Araucaria

The stairs look like this: [IMG]http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/stairs.jpg[/IMG] The floor in front is oak and was treated with a glossy varnish. As there is quite an area to be treated, the linseed oil/turps mix seemed attractive as it is a lot cheaper than most proprietary oils. Wikipedia says that danish oil may contain tung oil, or may be polymerised linseed oil. And this link suggested that you might be getting any one of a number of different things in a can of danish oil. Could either of you say what your danish oil actually contains? I hope I am not beginning to sound like the type of forum-person who asks a question but has already made up his mind what to do, and will ignore the answers, but I don't want to spoil the wood and I am interested in alternative options. But also I don't like paying fancy prices for simple products, and the (linseed/turps/dryer) mix I've used elsewhere seems to work quite well. But so far I haven't used it anywhere underfoot.

We have a substantial new Ash staircase. The wood at present is a natural blonde colour, and looks very good the way it is. I know we have to treat it with something. But I'm not too sure about using a vitrificateur (OK, varnish). We treated a floor with three coats of vitrificateur, doing it exactly as it said on the tins, and it has scratched in a way that I had hoped it wouldn't. It was also very expensive. Subsequently we have treated some other wood around the house (inside as well as outside) with linseed oil. We've put it on diluted with turps, and added a siccatif. The result looks good, smells fine, and is easy to maintain: just slap a bit more on. But on a staircase? Has anyone else used linseed oil on a floor? Is it a bad idea? And will it in time make the wood go much darker? We've noticed that putting it on new oak makes the wood just a little darker, but on old oak, even though before treatment it is a light colour, it makes it practically black.

Coops: what you suggest might work, I'm not saying it won't. But it didn't work for us. We got the local office to do a belt and braces job: copies of my and OH's FD5 via Paris, and a second copy, with an original stamp, direct. I later rang HMRC to confirm they had received the "direct" ones, they had, and they said they could not act on them. The forms had to come via Paris. I have very little sympathy for HMRC on this. Some other countries don't insist on the forms going via the (foreign) tax head office to the UK. It's supposed to be an anti-fraud measure so presumably we ex-pats in France are to be trusted less than ex-pats elsewhere. I think it just provides HMRC with a perfect excuse for sitting on a pile of unsorted forms and doing nothing. The UK exchequer gains by the delay. I would love to know whether the pile of FD5s in Nottingham is counted and treated as a target for the staff concerned, or whether it is just conveniently ignored. For what it's worth, HMRC have lost OHs FD5. Mine was processed in about six months, but after I received the long-awaited letter from HMRC saying OT codes would be issued "shortly", it was another three months before they actually did so. And then what they actually issued was OT on a Week1/Month1 basis, so yet another phone call was needed to get the arrears paid.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. All very helpful. Gluestick - one thing that can't be causing the problem is any form of timber treatment. None of the wood in the house had been treated when we bought it, so all the softwood was absolutely full of woodworm. And this particular floor/ceiling is pine. We treated the ceiling's upper surface (the attic floor) with xylophene a year or two ago, but xylophene doesn't produce this effect when you paint over it. I am fairly sure it's just the effect of smoke from the open fire. Particularly as it is much worse on the areas closest to the fireplace.

Yes, that's it. And it makes no difference where you leave the money. UK residents are subject to CGT on gains that they make anywhere in the world. The country where you make the gain may also want to charge tax.

The sequel to this was very cheering. OH went to the local Citroen garage with the car and the evidence (the undershield, which had been dragged along the road for a couple of kilometres before being removed). The garagiste said that a new undershield would cost (I think) €180, but he had fixed back ones that had had much worse damage than that one. And he did, on the spot, for €28. While under the car he said that he'd noticed a small oil leak from (I think) part of the turbo, and the cost to replace that would be €300 just for the parts, but if it was his car he wouldn't bother, it wasn't leaking much. He's certainly going to get my custom in future (not too soon though I hope).

It's a very kind offer, Theiere, but it's a bit far for you to come. I did open the link, and tried looking for a some kind of a list of distributors, or even an on-line shop, but I couldn't find one.

I'm with Dog on this - sounds wonderful - but who sells it?

We've been splashing the white emulsion onto the ceiling in the main room in the farmhouse. It has an old wood-burning stove, but previously there was an open fire in a "cantou" fireplace. The ceiling is pine boards - effectively the attic floor - supported on big oak joists which are stained/dyed/painted almost black. The white emulsion may not be an ideal finish but the room is very dark as it faces NW and the window isn't very big. We're leaving the joists black. I am beginning to think the ceiling has been impregnated by 60 or 70 years of smoke from the fire, as directly the paint goes on, dark brown stains appear through it. Even after a couple of coats it's still much the same. Can anyone suggest a sealant of some kind to paint on first (well, not first now, obviously it would need to go on over the discoloured emulsion) to stop the smoky/tarry residues in the wood from seeping through into the paint?

Dog I wish you the very best of luck. And maybe it might be best to get your retaliation in first and try dragonrouge's county court method. A more obvious example of bank incompetence would be hard to find. However one point makes me curious. Do you just take a sterling cheque drawn on your (UK?) bank down to CA and pay it in, with them fixing the exchange rate? If so, do you get a good exchange rate without massive charges? I'd not thought of trying that myself: I wasn't sure whether CA would know what to do with sterling. But please keep us informeed of the results.

Jay that's really great. Very comprehensive. Maybe it should be made a sticky?  [I]

I looking for something a bit quicker than that. Though I have very recently bought the Haynes manual. Specifically what is (in French) the big bit of plastic that Citroen calls the "engine undershield"? Thanks to Citroen's hydractive suspension, if you park over the top of a kerb while the engine is running and the suspension is up, when you turn off the ignition you settle down nicely onto the kerb and break it up into small pieces (actually you pull all the fastening clips out first, and then trailing it along the ground is what breaks it up). I suppose the easiest way is to take the remains along to the local garage and wave them about a bit. [:@]

Can anyone post a link to a site with English/French translations of parts of vehicles and other driving terms? I can just about manage to find the words for the windscreen, steering wheel, the tyres and the rear view mirrors, but once it gets to the bonnet, the bumpers, the parts of the electrical system etc I am totally stuck.

Our (definitely French!) plumber was very much against the idea of putting any showers in our upstairs bathrooms. He said that - however good the shower - it will always eventually leak. So we have ended up with the only shower downstairs in a "wet room" on concrete where it isn't likely to matter much if it leaks. Though of course we hope it won't.

Thanks Chancer, oak it is then. And you are right, the originals (which look as if they aren't even the same wood, from the colour anyway) are clearly handmade, and as you say threepenny-bit shaped. That rather dates both of us, doesn't it? It's solid walnut, no veneer anywhere, and it might be a bit older than 100 years. The previous owner of our house left it behind (about the only thing he did leave) because he couldn't get it out and didn't know how to take it apart.

I have just disassembled an old walnut armoire (c. 1900 I'd guess) - to move it. It wouldn't go through the doors or windows assembled. It was held together with eight wooden dowels or pegs. They are - or were - about 7.5cm long and about 7 or 8mm diameter. Are these stock items sold in Mr Bricolage (or equivalent), or should I just make my own? If so, any suggestions about the wood to use? I wonder if it should be a good hard wood for strength, or something like pine for a degree of compressibility in the hole. The dowels were in pretty poor condition and are not really re-usable. I am still amazed at the way the whole thing just slots together and then becomes a nice solid piece of furniture after hammering in just these eight pegs, four at each corner at the front, and four at each corner at the back.

I rather think the OP gets the worst of all possible worlds. He would probably be resident in France under French rules, but would remain resident in the UK under UK rules. He'd have his normal UK tax returns to make (that rental income for a start). And he'd have to go through all the trouble of making one or possibly two French tax returns, and making the claim in France that he was to be treated as a UK resident under the terms of the Double Taxation Agreement. He'd have to import his car too, but perhaps we'd best not start on that....

If anyone is interested in reading the original decision by the Special Commissioners in the Gaines-Cooper case, it's here. The Special Commissioners (who are an independent judicial tribunal, not part of HMRC) cannot take into account HMRC/IR publications or explanations about what makes you resident in the UK. They can only look at the law or at previous court decisions. But they did decide how many days Gaines-Cooper spent in the UK, and it was a lot more than 91 in virtually every year they looked at. It's in paragraphs 98 to 109. The later court decisions were Gaines-Cooper's (failed) attempts to overturn the rulings made by the Special Commssioners.

Quite right Bugbear, I did misunderstand. I think getting an aerial is what we will do - I believe it can go inside the attic, and not show at all from outside. It's a nice barn (in the avatar) and we don't want to clutter it up too much. Luckily the electrician cabled the attic and the wall sockets for an aerial too. What misled me was the "if" bit in your last sentence. Whether we had Sky or not, we'd still get the French channels through another socket on the TV, yes? Thanks again

Thanks for these replies. I didn't want another dish outside - one looks bad enough already! We don't have Sky - just the freesat channels. I didn't think there were any French channels available on the Astra 2 satellite at 28.2 degrees, Bugbear. At least our decoder box didn't find any. Mind you it is a cheap Chinese thing, with an instruction book translated - into English and French - even more badly than usual.

As someone who finds computers daunting anyway, I'd really appreciate some advice. We've had Orange France broadband for the last couple of years. Until recently we didn't have a TV. We've now bought a TV and had a satellite dish installed, which is pointing at the UK Freeview satellite. So we get all the free UK channels and it works very nicely. But I'd also like the option of watching French TV. Our Orange broadband package says it includes (French) TV, but at the time we bought the package (mostly the Livebox) we weren't very interested as (a) we didn't have a TV and anyway (b) we'd heard that round here the broadband speed wasn't all that good. But now we'd like to give it a try. But I have no idea at all how the TV signal gets from the Livebox to the TV. Is it another cable? If so from where to where? Is there some additional piece of electronic equipment required? If someone who uses the Orange broadband TV could explain how it's done in words of not much more than one syllable I'd be really grateful.

"Cheer up", they said, "things could be worse." So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

Lambkin  perhaps your rear brakes are drums? As has been said, these can rust and seize, and indeed often do. On the other hand, it's often possible to free them by taking the wheel off and giving the drum a few clouts with a heavy hammer. Carefully.

We couldn't get the whole of our ceiling level, for a very definite reason. The rest of the new plasterboard ceiling is fastened to the wooden supports for the new and nicely level floor above, which are only slightly irregular in places where different width/depth planks were used - but only a couple of centimeters different. I put a small triangular fillet in those places to avoid breaking the plasterboard. But above this bit (the last three spaces between the beams on the right) there is a concrete hearth slab, cast between and over the beams, for a woodburner fire on the floor above. The slab is seven or eight centimeters lower than the rest of the ceiling. So it has to be a feature unfortunately, as I couldn't see any practical way of getting it all level. If we'd gone down to the level of the concrete on the rest of the ceiling, some of the beams wouldn't have shown at all. [IMG]http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss293/Vanman15/foyer.jpg[/IMG] There are other pictures of this ceiling (all our own work, we can't afford the artisans) on my blog: and specifically at http://denchilds.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html I imagine eventually we won't notice it all. And after all, visitors don't spend much time looking at this bit of the ceiling (while the bit above the bed actually is level).

I submitted my FD5 in May this year along with my first French tax return, and the bureaux des impots stamped and signed it (giving me a copy) and said they would send it to Paris the same day. And I think they did. HMRC in Nottingham wouldn't do anything for me on receipt of the copy I forwarded to them at the same time (and so I am surprised they acted on one that hadn't come via Paris). At the end of September I received a letter from them (Nottingham) saying that the Liverpool office would "shortly" issue NT tax codes to the pension funds who pay me. Last week I rang up and found that Liverpool had simply sat on the notification and done nothing, but they promised they would send the NT codes out the next day. I shall be checking up with the pension funds next week to see if they have.