Building a Rainbow - part 3

The next morning we telephoned the TV station and managed to wheedle out of them the telephone number of the Company in Finland. Thank heavens they spoke English when we called!
In no time at all - and without giving too much thought to the consequences - we were off to Helsinki.
We flew from Toulouse via Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and with only forty minutes between flights, we anticipated delays, problems and perhaps a night in Amsterdam en route. Remarkably all went smoothly and we arrived in Helsinki late by our time clock but in good time for our first experience of that strange northern summer phenomenon of an almost, but not quite, twilight.
We had to buy a small travelling alarm clock. Graham cat, whose color lives up to his name, is our usual alarm clock. He has the rather anti-social habit of waking us by sucking hungrily at any piece of exposed flesh, never having completely forgotten the experience of abandonment as a tiny kitten in a plastic carrier bag at the side of a French country road. If these assaults do not have the desired effect, i.e. of persuading us to get out of bed and produce food, Graham will be followed by Molly, a large and very heavy tortoiseshell who has a habit of pinning you down whilst purring loudly two inches from your face. Although possessing the cantankerous disposition often found in tortoiseshells, Molly has an unassailable place in the household, being a legacy from a much-loved daughter who died much too young of cancer. We actually had six cats at this time, an admission which usually invited looks of horror from most people. We hadn’t set out to acquire this many and the supermarket bills horrified us too at times – cats eat more as a percentage of their body weight than just about any other domestic animal. We also had a dog and aspirations after we had settled in our meadow, for further and more productive animal additions in the shape of a couple of nanny goats and a clutch of chickens to complement our hoped-for eco lifestyle.

Building a Rainbow - part 2

On choosing wood as a building material, we had entered the maze like world of timber frame construction or solid log. If we chose logs, should they be round ones, square cut, laminated or plain and what thickness should they be? There was a bewildering variety. Why is it that initially choices look to be so simple but the more you delve into them, the more complicated and difficult they become?
At the outset, we had discounted a timber frame house as the feeling was that we would lose a lot of the style we had initially fallen in love with. We wanted wood with a capital W and frame houses normally had most of their internal walls constructed from sheetrock. We had also stayed several times in a log house belonging to a friend in Virginia, USA and loved the ambiance of the natural wood - the air inside the house always seemed so much fresher and sweeter smelling and there was just something essentially pleasing about living in a building that was so naturally at one with the environment. After all, we told ourselves, one of our main aims was to make this house as ecologically sound as we were able.
With these thoughts reverberating through our heads, we had started off by spending weeks trekking round our region visiting constructors and suppliers and had become more than a little disheartened with exorbitant prices, vague delivery dates and quotes that never arrived. Disillusionment had set in and we had been about to give up on the whole idea when we saw a TV program devoted to a self-build project which was actually being constructed in the UK with logs from Finland. The house looked wonderful, the price was good and the presenter assured our eager audience of two that Finnish timber was infinitely superior to that grown in more temperate latitudes. Furthermore, the forests that provided the timber were managed and sustainable. We were transfixed as the program showed the owner of the house discussing his plans directly with the suppliers at their factory in Finland. Wow! That could be us we thought.

BUILDING A RAINBOW

CHAPTER ONE – NORTHERN LIGHTS AND LOG HOUSES

La Vie est Une Chance - Saisis La
(Life is a Chance - Seize It)
Mother Theresa


Unlikely as it may seem, we traveled from the South of France to the far North of Finland to buy a kit house. Even in the height of summer, it was somewhat of a culture shock. The contrasts were starkly defined. The incessant sawing song of the cicadas was exchanged for the occasional whine of an arctic midge. The pulsating colors of fields of sunflowers, banks of oleanders and ripening vines for vast expanses of still lake and dark, cool forests. We left our searing southern sun for one that was altogether softer but which remarkably was still shining at midnight.
I wondered as we flew ever northward, whether the log house we hoped to buy would survive all these contrasts. Would it sit as well in our Mediterranean meadow as it would by a Finnish lake? Would all that hi-tech insulation keep out our summer heat as well as it did the freezing winter temperatures of Finland? Logic told me that of course it would, but then of course only time would really tell.
We weren’t going to be building this house in some avant garde district of Paris but in a conservative rural backwater and although from northern Finland to Southern France, we were still within the EU, it was a long way from Brussels! We would have to face censorious planning restrictions and would need to satisfy not only skeptical local planning authorities but the village Mayor. Mayors of small villages have a lot of clout and in out of the way regions of Southern France are not noted for their modern outlook, or interest in unusual eco-projects. The main [read ‘only’] preoccupation for most Southern French Mayors is the state of the vineyards and this year’s harvest.We already knew that our choice of design would be very limited. Our roof for example would have to be covered in the local terracotta tiles - unchanged in style from when they were fashioned over the thigh of a Roman Centurion. With planning guidelines dating from some time BC, heaven only knew what other restrictions we might be presented with.