The greater striped tile cutter

The new tile cutter was quite a machine. It would need to be placed on a workmate and, we guessed, would have to be outside. With a diamond cutting wheel powered by electricity, tiles would need to be placed on the flat surface and pressed two-handed against the rotating wheel, which ran through a water bath to cool it. It looked as though it might be just a bit too messy to use indoors. As it was by then beginning to get dark, we decided to give ourselves the rest of the day off and to start afresh in the morning.

The next day saw us up early, raring to go. We set up the cutter with an extension lead, filled the water bath, and pressed to ‘on' button. The cutting wheel rotated at high speed, throwing out droplets of water in all directions. Leaving Chris to decipher the finer details of the operating instructions, I measured and marked up another tile.

I stood well back while Chris laid the tile on the cutter, switched on the machine, and gingerly pressed the tile against the wheel. Just a little more pressure and the wheel cut through the tile swiftly and cleanly. I burst out laughing as Chris handed me the piece I needed: he had been sprayed by the cutter and now boasted a white stripe from the middle of his forehead, down his nose, over his chin and down his chest.

Chris got no cleaner as the day wore on, and I was laughing too much to lay the tiles straight, but we got the job done. 

If at first you don't succeed

Chris and I spent an exorbitant amount of time examining the various cutters on sale: we wanted to make sure that whichever one we bought would be up to the job of cutting floor tiles about a quarter of an inch thick. Eventually we found one which we thought would be right for our needs and drove back to Les Lavandes whistling merrily.

After lunch we tried out the new tile cutter. We decided to play it safe, and used one of the already spoiled tiles. The result was exactly the same as before. Could it be that there was something wrong with this tile cutter as well, or were we just not using it correctly? Perhaps somebody at Mr Bricolage could tell us, so we put the cutter and the spoilt tile in the car and set off back to Mr B.

It was only with some difficulty that we managed to explain to the assistant at the information desk just what our problem was, but our persistence paid off and she went to find the store's resident expert on tile cutting. When he arrived we went through the rigmarole again. Fortunately the expert cottoned on quicker than the young lady had. He raised his eyebrows in time with his shoulders as he shrugged and spread his hands as if to ask, "Well, what do you expect?" His response was issued in machine-gun-style French, from which we gathered that he really was saying "Well, what do you expect?" We also understood him to be saying that the cutter we had bought was completely useless for cutting floor tiles, a job for which it was never intended.

He led us back to the area of the store where we had so carefully examined all the wide variety of tile cutters on sale. The expert pointed to a huge beast that stood on the floor like a saw bench. "That is what you need for floor tiles," he exclaimed.

The price of this monster made me raise my eyebrows: the cutter was going to cost me more than the tiles, the adhesive and grout all added together. Luckily, the cost was defrayed a little when the store agreed to buy back the cutter I had so recently bought and Chris and I drove away with the back of the car almost dragging along the road, so heavy was the brute.

We make a start

When the shower room was built, the floor - for some reason I have never worked out - was raised by about one and a half inches. But instead of leaving the normal type of shallow step, the builder made a slope from the hall floor to the new, higher, shower room floor at an angle of forty-five degrees, presumably on the grounds that it would be safer as people were less likely to trip over it. Then, at the end where the toilet pan sits, the floor is at yet a higher level, again by about an inch and a half. And again the builder made a slope at an angle of forty-five degrees. At least, we thought that had been his intention. Unfortunately the angle was nearer sixty degrees at one end of the slope and thirty degrees at the other.

So, as well as one of us having to twist like a contortionist, we had to cut tiles to fit the corners, the edges, round the wash basin pedestal, round the toilet pan - oh, and round an air grill which had been set into the floor for ventilation, there being no outside wall to the room. And then there were those two funny little slopes to contend with.

Chris being bigger than me, it was decided that I would lay the tiles while Chris would cut them to shape. I slapped a generous layer of adhesive on the only place on the floor where I could lay whole tiles and put the first two in place. We congratulated ourselves on having made a good start and went to have a coffee.

The next tile to be laid needed to be cut down. I took great care in marking just where the cut was to be made, remembering Chris's maxim, "measure twice, cut once", before handing the tile to Chris, who had set up the workbench in the courtyard. Chris followed the instructions which had come with the cutter, pulling the diamond wheel along the line of the cut, then inserting the tile between the upper and lower bars and pressing down on the handle. The tile snapped in completely the wrong place.

I had anticipated that we might have the odd accident or two and had deliberately bought more tiles than I should really have needed, so it was no problem for me to mark up a second tile. But when I gave it to Chris to cut, the same thing happened. It happened with the third tile as well.

We decided that there must be something wrong with the tile cutter, but as I had bought it in England there was nothing we could do about that. We had another coffee, and then went off to Mr Bricolage to buy a replacement.

Chris and I and the shower room

The time came when I could put it off no longer. Something had to be done about the flooring in the shower room. I agreed that I would replace the faded and worn-thin lino with tiles and, on one of my solo trips to France, I drove hundreds of miles and traipsed round about seventy-three different outlets - posh shops, DIY stores, cavernous warehouses and builders' merchants' yards - to find tiles which I thought would please Mrs S. I did eventually find what I wanted in Mr Bricolage, the DIY store which had become my second French home and which was, of course, the nearest tile stockist to Les Lavandes. As well as the tiles for the floor, I found a similar narrow tiles to fix to the bottom of the walls instead of the skirting board which wasn't there anyway. I had insufficient faith in my French to buy adhesive, grouting and a tile cutter over there, so found what I wanted in England.

Chris came over with me: I can't think why it can be, but he seems to like these jaunts. We removed the lino and stood jammed shoulder to shoulder in the shower room doorway considering how to tackle the job.

Perhaps at this stage I should explain that the house, when it was built in 1840, consisted of just two rooms - one downstairs and one up. Adjoining the house were cattle sheds with a hay barn above. The cattle sheds had at some time been converted into the living room and kitchen, while the downstairs room in the house part had a stud wall built to provide a bedroom and an entrance hall. The hall had been further divided to provide a shower room, effectively under the stairs, and the shower room was therefore a little on the small side, shall we say. If Chris and I had attempted to get in there together we would have been unable to see the floor properly.

The dimensions of the room alone would mean that this would not be a particularly easy job: one of us would have to twist like a contortionist to reach every corner. And it was plain to see that only two tiles could be laid without cutting them. But there was another little problem as well.

An Egyptian brothel?

Chris and I had a little discussion before we fixed the first length of tongued and grooved board. It would need two and a bit lengths of board to cover the length of the hall and Chris thought we should arrange the boards so that the joins were level with each other in every second row. In my opinion this would be just a little too formal and I preferred a random pattern of joins, which I thought would be more in keeping with a house of this age. Chris deferred to me most graciously.

"After all," he said, "it is your house. And anyway, we would probably end up with a lot of short pieces to fill the last two or three rows."

Fixing the boards was a little fiddly as we wanted to nail them through the grooves so that no nails would be visible when the job was finished. Luckily, none of the boards was unduly warped so at least we did not have that to contend with. All the same, it was well into the following day before we could turn our attention to the really tricky bit were the stairs emerged into the hall. But Chris's plan worked well and we were undeniably pleased with ourselves when we stood back and looked at the end result. There was just one final, finishing touch needed.

When our son and daughter-in-law had moved into their new house, Mrs S had looked at a lampshade left by the previous owners and realised straight away that it would not be to the taste of either son or daughter-in-law. She had decided it was just what was needed in the hall at Les Lavandes. It was a somewhat fragile affair of clear and coloured panels in a wire framework and I had been extremely careful how I had packed it in the car. Now was the time to put it up.

I thought Mrs S was quite right and it was just what the hall needed. Chris's comment was that it made the place look like an Egyptian brothel: I diplomatically refrained from asking him what he knew about such houses of ill repute, but Mrs Chris was less restrained when I reported his comment later.

 And just to finish off, this is the hall as it looks nowadays.

Cross battens in place

The next thing for Chris and me to do was to cut the cross battens and fit them in place. Each one had to be measured separately as the walls of the hall were not exactly parallel. There was also the small matter of how they were to be fixed to the battens on the wall. For some reason which I can't recall we decided that we wanted the underside of the cross battens to be at the same level as the underside of the wall battens. Eventually, we decided to cut the cross battens to exactly the same measurement as the gap across the hall between the wall battens. We then cut shorter lengths of batten which we fixed to the top of the cross battens but protruding at each end. These short lengths could sit on top of the wall battens and we could fix them by screwing down through the protrusions. It was not until we had nearly finished that we realised we had made unnecessary work for ourselves: all we really had to do was to fix the cross battens immediately underneath those on the wall and screw up through them. We consoled ourselves by telling each other that our method produced a much neater finish!

So far we had given little thought to the most difficult part of the job but that could not be put off any longer. At the far end of the hall from the front door the stairs curved round the corner of the wall behind the shower room and jutted out into the hall a little way. There was insufficient height over the bottom two stairs for our new, lower ceiling. We stood gazing at the spot for some time until eventually Chris exclaimed, "I've got it!" He had worked out how to construct a step in the false ceiling so that, although the step itself would be clearly seen, it would not look out of place.

I left him to the carpentry while I went and prepared our lunch.

We were ready to nail the first length of tongue and groove boarding to the cross battens. Now, however, we had another decision to make - and we realised that there was something we had forgotten. We had intended buying the nails the previous day as we had to pass Mr Bricolage on our way to the timber merchant to buy the battens. Six times we had driven past - three return journeys - and each time we had forgotten to go in. Before we could go any further, that had to be put right.

In which battens are fixed to the wall

After all the measuring, calculating, running around and general faffing around, the afternoon was pretty well gone and we decided that there really was no point us starting to do any actual work. We might as well relax for a while before getting cleaned up to go out for a meal. Chris could relax with a glass of Scotch, but I had to content myself with orange juice as I was driving.

Next morning we were up bright and early, raring to get started. We took great care as we fixed the battens to the wall: they needed to be perfectly level round all four walls. Actually, there were six walls as the hall is L-shaped, but that is just splitting hairs. Despite all our care, we did make a small mistake. We started at the wrong end of the hall.

The front door to the house is recessed into the two-feet thick wall, but the recess does not reach to ceiling height. If we had thought about it, we would have fixed the batten above the front door first in order to ensure that the tongue and groove timber ended up at the same height as the top of the recess. It would not have been the end of the world if the false ceiling had been slightly above the door recess, but going into the recess would have led to some tricky cutting of the boards as the recess is not square-shaped. But for once Lady Luck was on our side. As we fixed the last batten to the wall - the one above the door - we realised that the ceiling would line up exactly with the top of the recess.