Further Work

A note on the remainder of my week in France. I carried on the process of clearing out the house - there's a huge amount of junk left in it from the time when it was actually occupied as a residence as opposed to be being used as a farm building. I've turned up all sorts of things in the course of the clearing out - pictures, letters, tax returns, postcards from someone in a German prisoner-of-war camp, a very large iron crucifix - but most of it is just junk and needs to be thrown away. This does, however, take an inordinate amount of time.

The good news is that I've discovered that the house is already connected to the mains water supply. I went to the offices of the water company to enquire about being connected and when I gave the information on the previous owners was told that there is already a meter in place and would I therefore sign up as the person to whom the bills would be sent in future. So I went back to the house and had a root around and I have indeed discovered the meter and the stopcock which supplies water to a tap on the outside of the house at the front. So one problem solved.

I have also met and talked with my next-door neighbour - an elderly gentleman who seems to have a substantial extended family living with him. Very hard to understand him as he speaks with a pronounced local accent and has a cigarette in the corner of his mouth which doesn't help his diction! But he's interested and supportive of the idea that the house should be rescued and not troubled by foreigners doing it.

I have also agreed with the roofer who lives in the village that he will do the restoration on the main house roof and he said that he would start that in July - of course we need to hope that planning has been granted by then, although there seems to be an attitude that even without it everything would be OK!

I also met with an electrician who is going to quote me for the work that's needed and he's prepared to deal with EDF to get a supply in right away. The problem with this is that EDF may well regard the house as a building site not a habitation and that involves the supply being provided in a different way at the start, which can be somewhat expensive.

Finally I met with a local mason who looked at the wall at the western end of the house. After some consideration he decided that it would be safest to take it down and replace it with a block wall - it might even work out cheaper to do it that way. He was accompanied by a guy who runs an earth-moving business and he will also quote for pulling the earth back at the back of the house and removing the internal ground floors to a depth to allow for concrete flooring to be laid. It was both interesting and amusing to watch how they inflated the jobs that they saw themselves taking on and quoting for as we moved around the house. We'll see what quotes they come up with - the warning given by all in France is that French builders think that they can charge absolutely top rates to all Brits involved in restoration works.

The saddest part of this end of the visit was that I intended to give myself a break on Sunday and may be go over to Spain for a little light shopping in the very cheap supermarkets just over the border. But I decided to look in on the house for perhaps a couple of hours' final tidying up. And it was a good job that I did for the internal wall that is in poor state had decided to collapse yet further, threatening the props holding up the floors above, which in turn are helping to hold up the remnants of the roof in that area. The attached pictures show the situation I found when I got to the house and what I had achieved by the end of the day. Encouragingly where the earth wall is dry it is frankly as hard as concrete - I had to break it up with a lump hammer and cold chisel to create movable sized pieces.

So a mixed picture by the end of the week - real progress with the architect and in some of the clearing out, quotes awaited from the artisan and concerns about further collapses (which could be dangerous) if the weather remains wet. But on the latter point another neighbour who visited said - 300 days of sunshine is what the village experiences, so pretty soon it has to start getting better!

The Work Commences

Despite the lack of a caravan, see the last posting, I went to Arné for a week and the central purpose was to meet with the architect. So at the start of the week I spent my days clearing away rubble, etc to make the site as safe as possible for us to explore it fully and thereby be able to draw up the necessary plans. The scale of the problem is aptly demonstrated by the attached picture which shows what has happened in the centre of the house where the roof has fallen in and the weathering has reduced part of one of the internal walls to a muddy heap covered with the tiles that have fallen through.

Part of the concern that the architect expressed is that all the walls made out of earth have so little stone/pebbles in their structure and as many of them have been and are still exposed to the elements he cannot be sure as to their long term durability. There's a particular issue with the external wall at the western end of the house which is badly affected with a large area where the wall is disappearing. The architect asked that I have it assesed by a local mason to see whether it could be rescued or would it need to be pulled down and replaced by a new block-work wall, which would of course be covered with limestone plaster (chaux) to make it look the same as the rest of the house.

It's also apparent that we shall have to take down the open-sided barn on the eastern side of the property. It would require a huge amount of work to make it safe and it's not really an option (see the attached picture to get an idea of the problems). We don't need the barn and don't want to convert it to a gite; and removing it would also make restoring the main roof that much easier as we could reuse the tiles to replace those broken or missing. So the architect is going to enquire about getting a demolition order and this may be on a Déclaration de Travaux which is much simpler. In fact he thinks that we might be able to do most of the work on a set of Déclarations if the Maire is agreeable, but this is unlikely as there is so much that needs to be done. Still it's apparently worth a try.

The architect's visit also included a meeting with the man responsible for checking the viability of septic tanks - the rules have been very much tightened up recently. In fact his view is that there's absolutely no problem with this and we actually filled out the forms there and then so that they will go through with the main planning application without a problem.

So, good progress at that stage and much encouragement.

Caravan, what Caravan?

The confidence that everything was and would proceed smoothly from now on has been rudely shattered. Yes we have a caravan and superficially it looks fine - a reasonable purchase. But on closer inspection by a local company serious flaws emerge into the light of day - it has not got a water pump and the burner for the water heater system is shot. Most significantly it has a small gas leak somewhere inside and this renders it totally unsafe to use.

So we are now into the business of trying to resolve this - as the trader who sold it me has said - "See you in court then!" And this completely screws up our planning for the next steps - notwithstanding the caravan issue I have to be in Arné to meet the architect next week.

So it's a stay in B & B with an English couple quite close to Arné for me - much more comfortable than the caravan - but only for the week, so the amount of progress is likely to be quite small. Then it's back home to try to resolve the caravan position and whenever that has happened I'll tow it, or a replacement, out and stay for a substantial period to push on with the work.

Keep watching this space!

Some Progress

A period of preparation is beginning to come to an end and the hard work will soon commence.

As noted in the last posting we have had to do a bit of research around the issue of an architect - it's a matter of costs, but when was it anything other for building projects?? The result of our efforts is that we have engaged a Scottish architect who is resident in France and therefore knows the demand of planning regulations and the expectations that the 'authorities' have. I shall meet with him at the house at the end of February to sort out what we want to do to the house so that he can draw the plans and make the submission for the Permis de Construire and also for the installation of the the Fosse Septique. He has indicated that he will submit these plans by mid March and the reasonable expectation is that we shall be able to proceed two months from that date. We shall see!

I've also acquired a caravan which I shall be towing to the house in time for the meeting with the architect. This will allow me to stay on site and start the clearance of the debris, weeding the courtyard at the front, sorting out the provision of electricity, telephone and water supplies and possibly the repair of the roof. The latter might just require the Permis de Construire to be agreed prior to starting though I am hoping that this won't be the case. We'll know better once we have talked with the Maire as part of this first meeting.

So very soon I shall be donning my French beret under my hard hat and setting about the first stages in the project to restore the house to a habitable state. Because of the lack of internet connexion and the lack of power this may be the last posting until mid April when I return to the UK, it depends on whether I feel moved to use an internet cafe to report the latest position. So read and then imagine me in my little caravan in deepest France wrestling with French bureaucracy and attempting to keep warm.