The chalet finally arrives..!

Okay, so without wanting to be accused of falling at the first hurdle... I know that it's ages since my first post but I'm trying to put it down to the fact that I've been super-busy! And not just so lazy that I'd rather sit on the counch watching TV at the end of a long day rather than update my blog. I'm going for the "It's all about quality" tactic. :)

LOADS has happened since you were last here. The tiling in the basement is now finished (verrry nice but not much to look at... they're tiles, afterall); the Lithuanian team are here (they arrived last Wednesday night, only 24 hours earlier than expected!) and the first floor has already been completed, logs-wise.

The biggest challenge of the project so far has been the arrival of the first truck (of which there will eventually be three) and in trying to get the stuff off the darned thing and up to the chalet!

Oh, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. We had to get the crane in place first! Not easy when you have to manoevure the thing down the side of our existing chalet, with only 4 metres to work with - it's long! And heavy! But thanks to Thierry Puissant's excellent skills, we got it sorted.

Yes, they're tiles!

Using a tractor to push the crane into place

Longgggg....

The truck itself was about 16m long, which meant that there was NO way it was getting up our narrow mountain roads to the chalet location. Hence, we had to offload the 15 or so pallettes individually onto a smaller truck fitted with a crane. Then, making sure we didn't take out Les Houches' entire telephone network cable system in the process, it was up the hill to... well, we still haven't decided on a name for the new chalet yet so submit your suggestions here, please!

Chalet Roberts... so far!

This pallette was about 11m in length.

4 hours and 100 Euros later (paid to the shop owner who was none-too-chuffed about having a truck dent his lawn unexpectedly!) we finally (!) got everything off-loaded. At which point the team of builders (Raymond, Thomas, Darius, Egi and Vil..helm..ni..us (I think! - only two of them speak any broken English)) attacked the packages and within a matter of hours had the first logs out and were laying them down on the concrete slab. All the while, I was getting a crash course in how to operate a crane - hoping desperately that i wouldn't end up swinging a log beam through a window or knocking off a chimney of our existing chalet in the process.

All those hours of playing computer games finally coming in handy!

Sooo... swing left when mean right, um, no wait.... darn!

Meccano; giant-sized Lego... these similarities spring to mind. The log profile of the chalet we're building is 18cms x 24cmx so they're beefy. And heavy too - it took six of us to carry the longest one down into place.

Then, as is tradition, prior to the first log being fixed in place, Lisa and I (as the owners) had to lay a coin under the one of the corners of the new chalet to ensure good luck would stay with us in our new home..!

There...

...you...

..go!

Ceremonies over with, it was onto the serious business of lifting; lowering; measuring; banging; hammering; the very occasional bit of sawing and overall supremely efficient placement of the first layers of logs.

A goes into B as C joins up to D...

The base framework all in place

8 hours later...

 By the end of the first day, the team had put in all of the logs up to the top of the first floor, which was simply amazing and due, in no small part, to the speed at which they worked (I'd like to say that the crane operator was also responsible but that would be too cheeky!).

Photo-stitching software not so hot but you get the idea..!

And that's where we at right now. Sunday today so it's a (well-earned!) rest day and then it all carries on again tomorrow, when the second truck will arrive. It's is sooo exciting to see this chalet going up and it looks really impressive too. Can't wait for the day when it'll be finished!