Renovation Project - Plaster board in France

Renovation Project - Plaster board in France

It is time to move downstairs and make a start on the kitchen.

The first Job is to empty the kitchen into the living room, so now we have most of our belongings in one room, overcrowded is an understatement!

We have beams on the ceiling at the moment but because we have installed all new electric cables and the new soil pipe we need to cover these, we do not want to lose the beams entirely so John will be plaster boarding in between the beams. These means we can cover everything but not lose the beams entirely.

John covers the ceiling in insulation, insulation was on special offer, so always shop around for deals.

The insulation is as much for noise reduction from upstairs, due to having wooden floors, rather than just for heat, though, the insulation will make a big difference to the temperature in the downstairs of the house, and hopefully to our heating bills.

Once ready we start to fit the plaster board.

We had already covered a section in the living room, where the soil pipe is, and found out that it is very difficult to use a large piece of plaster board without a plaster board lift.

It consisted of John trying to hold it in place on a ladder and me using the broom to hold the other end in place, this is when we found out the beams were not square so whilst perched like this John was also having to shave bits of plaster board off.

Plaster board in France comes in a larger size than the UK, it is 8 foot by 4 foot (yes we are still in old measures) but the metric size is 2.5 metres by 1.2 metres.

This time we have bought smaller pieces and will be cutting them to size, it will mean more work covering joints but will make life mush easier.

The smaller boards are 2.5 metres by 0.60 metres, the smaller sized boards also meant we could pick them up in the car and did not require a van. We also had very little waste. So the cost of the smaller boards were more than the larger boards, overall, but the lack of waste and ease made it more cost effective.

We found Brico Depot to be the cheapest place to buy plaster board. It is called Plaque de platre

As we are near to finishing Sheila telephones to see if I want to go for a walk, John says he will finish off and I go for a stroll around the lake, when I get back John has changed everything. He has put the temporary cupboards back on the other side of the room, the kitchen looks so much bigger and better.

Once again our plans have changed, we will be having the kitchen units on both sides of the kitchen, and if the table and chairs are too big, we will deal with that at a later date.