Renovation project - Replacing old lead pipes
The stain on the stairs is so nice we have decided to use it
on more wood; the next item to get treated is the front door.
And once again this looks fantastic, I had stripped the door
previously and we hadn’t decided what to do with it, the original wood colour
was really nice but unfortunately it had a lot of black spots from where the
rain had got to it. By staining it the colour is more solid but still looks
like real wood.
Where we live you have to have planning permission to change
anything on the outside of the house and yes this does include the colour of
the front door! But because we have kept the original wood and not actually
changed the colour as such, we did not need to wait for planning permission
(which is lucky as the door may have rotted away before permission came back!)
John is back on plumbing duty, we had discovered a small length
of lead pipe which we didn’t know was there, as you strip back a house these
little surprises jump out at you regularly.
The lead pipe is from the water meter and has to be changed,
we were lucky in that this was the only piece of lead left in the house. It’s
amazing at what you consider to be lucky finds, we had first been hoping to
find treasures, or fantastic original features, now we are happy to find only
small disaster areas.
This is one of those jobs that can be so quick, whip it out,
put a new one in place, seal it, job done! Or it can take forever because you
find a leak. We thought we had been on the first one until we noticed a damp
patch, some more soldering and the leak is gone. It didn’t help that this piece
of pipe was a different diameter and even the shop didn’t sell the right size
and had no idea where this diameter of pipe had come from, at first they asked
if we had brought it from the UK. But no, it is just another of those lovely
little surprises to hold you back.
Top tips
- When buying an old house in France you have to be careful of lead in the house, we have already scraped the lead paint from the windows and as soon as our planning permission comes back we can replace them completely. Be very careful when buying and make sure any visible lead is reported to you and look at your old water pipes!
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