A Series of Pictorial Up-Dates, no. 2

In this set you can the difference in what is for the moment the kitchen/dining room.

As with all the areas in this part of the house the fact that the roof had collapsed in several places caused a great deal of damage. But this room seems to have been used as a store/wine cellar and was therefore not particularly well looked after even when the house was occupied.

The room is being used as a kitchen/diner only until we can get to work on the second half of the house and create the proper kitchen and separate dining room. Once that has happened this room will revert to being a cosy sitting room/study/music room.

A Series of Pictorial Up-Dates, no. 3

And in this set the change is from very badly damaged bedrooms and sitting rooms to the principal entrance-way into the house. The area is virtually unrecognisable from how it used to be and provides a splendid, welcoming entrance.

A Series of Pictorial Up-Dates, no. 4

And the external position of the house. We will eventually have the walls at the front, the side and part of the back covered in a new coat of crepié. But I have spent time ensuring that the existing covering is complete and gives a weather-proof covering. It also makes the house look a little less ‘shabby’!

A Series of Pictorial Up-Dates, no. 5

Just for completeness here’s the position on the field which was covered in the material taken from the back of the house. We have spent some time removing a great many pebbles/stones from it, though that is far from complete - look back to July 2008 to see how it was. It is green only because vegetation has grown back of its own accord. But you may be able to see that we have now planted nine fruit trees at the far end to create a small orchard. We hope that in the not too distant future we shall be able to pick our own fruit whilst relaxing in the shadow of the trees!

At last, a Summer up-date

Dial-up is such a pain that keeping the blog going is a real trial, and up-loading pictures virtually impossible, but for the moment this will bring you up-to-date on where we are now.

In terms of rooms not much has changed since the last posting – we have two bedrooms, one with an en-suite shower room, a kitchen/diner, the large sitting room with mezzanine and now a downstairs shower room. This latter is very useful when we have guests as they no longer have to use ‘our’ shower room. So what have we been doing all this time? Working very hard to finish all the rooms, and this is still very far from complete. The main bedroom and en-suite and the kitchen/diner require very little finishing now, I have not done this as other tasks were more urgent. The spare bedroom is only a little further on as it is useable and we want to complete other areas first. In the large sitting room the three non-plasterboard walls were crepied by Jean Claude and initially we were quite content with this. But we then employed another craftsman to crepie the walls in the hallway and downstairs shower room and he made a marvellous job of this with a much better finish. So we have decided that we’ll employ him to cover over the walls in the sitting room again to achieve the much better finish that’s possible – a double cost but we think worth it in the long run. I have tiled out the floor in the sitting room and carried this through into the hallway so that I could tile out the shower room and the next door walk-in cupboard. In having the shower fitted we employed a plumber who ‘sorted out’ some of Jean Claude’s less than wonderful plumbing efforts and we are much more content with it all. I have also put in the floor for the mezzanine and the ceiling underneath it. We bought a spiral staircase to access the mezzanine which, unfortunately, when I tried to work out how it would be fitted we realised that it would be rather ugly and intrusive in the room. So, research at various builders’ merchants led us to buy a second staircase that works extremely well in the overall context of the room. And we shall use the spare staircase to access the summer room we intend to make in the first floor of the open-sided barn, so not an entirely wasted purchase.

Most importantly in terms of comfort we have finally got a proper connexion to the electricity supply – two days ago indeed. It’s taken over a year to get to this happy position and even right at the end EDF managed to make things difficult for us. An appointment was made and confirmed with EDF but the technician did not turn up and EDF claimed that the appointment had been re-made for a day six days later. Result – we would be without a supply of any sort for that period. However, our ever helpful neighbours allowed us to tap into their supply, and as long as we didn’t use too many appliances at once all was well. But now with a proper connexion we can put in heaters and the like and not have any concerns about over-loading the supply.

Outside we have spent time trying to keep the courtyard and garden tidy. We have created a vegetable and flower patch, reclaiming this from the on-rushing weeds – it’s going to be a constant battle as we adjoin a field which is a haven for all sorts of invasive weeds. Foolishly we did not put in the necessary work on our field in front of the house. If you remember, or look back to the previous posting – July 2008 – we had the earth taken from the back of the house spread over the field but this contained a great deal of caillou (pebbles ranging from quite small to huge) and these need to be lifted before we can turn the field into even a quite rough grassed area into which we can put fruit trees. The area we did work on can be mowed using the sit-on mower but this accounts for only a quarter of the field and in the remaining three-quarters the grass and weeds went wild – up to three feet tall. Eventually our neighbour kindly cut it all using his tractor and attachment and turned and lifted the cut material to use for feeding his cattle. I have now used the mower to cut over this area as well but very cautiously trying to avoid the pebbles as much as possible. We must though carry on the tedious task of removing the pebbles so that mowing is not such a fraught task and we can establish the field in its proper state.

All work and no play I hear you ask! Well not entirely, we have met many people here both French and ex-pats and our social life is expanding quite nicely so that we are able to lift our heads from the grind of working on the house and simply enjoy the pleasure of la vie française.

A Christmas Posting

We feel that we should let you know what progress has been made in time for us, perhaps, to be able to enjoy the festive season. Firstly we have now cleared all the furniture, clothes, books, pictures, etc., etc. that were in the house in GB and we wanted in France. A mammoth effort in that we had thought that we could have the moving carried out by a local South West British company. They had given me an ‘indicative’ quote over the ‘phone which was, on reflection, ridiculously cheap. On the basis of it we drove back to GB expecting to have to make only the one journey back. In the event when the company made a full assessment of the task they provided a quote which was 6 times higher than the indicative one!! We therefore hired a van and did the move ourselves. Much harder work involving all the packing and unpacking plus lots more driving, but worth a huge saving.

In terms of the house we have the finished bedroom and en suite bathroom and the kitchen/diner. In the big salon the ceiling and one wall have been plaster-boarded and I have started painting the ceiling where there is some staging left from putting up the ceiling. Jean Claude has installed the wood-burning stove and we can now use it to help warm up the house. That is fortunate as the weather has been brutally cold on occasions. The electrician has also worked on this room so all the cabling, switches and sockets are in place. And therefore we are now having the remaining three walls plastered with crepie – a special chalk-based product which is particularly effective on earth walls. If this is finished in time for Christmas we shall be able to make use of the room for the festive period. I shall still have lay all the floor tiles and we have much to do to complete the mezzanine; but we can make use of the room in the meantime.

I have also completed the insulation and plaster-boarding of the spare bedroom which has significantly improved the overall warmth of the house. Now I need to fill all the joints in and paint the room, but it is a useable space and we have indeed slept in it when we had visitors recently. There is also work for the electrician to complete in putting in the switches and sockets.

If I then put in a plaster-board wall in the large cupboard in the hallway, so that we can hang the main electricity switch board, – the ‘tableau principal’ – we should be able to persuade EDF to let us have a full electrical supply. At the moment if we have too many electrical appliances in action at the same time we suffer the main fuse tripping out, usually plunging us into darkness.

So we are getting close to being able to live relatively comfortably in the house. When this phase ends we shall have to turn our attention to the outside and rescue to courtyard, the garden at the back and the field from the encroachments of the weeds, plenty therefore to keep us occupied.

It’s been a Long Time

My apologies for the very long gap between postings to the Blog, there are two main reasons for this – firstly the difficulties of working with a dial-up connexion and secondly the fact that we have been working incredibly hard on the house. Below, headed “Real Progress”, is a posting I composed about a month ago in which the position was hopeful.

I can now report that some of these hopes have been realised. The bedroom and en suite bathroom have now been fully completed though not without some problems on the way. Most notably the shower had to be moved out of its corner as a consequence of a flexible hose developing a leak. This led to tiling and paintwork being damaged, an irritation rather than a major difficulty.

The temporary kitchen/diner is now fully operational though not yet absolutely finished. We have a working sink, new cooker and a range of kitchen cabinets and drawers with a complete set of work surfaces. Notwithstanding the need to finish off the work we have been able to move out of the caravan definitively – just in time before the weather begins to chill down in autumn.

Above this kitchen/diner a space has been created where a bedroom can be made. It has only a rather small window as a consequence of an error by the builder, but it should suffice for a bedroom. The next steps for this room will be to complete the wall linings and the ceilings and this will then become useable.

Elsewhere Jean Claude has cut the hole through and placed a window in the downstairs shower-room. There is still much work to be done to the walls and ceiling to complete this, but for the moment it provides a downstairs loo and wash basin. In the very large salon he has also put in the French doors which gives us easier access to the back of the house and the garden – this is a hopeful word to use as at present it is a weed-filled jungle for the most part.

Jean Claude has also commenced on the difficult task of ‘rescuing’ the very fragile wall at the western end of the house – you may remember, and can look back in the blog to see, the very large crack there was, and is, in one corner of the house affecting the stability of the wall. There is a long way to go to finish all that he plans to do to ensure that this wall is fully stabilised but once he has done it we shall commence to work in the large salon as we want to arrive at a point where we can put in the wood-burning stove to start providing heat inside the house.

There’s still a long way to go before we are at a point of true comfort even in terms of just the half of the house we are now aiming to complete. But real progress has been achieved and to be able to ‘abandon’ the caravan is a major step forward.