Given that it’s not coming through at ground level, I think it’s more likely to be one of two things:
Condensation where the wall is cold because it’s an old solid wall, exposed to the outside, but unable to breathe properly. It’s likely to be this if it happens in winter but not summer. Crepi and plaster is meant to allow the wall to breathe, but sometimes they have impermeable additives that means that this doesn’t happen. Increasing ventilation or dehumidifying should help, but other than that, there’s not much you can do unless you want to insulate your walls.
or penetrating damp, where there’s a failure of the flashing at the neighbouring roof, or their gutter overtops in a rain storm, spraying the water over your gable wall. If you’re getting damp after the summer storm season, this might be the cause.
The French don’t really go in for having surveyors look at properties prior to purchase, and their general attitude is to allow a little damp if the building can breathe properly (and unfortunately, lots of Brits seal the houses up with impermeable coatings and renders).
I don’t know whether France has an equivalent of the Property Care Association, with accredited damp surveyors etc, but it’s worth getting one in to check it out. The Maisons Paysannes de France might be able to help:
Fairly sure it’s this. We did employ a surveyor before buying the house (the survey was done in October 2019) much to the bemusement of our French seller. The surveyor was very thorough and didn’t identify any issues with the adjoining neighbour’s roof. Plus this is very recent and it has rained a lot here over the last few weeks. Insulating the walls could be the way forward; this may be a daft question but would the insulation not then just get damp?
Insulating the walls is a big job - increasing ventilation is usually a better option, although it does make your house colder, obviously. If you have vents in your windows I’d open them, which will help.
It is best to allow a small air gap between the insulation and the solid wall, and this is one of the reasons why it can mean that you lose 120mm or so from your room. If you have existing cornicing, and skirtings, you’ll lose these as well.
I don’t know what kind of products you can get in France, but in the UK you can use something like British Gypsum’s Gypliner Universal to achieve this. (We used it on our end-terrace house).
Thanks Markee, I really appreciate the advice. I will look into it. I don’t mind losing space as it’s the stairwell and a cupboard. The stairwell is yet to be decorated so it could work, just depends how much €€€ it’ll cost as to when we could get it done.
Lined up an electrician and stone worktop company to help get this done. Definitely needed a dedicated electrical circuit for a 5 ring hob.
Needed the worktop company to take a look at the job but they said it sounded fine and that they’d come out, take a look, and do the cutting if it was ok, so I took out the gas hob, got an electrician to put in a dedicated supply, and got a plumber to cap the gas.
Stone worktop guy comes out and says because there’s not much material at the front he doesn’t feel good about enlarging the cutout to fit a wide induction hob. He says he’ll do it if we take the risk, but we’re looking at probably a grand to replace the length of quartz worktop if he fucks up. Feel a bit pissed off that we weren’t told this earlier.
In the end decide to keep the cutout as it is and stick a regular 4 ring induction in the existing cutout. get the electrician to finish the wiring up. Job is all done, and I don’t think the smaller induction hob looks too small for the gap really. Seems a nice hob as well (AEG).
So an annoying saga, but we’ve got a nice induction hob in the end.
The old gas hob was wider but fitted in the smaller regular cutout
Quite tempted by an induction hob for ease of cleaning but heard they’re a bit difficult to control temperature. Interested to hear you report back my little guinea pig
Haha yeah wipe clean is really really good and I think they look nice in a modern kitchen. I don’t think the temp is hard to control, you just have to get used to it a little I guess but it doesn’t take long. Plus there are other cool features and they’re safer than gas and things.
I dunno if they’re more energy efficient or greener necessarily but they heat up fast and it seems like the heat/energy is focussed on the pan
My parents have got one and it’s not hard to control the temperature. The only thing is that at the lower temperatures it heats in pulses, so if you’re cooking something really sensitive to heat you might need to use a bain marie or something. Overall i much prefer it to gas.
So we’re getting the kitchen done. Which is very exciting. Getting an IKEA kitchen, which they are fitting. But also need to get the current one removed, and get the floor and walls re-tiled and paint the walls and put up some new shelving.
Question 1:
Im guessing the order to do these jobs in would be
stripper to remove old kitchen, floor and tiles
IKEA install kitchen
tiler for floor and walls
we paint and put shelving up
Or am I missing something in the order of these jobs?
Question 2:
Around the door we have some pretty grim looking wall
The order you’re working to makes sense. Is there any work needed with the electrics/plumbing/lighting? You’ll need to factor that in before the new kitchen is installed.
Marckee is your man on the wall situation. I wonder if it’s a condensation issue given it’s a kitchen and you may have a draft around the edge of the door which is causing condensation to collect. Check the outside for anything obvious (blocked drain/dripping gutter). You could ask a damp proof company to take a look
Finally, does your extractor hob vent outside? Worth making sure that’s installed with your new kitchen (our house in Sheffield didn’t so we installed that ourselves, which helped a lot with condensation)
Ta, Sink and Oven are both going in the same place as the current ones so gas/plumbing stuff should be relatively straightforward. Going to have a think about lighting but probably just going to replace the current light fitting rather than doing anything new. Kitchen is a 3x2m offshot so hoping to keep everything under c. 5k all in.
Built a new chicken coop yesterday which is more like a small shed (probably $2000/mo in NYC amiright?!) - the err pointy top roof bit was broken (has a name but can’t think what). Not a massive drama, just stuck a couple of nails in it and glued it back together… but it was missing all of the little divider slats which separate the boxes the hens sleep in. Double, triple-checked, definitely not in any of the boxes.
Company want a photo of them after I said they weren’t included, so they’ve got lots of photos from me holding up nothing in various spots round the farm. “Me and my divider by the pond (divider not included)” etc.
Could literally replace the pieces in about two minutes with a saw and some ply, but THATS NOT THE POINT.
So far their suggested option was to return the whole thing at my expense which I’ve already built and wait for another one (and then build that).
I sent a rant to a company that asked me for photos like this. I ordered loads of different types of garlic as part ofa Xmas present and half of it was completely rotten. When garlic is rotten you don’t have to cut it open to know, it stinks the whole place out. They wanted photos but only replied 2 weeks later. As if I’m keeping some stinking rotten food in my house in the hope you’ll actual reply. Piss off mates. Told them they should have faith in customers rather than imply they’re living and they refunded me.
Wasn’t there a joe lycett thing about photos of a missing product?
Ha, some customer service drones (I, and I’m sure many of us, have been there) just either don’t engage brain or won’t deviate from the flowchart of Company Ltd’s complaints procedure.
We do weekly BigShop on a Monday, can’t think what it was we bought but a day after we noticed it was absolutely rancid. Might have been a smoothie - that had congealed . Now no one’s driving back just for a £1.49 drink, so took it back the following Monday like… look!
Weren’t having it “well it’s a week old” YES BUT IT WASN’T THEN.
A colleague overheard and was just like scan-beep-beep “sorry, we’ve taken that off your shopping this week, refunded it, and here’s a voucher for another one” in less than the time it took me to type this.
Sanded one of the kitchen worktops down - bought a cabinet scraper and it made such a difference. A much quicker job and got through hardly any sanding pads. Bought some nice hard wax oil too, rather than using the left over Danish oil with the lid that always jams closed.
Annoyingly, it now looks really good and has made the other one look really shit. And the other one has the sink and hob cut into it, so has loads of narrow bits I can’t get to with the scraper. One for 2022 I reckon. (pops feet up and admires handiwork).
. Now no one’s driving back just for a £1.49 drink, so took it back the following Monday like… look!