we have learned a lot about how to get the most out of life in another country. We will talk about food, wine, culture, outings, golf, shopping and good friends. We will also share a few tips and tricks about moving to France, the bureaucracy, how to find good crafts-men and much more. We hope you will enjoy our Blog.
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